Contractor Stopped Working - Name is on Permit - Help

I am not drunk enough to tell the full version of this story, which is looong and sad. So I will try to give you the highlights – any advice or links to other resources would be met with heartfelt gratitude.

Ready? Get comfy.

Our contractor stopped working about a month into a full renovation of a co-op in Brooklyn. Before he stopped responding, he asked for most of the remainder of the money agreed to in the contract in advance.

We have paid him more than half of the money in advance already, and he has completed a little more than a third of the job. So we said we’d rather not pay any more in advance, but to pay for work completed as agreed to.

Given how he was slowing down, we said we’d also like to retain some portion of the remaining money until the job was complete, the final DOB inspections (plumbing and electric) were complete, including any work that came out of the inspections.

He then said that he could no longer get his floor subcontractor, so we would need to find someone to do the new floor work and refinishing ourselves – he would not guarantee the work, and he would remove that item from the contract. He also said that he would not build the kitchen cabinets/doors, though he would still install them.

He never sent the revised contract. We did find a floor person and the floors are now complete (and beautiful, if anyone needs a recommendation).

He wrote a final email saying that he and the plumber and electrician were looking forward to completing the job and asked again if I would read over his proposed payment terms. I repeated my answer and asked how he wanted to proceed. He has not responded.

So we have found someone to build the kitchen cabinets, which are underway, and we are ready to move on to the next part of the job (baseboards, picture molding, hang doors, paint, minor bathroom repairs), but he is nowhere to be found after several emails, calls and texts asking him to let us know how he plans to proceed.

Obviously, I am not going to pay him the remaining money – after taking on the floors, less than 15% of the total cost of the job remains to be paid, and he has not done any work for almost two months now.

I could move ahead and find someone to do the next part of the job (not including the remaining permitted plumbing/electrical work), but I am concerned about the fact that the contract still lists these items, in addition to the floors.

Should I be concerned?

As for the rest of the job, if he continues to be unresponsive, is it possible to switch the permit to another contractor, plumber and electrician? If so, how is that done? And if I do that, wouldn’t I have to pay for more than the amount of the remaining work as they would need to verify the work that was already done and open up the (now skim-coated) walls?

We created a one bedroom from a studio, moving plumbing from the kitchen to the main room and rewiring the entire apartment. Most of the work is complete here, but the kitchen still needs to be installed, the kitchen plumbing/electrical hooked up, and the light fixtures and plates in the rest of the apartment still need to be put in.

So some other questions would be:

– Do the plumber and the electrician need to be present for the installation of the kitchen?
– If I don’t hear from him, do I have any other options besides switching the permit to another contractor’s name?
– Can I contact the plumber and electrician directly and see if they will finish the work, or do they have to work with the unresponsive contractor?
– Could I ask the plumber and electrician if they’d work with a different contractor, and just transfer the permit, so I would not have to start over with another plumber and electrician?

Etc, etc. You get the idea.
It is grim. We are desperate. We are losing money daily in rent/storage and this project, including the (equally painful) time it took to secure the permits, has dragged on for more than a year and a half now.

So. Any advice, ideas, hope?

(Note: I don’t want to publish the name of this contractor here yet as I still have some hope he will resurface and I don’t want to antagonize him.)