28 jobs lost as Trenton firm closes Owner blames failure on congressional hopeful

TRENTON – Display Concepts, founded in 1973 to manufacture interior signs and exhibits for businesses, closed its doors Friday and laid off 28 workers, owner Steven Shelton confirmed.

Shelton said 12 more employees will work through next Tuesday to finish projects that are close to completion in order to get more money for his creditors.

Shelton, whose father bought the business in 1978, said he would file personal bankruptcy.

He blamed the demise of his business on Sean Faircloth of Bangor, a candidate for the 2nd Congressional District seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. John Baldacci and a former state senator, who he said “took advantage of me” when Shelton contracted to manufacture all of the exhibits for the Maine Discovery Museum.

“And I paid the price,” Shelton said.

Faircloth developed the idea for the museum, located in Bangor, and later became its first executive director. Faircloth declined to respond to Shelton’s allegations Friday afternoon, but the museum’s attorney, Roger Huber, emphatically denied that Faircloth or the museum’s contract with Display Concepts caused the company’s demise.

“Mr. Shelton can characterize it any way he wants, but all we asked was for him to do what he said he would do,” Huber said.

Faircloth praised the Display Concepts employees, who he said did a “great job” for the museum.

“I care a lot about those people and liked them, and my concern is with them because I think they are terrific people,” Faircloth said of the employees.

According to both parties, Display Concepts contracted with the museum to build the exhibits for $1.14 million. The contract was signed Dec. 28, 1999. And that’s where the agreement ends.

Shelton contends that Faircloth made changes to the building specifications during production which drove the cost to $2.5 million. The changes were made in cooperation with one of Shelton’s employees and without the owner’s knowledge, Shelton said.

He claims that Faircloth, a lawyer by education, and other attorneys for Faircloth, forced him to finish the work after threatening to ruin him financially with lawsuits.

“I finished the work, and I’ve been staggering ever since,” Shelton said.

Huber said he and Faircloth negotiated with Shelton “to make sure he was going to get the job done,” but never threatened to sue Shelton if he didn’t finish the work.

Huber said that when Shelton told Faircloth and Huber that he could not finish the work for the contracted $1.14 million, “we did evaluate our options … but I don’t think suing DCI directly was an option.”

He said the museum specifications were never changed.

The museum board was not involved in the dispute until members agreed to pay Shelton an additional $300,000 above the contracted amount when “he essentially walked off the job” shortly before the museum was set to open in February 2001, Huber said.

Huber said Shelton never told him or Faircloth during negotiations over the dispute that the project cost $2.5 million to complete, although he recalled hearing the figure in another context.

“I totally recognize that it may very well have cost him” far more than the $1.14 million, Huber said of the original contract, “but he apparently underbid” the work.

“I have no idea what DCI’s financial health or structure is, nor do I feel it’s my responsibility to know,” Huber said.

Alan Comeau, president of the museum’s board of directors, declined Friday to comment on Shelton’s allegations.