Queens Galley starts shutting down Uptown kitchen

The 31-year-old city resident is using the kitchen during the week of Christmas to make 30 dozen cookies."It would take me days to bake all those at my house, but I'll be out of the kitchen in four hours," Ensminger said.She's planning to make six different recipes and give out the final product to family and friends."It's about speed and efficiency. When I go to the kitchen, I got all the pans there and everything I need. It's such a great asset to the city," Ensminger said.Laura Guthery's experience with a kitchen remodeler last summer was so "nightmarish" that she felt it went beyond a contract dispute. So she reported it to both the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry and the Bloomington Police Department.

Now the botched kitchen project in Guthery's home has turned into a criminal charge against the remodeler, Mark M. Kotek. The department told Bloomington police that a little-known and rarely used Minnesota statute makes it a crime for someone to do contracting work without a license.In a summons filed Nov. 21 and made public Monday, Kotek, 37, of Minneapolis, was charged with a misdemeanor after an investigation by Bloomington police detective Cory Cardenas."I've been a detective for 10 years and I had never heard of this," Cardenas said. "A lot of these people don't think they're going to fall into the criminal realm."

In August, the Department of Labor and Industry issued a cease-and-desist order to Kotek, fined him $10,000 and his company, Kotek Construction, $20,000,Prepare simple holiday gifts in your kitchen penalties that remained unpaid as of Monday. But the department's director of contractor licensing and enforcement, Charlie Durenberger, welcomes the criminal case and hopes other cities will take similar action."Our experience has been, historically, cities are not interested in charging contractors, and it's long been a frustration for us and homeowners," Durenberger said.In the past five years, the department has issued 596 cease-and-desist orders to unlicensed residential building contractors, but only a very small percentage have faced criminal charges, Durenberger said.