President and CEO of Gen Phar, Dr. John Dong received word Friday that AT&T was not able to access their building at 1200 Innovation Way which is currently under construction. He was told the technician would not enter the building because a stop work order was placed on the facility by Lee Cave, Division Chief of Building Inspections for the Town of Mount Pleasant . Dong said this creates a dangerous situation for the area.

The AT&T technician arrived at the building Friday to lay down the cable for the fire alarm and would not enter due to the stop work order.

Cave told the Moultrie News that he halted construction on the pharmaceutical building because ‘a project that size, by law requires that they have a design professional and someone who is responsible in charge of the construction operation. In other words, Dr. dong needs an architect. Cave said the town has the original plans on file but those are incomplete. At best they need to be updated, said Cave. He’s making changes not reflected in those plans. By law it requires that I have plans on file.”

In an E-mail to Christiane Farrel, planning director for the Town of Mount Pleasant, Dong said his project has been behind schedule because of regulation issues with the building department. “It has been red tagged twice, the first time for three months and this time already more than ten days. There are no justifiable reasons to red tag the entire building. This is the first time in the State’s building history and certainly in the Town of Mount Pleasant.”

Dong argued that everything related to the structure of the building has been validated by an engineering testing company and approved by the Inspection department. IN fact, Dong insists that inspectors made a “secret inspection” and red tagged the entire building saying that Gen Phar was accused of covering up the plumbing before inspection. In his E-mail he said, “There are documents to show the entire events. You may make your own judgment, if any of these are justifiable for red tagging our entire building for nearly four months while we are black mailed by some of the people charging us hundreds of thousands dollars for removing the red-tag for us or even demand to have our building for a dollar in order for us to not lose the multi-hundred million dollar contract.”

Cave said last week that “‘they are way behind schedule at the fault of no one but themselves,’ said Cave. ‘Dr. Dong has not been forthcoming with things I have asked him to provide. There were a number of code issues identified in the building six months ago and we still don’t have answers. Until he comes forward to clean up these issues I am not willing to let him go any further with project,’ said Cave.

Dr. Dong said he has appealed to mayor and town administrator to help them to resolve the issue. Mayor Billy Swails said he did not want to comment until he could speak with Dr. Dong personally. Dr. Dong said a legal appeal would take too much time.

Read the complete story in next week’s Moultrie News.