Gahanna's $59 million civic center was supposed to open last November. Then April. Now the city is hoping for mid-July, and the holdup is electrical work so bad it has to be ripped out and done over.
Elford, the Columbus general contractor, told City Council on May 18 that it fired the electrical subcontractor over poor-quality work and hired a new firm to redo it. CEO Mike Fitzpatrick said his company will eat the cost, not the city. That's the right call, and Elford should absorb it. But it doesn't answer the bigger question of how the work got this bad in the first place.
Elford hasn't said who it fired. People close to the project tell The Pennant it was BW Electrical Services, out of Hillsborough, New Jersey. That's almost 500 miles from Tech Center Drive. BW was purchased in 2021 by Charge Enterprises, which turned around and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2024 before rebranding the whole operation as Charge Power Solutions.
To be frank, you don't have to know a thing about construction to see where this was headed. Somebody signed off on shipping critical electrical work to an out-of-state outfit whose parent had just been through bankruptcy court. And that raises a question worth asking out loud: why is a company from New Jersey wiring a public building in central Ohio at all? There have to be qualified tradesmen living right here who can do the job. Jess Howard Electric and Settle Muter Electric both sit within a few miles of the site. Either one could have driven over for a look.
We're not here to convict anybody before the facts come out. But the people of Gahanna paid for this building, and they're owed a straight answer about who picked this subcontractor and what the do-over is going to cost them.
Elford brought the news to the council. We hope it keeps that same candor if we find there is more to the story.
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