Cumberland County sued over $1.3M in unpaid fees for Crown Event Center design

A federal lawsuit says the Cumberland County government owes more than $1.3 million in unpaid bills to the architectural firm that designed the now-defunct Crown Event Center in downtown Fayetteville.

The suit, filed in October by Philadelphia-based architecture firm EwingCole, also seeks over $329,000 in accrued interest, as of Sept. 25. Interest for the unpaid bills grows at an annual rate of 18%, according to the lawsuit.

The firm maintains that it did the work that the county told it to do.

“The County has never communicated that EwingCole’s services were substandard in any way, or that EwingCole billed for services it did not perform,” Carmela Mastrianni, an attorney for Ewing Cole, wrote in an email to CityView.

County officials anticipated the litigation, commissioners Chair Kirk deViere told CityView in interviews this week. “This is a billing dispute we seek to resolve with this lawsuit,” he said.

“We did go through mediation, but there wasn’t a resolution,” he said.

Pitched as a transformative downtown venue when its Gillespie Street site was announced in November 2022, the Crown Event Center saw its design reworked and its budget swell over the course of 35 months before construction started in fall 2024. Then, in March of this year, the commissioners stopped construction to review the project and launched an investigation of a $1.92 million fee from EwingCole.

The commissioners ultimately voted in June to cancel the project altogether.

A project that kept growing

EwingCole’s lawsuit and a county document say Cumberland County hired the firm in November 2022 for $6.41 million to design the Crown Event Center. 

The venue was intended to replace the aging Theatre and Arena facilities at the Crown Complex off U.S. 301 South, several miles from downtown. The project initially carried a budget of $82.5 million, with plans for an 89,000-square-foot building.

The initial plans called for multipurpose performance spaces accommodating 2,500 to 3,000 guests, banquet seating for up to 500, VIP boxes and membership seating, a grand lobby entrance, meeting rooms, classrooms, food service areas, dressing rooms, a loading dock, and “back of house” components typical of regional entertainment venues.

Key events in EwingCole’s lawsuit against Cumberland County over the Crown Event Center project.

But the county expanded the scope, square footage, and features, and inflation drove up labor and material prices. The projected cost ballooned to $131.7 million in 2023, then $163.5 million in early 2024.

That was more than what the Board of Commissioners was willing to spend.

In January 2024, the county ordered a redesign to bring the budget down to about $145 million.

EwingCole billed the county $1.92 million for that redesign, the lawsuit says. This fee was the subject of the county’s investigation a year later.

“Ironically, the fees the County refuses to pay are unrelated to the redesign,” Mastrianni said.

The investigation into the $1.92 million fee generated a report that is more than 1,000 pages long, deViere said in April. The county at the time refused to give a copy of the report to CityView, saying that it is not a public record.

“It’s a legal body of work that is part of this ongoing lawsuit,” deViere said on Monday.

Payments stop, lawsuit follows

EwingCole says it continued its work through early 2025. This included revising plans and preparing construction documents.

But according to the lawsuit, the county stopped paying invoices beginning in July 2024 and withheld payments for August, September, October, and February 2025.

As of Sept. 1, EwingCole says it was owed $2.3 million, not including interest. The county paid $977,615 on Sept. 11, leaving a disputed balance of $1.32 million, according to the lawsuit.

Fees added for additional work

EwingCole says its fees increased twice during the project.

The first time was in July 2023 when the county expanded the Event Center size to 131,000 square feet. This added about $2 million to the fees, bringing the total to $8.42 million, a county document says. The commissioners voted in November 2024 to pay that additional sum.

EwingCole says its second added fee, for $1.92 million, was for the redesign the county ordered in January 2024 following the new cost estimate from the construction management companies, CityView previously reported. The new cost, at $163.5 million, was $32 million higher than the previous estimate, and the commissioners ordered a redesign to reduce the budget.

The county had hired the T.A. Loving and Metcon construction companies to manage the project.

The “redesign services were due to the County’s failure to timely retain the project Construction Manager,” EwingCole attorney Mastrianni wrote in an email to CityView. The lawsuit says T.A. Loving and Metcon “came on board” in September 2023, four months before the newly increased price was brought to the county commissioners.

EwingCole says Cumberland County paid the $1.92 million redesign fee, but in November 2024, the county staff told the firm that it considered that fee to be “unapproved.” EwingCole said it sought an explanation from the county but “received no response.”

“Any change order must be approved by the board before it is paid,” deViere told CityView. In the construction world, a “change order” is “an official change of any kind in the original scope of work or terms,” says the Associated General Contractors of America.

Did the county Board of Commissioners ever approve paying EwingCole the $1.92 million fee—a payment that EwingCole says it received? DeViere would not say.

“We’ve just got an ongoing lawsuit. I’ll just leave it at that,” he said.

CityView reviewed county commissioners’ meeting records. Paperwork dated Nov. 20, 2024, discusses the $2 million fee from the county’s 2023 redesign order. The commissioners approved that payment five days later. The paperwork makes no mention of the commissioners ever approving payment of the $1.92 million fee from the January 2024 redesign.

Despite the payment dispute that started in July 2024, the project moved forward. The county broke ground in October 2024 in a parking lot in front of the Cumberland County Courthouse in downtown Fayetteville for the now 134,000-square-foot project. 

Over the next four months, the land was cleared and other site-preparation work was done. 

But in March 2025, after three new commissioners were elected to the board, the county paused construction. Over the next three months the board considered whether the project should continue or if the old Crown facilities should be renovated instead.

At the same time, the board hired attorney J. Scott Flowers of Fayetteville to investigate the $1.92 million fee.

Legal stakes and public questions

EwingCole is seeking damages for breach of contract, including unpaid fees and interest accruing at 18% annually.

“​​EwingCole attempted to resolve this dispute without resorting to litigation, but, unfortunately, the firm remains owed fees in excess of $1 million for its services on the project,” Mastrianni said.

“EwingCole is disappointed that it is forced to pursue legal action to recover payment for services duly rendered under contract with the County.”

The county has yet to file a response. A jury trial has been requested.

Government reporter Rachel Heimann Mercader can be reached at rheimann@cityviewnc.com. Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.

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