Beattie Development subcontractors speak out

Following the raid of a contractor’s office after being accused of not finishing work on their homes and still taking the money, the victims are now speaking out.

WINK News was first at the scene at the downtown Cape Coral office.

Art Castellanos is the president of Castellanos + Tramonte Architects.

He’s owed about $20,000 for plans he drew up for Beattie’s office remodel.

Castellanos is a trusting guy. Meeting Paul Beattie was no different.

“I knew of him in the community, talked with him a couple of times. Seemed like a pretty upstanding guy,” said Castellanos.

After Hurricane Ian, the Beattie Development office was damaged, so Beattie called Castellanos for help with remodeling.

“He hired us to do the development of the plans and the permitting set for the building, the two stories,” said Castellanos, “so we started on that project. We got the contracts, invoices and all that.”

Castellanos finished up about half of the work when things changed.

“He actually never notified me,” said Castellanos. “I found out, you know, three months later, he was going in a different direction.”

In total, Castellanos said he did $29,200 worth of work.

Nearly two years later, he said $20,700 remain unpaid, so Castellanos filed a lien.

“Every contractor has a mechanics lien rights,” said Castellanos. “We have it as well on our drawing, to have rights, to get paid if something were to happen with that property.”

It’s a long court process, one that Castellanos hopes gets him his money back.

“That money that’s owed to me is work that we did that I can make up for it, some other place,” said Castellanos, “but for people like that, that put their life savings, they’re in harder shape, so I do feel for those people.”

The state says if you, a homeowner have suffered financial loss because of a contractor’s negligence, you may be eligible for a claim.

Castellanos’ case is just one of over 40 listed when you search Beattie Development.

Matt Armstrong is the owner of Armstrong Propane and had similar issues with Beattie Development.

“Really no issues until maybe a year ago,” said Armstrong. “Things started getting piled up billing wise, and checks stopped coming.”

The communications issues continued.

“He actually never notified me. I found out, you know, a couple months, three months later, he was going in a different direction,” said Armstrong.

Armstrong said he struggled to get in contact with Beattie’s office.

“I called him personally, and he wanted to know why I hadn’t contacted him sooner.”

Armstrong said he was told everything would be taken care of then this happened.

“Randomly, I got a $5,000 check that didn’t cover half the bill on one house,” said Armstrong. “There was no attempt to rectify any other situation, any other house.”

Armstrong said that this situation reflects poorly on him and other subcontractos.

“It’s given a lot of us bad name when we had nothing to do with it. We’re just trying to do our work,” said Armstrong.

This experience has change how Armstrong does business.

“Because of what has happened, we now require 50% deposits from everybody, whether we know you or not,” said Armstrong.

WINK News has reached out to Beattie for a comment and have yet to hear back.

You can file a complaint in the link here through the Department of Business and Professional Regulation.