Arlington contractor leaves clients stranded with unfinished projects

ARLINGTON, TX – A well-known Arlington construction contractor has filed for bankruptcy, leaving many of its clients stranded.

FOX 4 has heard of many people who paid the company tens of thousands of dollars, only to end up with a locked office door and unfinished projects.

RJ Construction owner Robert Jordan wouldn’t take questions from FOX 4 for this story, but just months ago he got candid about his own grievances with a local school district.

One client, Travis Hyden, said he hired RJ Construction to rebuild his mother’s house in Fort Worth after it burned down in a fire.

“At this point we thought there would be sticks in the air, drywall work, but here we are on concrete,” Hyden said.

Hyden said he and Jordan have been friends since middle school.

“Robert Jordan, who I’ve known for 30 years. I knew he was in the construction business, and his office is actually right across from mine,” Hyden said. “I contacted him and he was like, ‘Yeah, it’s just in my wheelhouse.'”

Hyden said Jordan needed 30% of the project upfront, or $115,000.

“Once he got the money, nothing happened. It was delay after delay,” Hyden recalled.

Hyden initially thought the delays were part of supply chain issues.

“Given the related real estate market climate over the past few years and the type of home building market, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary. Contractors are right behind right now,” he said. added.

But over time, Hyden decided to go to RJ’s Construction office building in Dalworthington Gardens.

“The doors were locked,” he said.

Jared and Kimberly Carter also trusted the man who appeared on the August 2022 cover of “Arlington Today,” tagged “All Star Construction Specialist.”

“At this point, we were thinking of arranging furniture and hanging artwork,” Kimberly said. “We have a 16 foot hole in our living room.”

“He promised me, gave me his word,” Jared said. “That he was going to do whatever it took to get the job done, [saying] it’s Mr. Arlington.”

The Carters invested significant resources in RJ Construction for the renovation of their home which they purchased in October.

“He said we were going to get this going, get us in by the spring,” Kimberly said. “He was just very ambitious. Our grandmother is going to move in with us, so time was precious.”

Although some work has been done, the Carters have been told that the contractors who worked on their home have not been paid, putting her at risk of liens.

“I was shocked to learn that none of our windows were paid for,” Kimberly said. “The sidewalk we’re standing on hasn’t been paid for.”

When FOX 4’s Lori Brown visited RJ Construction’s office in Dalworthington Gardens, he was locked up.

Stickers on the doors showed that accreditation from the Better Business Bureau and the North Texas Roofers Association had expired eight months ago, as did a tag on his truck.

Hyden thinks this shows that Jordan knew for months that his business was in trouble while continuing to ask customers for money.

“You don’t wake up one day thinking, ‘My business is gone, I have to file for bankruptcy,'” Hyden said.

With no one in his business, Brown drove to his home address, which is valued at over $1 million.

Records show he bought the house with a tennis court, swimming pool and beach volleyball court in June 2021.

While Fox 4 was still outside Jordan’s house, he walked out.

“Excuse me, Mr. Jordan,” Brown asked. “Did you know you were going bankrupt when you kept asking customers for money?”

Jordan did not answer Brown’s question.

But in a statement from his attorney, he blamed his bankruptcy on a dispute with Arlington ISD.

“…After the 2021 Uri winter storm, RJ Construction was hired by Arlington ISD to perform a substantial amount of cleaning and remediation at Sam Houston High School for an agreed upon fee that the district did not provide. The impact of this unfortunate dispute over fees has placed RJ Construction in a position of significant financial pressure, leading to its ultimate bankruptcy filing…,” the statement read.

While RJ Construction is closed, many of its country-style signs are still in place.

Last year, Jordan put up hundreds of signs that read “Pay RJ” and directed people to a QR code that led people to a petition against Arlington ISD.

He also made a YouTube video detailing his complaints against the district.

“What the Arlington ISD Board of Directors is doing to my company is outrageous and wrong,” Jordan said in the video.

Jordan filed a lawsuit against the school district.

“AISD is ready to put a company out of business,” he added in the video.

The school district denied this, saying, “Arlington ISD never had the desire or motivation to bankrupt RJ Construction,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “At the same time, Arlington ISD has a duty to ensure that taxpayer dollars are only spent on services actually performed and documented…Arlington ISD has previously paid RJ Construction for its services for an amount deemed appropriate.”

READ MORE: Arlington ISD’s ‘safety tracker’ will help answer parents’ questions in an emergency

FOX 4 interviewed a prosecutor from the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office about contractor responsibilities.

The District Attorney’s Office has not yet received a referral from law enforcement regarding RJ Construction.

Attorney Lori Varnell said Texas law generally requires contractors to document how they spend a landlord’s money when there is a contract over $5,000.

She said the law aims to prevent a Ponzi-style business model.

“It’s paying for older customers with money from new customers,” Varnell said. “That’s what they wanted to prevent because it will fail every time. It’s a mathematical certainty. It’s just a matter of time.”

The Carters know there’s one thing they’ll never get back and that’s time, especially time spent with Kimberly’s grandmother.

“We hope he has decades left,” Kimberly said. “We don’t know how many days we have left on this Earth. We wouldn’t have chosen to have her live a year on Airbnb. That’s where we wanted her.”

“I gave him my mother, to take care of her,” Hyden said. “And he betrayed me.”

While the clients have filed police reports with multiple agencies, at this time Jordan has not been charged with any crime.

Varnell encourages people with construction account violations to file reports with the police.

The law requiring contractors to keep records of how money is spent on a project over $5,000 is set out in Property Code Section 162.