POINCIANA, Fla. -- Commissioners said Thursday that construction on the new Poinciana bio-pharmaceutical park is embarrassing.

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The project missed construction deadlines and has few tenants signed up for leases for when construction finishes.

Developer Dennis Stackhouse, who was under criminal investigation, was not present at the most recent commission meeting. Officials of the Empowerment Zone Trust, which was in charge of bringing tenants to the land left barren by the Liberty City riots of 1980, were at the meeting.

Empowerment Zone Chief Executive Officer Aundra Wallace said she took responsibility for the project's shortcomings.

Wallace, who did not head the trust when it signed the development deal with Stackhouse, denied there had been a failure to check out Stackhouse's background.

"I'm comfortable with the due diligence we did at that particular time," Wallace said.

However, some commissioners, like Rebecca Sosa, said the county should have been watching more closely. And the commission's own auditor said he had not checked Stackhouse's background either.

Assistant county manager, Roger Carlton, was in charge of overseeing the project. He said, while there were problems, he was trying to work with the developer.

"We had the potential of saying, 'You're in default. Goodbye,'" he said. "At this point, twenty years of effort go out the window.

"Our focus was on keeping county dollars from going out the door," county manager George Burgess said. "I believe we did do that."

Burgess said, while county money was supposed to pay for a parking garage at the bio-pharmaceutical park, those dollars were not and will not be spent. Still, that did not satisfy all commissioners.

"After a while, I get tired of hearing, 'I take full responsibility,'" Miami-Dade County commissioner Audrey Edmondson said.

A prime backer on the commission for the project made no apologies.

"I won't apologize for this," commissioner Dorrin Rolle said. "Yeah I pushed it. I sure as hell did push it based on what I saw."

Some commissioners were upset that another advocate of the project, former Rep. Carrie Meek, was so prominent in the decisions made on the complex.

"The congresswoman should not be held accountable for failings of her client, someone she trusted," commissioner Barbara Jordan said.