Eric North/Daily Reporter

Builders and developers around the area are surprised and angered by the announcement Wednesday that Eden-based Irving Materials admitted to fixing concrete prices.

“This is huge,” said Steve Reilly of R & F Development in Greenfield. “Four years, multiple companies, thousands of loads of concrete each day.

“How would you ever make compensation to the end users of the concrete?”

Reilly, who has developed a number of subdivisions in Hancock County, and other developers, are sorting through invoices with Irving and calculating the costs of what the government says are the overcharges.

Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that IMI executives colluded with other companies to fix the price of ready-mixed concrete in the Indianapolis area beginning in July 2000 and ending in May 2004.

“I know that you can get concrete delivered in other places in Indiana cheaper but they can’t go very far before it starts to set up, so you have to use someone local and a lot of times around here, that is Irving,” said Roger Sitton, a local custom home builder and occasional IMI customer.

Sitton said some of his projects had driveways or basements constructed with IMI concrete.

Builder Dave Sego also will be doing a lot of paperwork today.

“I have been a customer of IMI since 1988 and can probably get my hands on all of the invoices,” said Sego of New Palestine who may be looking for compensation for some of the work IMI did on his construction sites during the early 1990s.

Sego said he built 75 homes during the past two decades, many of which include IMI concrete.

Other builders say they are – like Sego – checking their records.

“I know they worked on pouring floors on several of the projects at Mt. Comfort,” said Larry Siegler of Western Hancock Utilities and the Precedent Group, which has developed the Mt. Comfort Industrial Park.

Siegler said Irving worked as a subcontractor on many of the homes built in Precedent subdivisions, including the new Woodhaven development on CR 600N, just east of Mt Comfort Road. He said Precedent is looking through its records but characterized the amount of business between the two firms as “thousands of yards of concrete.”

Some local builders said they will talk with their trade organization, the Hancock County Builder’s Council, during the next few days to determine the next step.

“Right now, we are gathering information on the legalities of the situation,” said Dale Langhans, president of the council and a local builder. “We are in the midst of our due diligence on what to do but it was very disappointing news.”

The news also startled government officials, who bid infrastructure projects to general contractors who then hired concrete subcontractors.

“We are stuck in the middle and just had to pay the cost to get the jobs done,” said Jim Hahn, Greenfield’s Street Commissioner. “We might see some compensation but the contractor will be applying for any refunds first.”

Reilly believes the price fixing story is far from over.

“Developers pass the costs to the builders. Builders pass the costs to the homeowners, but there are several contractors involved in the process too,” said Reilly upon learning of the fines. “Of course it remains to be seen which other companies are involved. It may be hard to sort out which companies participated in the price fixing and which just followed the prices of the leaders.

“We have done business with them for over 30 years. Good people make bad choices sometimes.”
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