News10NBC Investigates: Greece housing development slowed over struggles to get RG&E power

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ROCHESTER, N.Y. — A lot of our investigations into RG&E exposed problems with enormous bills, customer service and surprise shut-offs.

Tonight, we turn our camera onto a housing development that has slowed because builders say it cannot get RG&E to show up and provide power.

“This is considered the third phase right here we’re driving through,” Carlo Callea as he drove me through his housing development called The Villas at Town Center on Long Pond Road.

Some of the homes are done and have people living in them. But many are empty, unfinished and not yet built because he can’t get RG&E to show up and install power and gas.

Brean: “And why is that?”
Carlo Callea: “They have not shown up on site. We can’t get them to give us an exact date.”

Callea says he’s had to slow some of the work because of that.

Brean: “Should it be in by now?”
Callea: “It should be in as we submitted our paperwork in June 2021.

RG&E told me it’s looking into this and will have more information later in the week. Rick Herman runs the Rochester Home Builders’ Association and he says he talks with RG&E’s upper management.

“Is it perfect?” he said. “No, it’s not perfect. But we didn’t expect anything to happen overnight.”

Herman says RG&E is working on an app for contractors early next year.

Brean: “Do you have a sense of hope that things are going to change? Do you see a light at the end of the tunnel?”
Herman: “Well, I’m hoping so. Some of the solutions we have heard are acceptable if they can get them in place in time.”

Callea: “It costs us thousands and thousands of dollars by one, not being able to finish the units, which in turn we can’t rent the units. Like this home here, has the drywall staged, ready to go in, but it cannot be installed due to [the fact that] we have no heat, no electric.”
Brean: “If you had power and gas could people move in?”
Callea: “This project here would be in the final stages of production if we had power a month ago.”

More about billing issues with RG&E: