As bad news for SportsQuest continues to roll in…. Steve Burton, the founder and chief executive of SportsQuest. “I look forward to better days.”

The bad news for SportsQuest continues to roll in.

Its fitness center is closed, at least temporarily, after being evicted from its facility in an industrial park near the 250-acre campus in western Chesterfield County, and the lawyer representing a contractor with unpaid bills for work on lighting and a concession stand said he’s moving forward with a lawsuit to try to recoup the money his client is owed.

“It’s been a challenging year,” said Steve Burton, the founder and chief executive of SportsQuest. “I look forward to better days.”

Those days are not coming this week. By Tuesday morning, SportsQuest had been locked out of its fitness facility, and a new home might not be up and running for a week or more.

Burton said the move was planned and that he had identified a new site, but he declined to name it on Tuesday. He said he wanted to thank his members for their patience, and he promised that a new center would open soon.

Neal Carns, the landlord of the SportsQuest fitness center at 2240 Oak Lake Blvd., said SportsQuest was significantly in arrears on their rent, but he wouldn’t say how much. He said that after months of trying to work out something, he terminated their access.

“You can only work with somebody for so long,” he said, “and that time ran out.”

In an unrelated development Friday, the lawyer for Farmville Excavating filed an amended mechanic’s lien in response to a SportsQuest announcement that it was trying to sell its business a piece at a time.

“We’re trying to protect our interest,” said Steve Coleman. In September, he filed the original lien for $96,576.92, plus $1,159.26 in interest, for work done during the summer. The amended lien includes a wider range of Sports-Quest property. Coleman said he would file suit when the six-month window the state allows businesses to handle such liens expires in March.

The setback at the fitness center comes just weeks after Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli sued SportsQuest for the way it marketed and sold memberships to the center.

In the lawsuit, Cuccinelli claimed the company violated the state health spa and consumer protection acts by first not saying when the center would be built and then, after saying so, by not sticking to its self-imposed deadlines. He’s seeking to force the company to offer refunds to its 725 or so paying members.

In addition to the Farmville Excavating lien, two other contractors have filed similar liens for an additional $670,000 in work.

When he announced the creation of Sports-Quest in December 2008, Burton said he envisioned a multisports complex that would bring an Olympic village-style facility, and all of its trappings, to a site where Genito Road crosses state Route 288 not far from the Brandermill neighborhood.

Since then, the plan has grown to include 250 acres on two campuses — one on each side of Route 288 — and up to $250 million in development. But the reality has been different, with Burton struggling to raise money in a weak economy.

His biggest public support came in summer 2010, when Chesterfield leaders agreed to a two-part, $4.3 million investment in the complex. The county signed a $2 million, 20-year lease for the regular use of soccer fields, which are built and operational. The remaining $2.3 million is for an as-yet-built senior center and indoor basketball court. The county holds the first lien against the property in case SportsQuest is unable to fulfill its part of the deal.

Chesterfield County Administrator James J.L. Stegmaier didn’t not want to comment on Sports-Quest’s current troubles, calling them “a private matter between private entities.” However, he did say SportsQuest’s athletic fields are proving their value to the community.

“The scope of the soccer tournaments coming up over the next few weeks demonstrate the value, but even beyond that, our youth are making use of those fields Monday through Thursday every night,” he said.

Early this month, Burton announced in a blog post on his website that he was actively seeking buyers for parts of the business. At the time, he said he had potential buyers for two of the three segments. But weeks later, no sales have been completed.

On Tuesday, he was still optimistic but no more specific.

“I’m an optimistic guy,” he said. “I’ll continue to drive this forward.”