Moroun’s bridge company fights for piece of public park

DETROIT — In Southwest Detroit, a small park has emerged as a strategic battleground in a modern-day David v. Goliath match up.

For the most part, the battlefield is the courtroom, but it may extend into the mayor’s office as well.

Part of the Ambassador Bridge's disputed "buffer zone" carved out of Southwest Detroit's Riverside Park. (Photos by David Alire Garcia)

Late last year, the Detroit International Bridge Company, owned by billionaire Manuel “Matty” Moroun, was ordered by Wayne County District Judge Beverly Hayes-Sipes to remove the fences it erected around the eastern half of city-owned Riverside Park nine years ago.

The fight over the park is just one part of the billionaire-behaving-badly storyline critics of Moroun often invoke these days.

Erected shortly after 9/11, the fences turned a basketball court and grassy green space once used for baseball and softball games into a 150-foot security buffer around the Ambassador Bridge.

Judge Hayes-Sipes gave the bridge company a 90-day eviction notice to vacate the portion of the park it had occupied. That expired last month.

“It was reported in the media that they were not going to appeal, but then they changed their mind,” John Nader, the attorney representing the City of Detroit, said in an interview last week. “It’s their prerogative to appeal if they want to, and that’s what they did.”

The case now sits before Wayne County Circuit Judge Kathleen Macdonald.

The promenade along the western portion of Riverside Park.

But Moroun’s bridge company isn’t just waiting for another showdown in court, according to company spokesman Phil Frame.

“We’re having talks with the city about the ultimate disposition” of the park, Frame said without going into further detail.

Edward Cardenas, spokesman for Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, wouldn’t comment on negotiations, including a potential land swap, between Moroun and the city over the park. “Since the matter is on appeal, we cannot comment,” he wrote in an e-mail.

In the view of critics of the bridge company, invoking the need for a security buffer zone was always a ruse. They say the real reasons revolve around the battle over who is going to build a second bridge across the Detroit River.

Moroun’s proposal to build a second, or twin, span on his 80-year-old Ambassador Bridge could complicate, or even thwart, plans to build a publicly-owned bridge about a mile and a half downriver that would offer stiff competition to Moroun’s current monopoly on lucrative toll revenue.

Published estimates put the bridge company’s annual take at approximately $60 million a year.

Coincidence or not, the stub of a would-be second span that’s already been constructed is closest to what used to be the eastern edge of the Riverside Park.

“Where he fenced it off just happens to be in direct alignment of where he wants to twin,” Gregg Ward, co-owner of a nearby family-owned Detroit-Windsor Truck Ferry, said on a recent tour of the area, pointing to what he believes is the bridge company’s primary motivation for grabbing the land: a parallel, Moroun-owned bridge spanning North America’s busiest border crossing.

“Moroun’s argument in the press is it’s to protect the bridge from terrorists,” Ward said. “But on the other side” – in Windsor, Canada – “there isn’t a fence. Just on this side.”

Ward further accuses the bridge company of claiming on an application for a U.S. Coast Guard permit for its proposed second span — a permit that the company has not received — that it legally controlled the property it fenced off from Riverside Park.

“It was just an outright, false statement,” Ward said.

On Feb. 1, Moroun’s proposal for a second span took a hit in a separate lawsuit in which the bridge company was faulted for seizing a different piece of a public land – a stretch of 23^rd Street where Moroun illegally built a duty-free store and a fuel pumps. While Wayne County Circuit Judge Prentis Edwards ruled that the structures must come down, the bridge company has yet to decide if it will also appeal that decision.

Ever since the fences were erected, area residents like Anthony Benavides were denied what had been a pleasant place to play softball.

“The bridge, the waterfront, the boats going back and forth, it was really a beautiful site,” Benavides, director of the nearby Clark Park Coalition, recalled. “We’d use the field underneath the bridge.”

Along with the arrival of the fences, the park’s once-busy marina and fishing spots were effectively closed, and “no trespassing” signs emblazoned with Homeland Security warnings were put up along the fences. Benavides explained how well-tended sports fields morphed into a weed-strewn – but secure – strip of land.

“The bridge company literally had a guy drive around in a vehicle and he’d let you see his shotgun,” Benavides said.

State Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit) represents the neighborhoods closest to the bridge. In a recent interview, she noted that her district is home to the state’s only oil refinery and a large sewage treatment plant; it also features numerous boarded-up or abandoned buildings, some owned or recently-purchased by the very same bridge company.

Tlaib, a lawyer, argues that the city shouldn’t part with any portion of the park.

“For my community, this is a green space that could be used,” she said. “I think the city wants to be fair, but the reality is this is a company that can’t take no for an answer. It’s very frustrating.”

About the bridge company, Tlaib added, “If we give them an inch, they seem to take all of it.”

Meanwhile, Frame, the bridge company spokesman, claims that populist posturing is behind the opposition to the company’s actions.

“There’s a lot more politics than reality going on,” he said. “The lawmaker has to run for office every two years, and has to show that she’s kind of working in the community’s interests. So things are going to get blown up out of proportion. Some things would be better if people started talking less and letting these things resolve themselves.”

That’s advice Tlaib and others concerned about the fate of Riverside Park are unlikely to take.

Benavides, who fondly remembers using the park’s softball fields in the 1980s and 1990s, emphasizes the need for more places for outdoor recreation for local kids. And he doesn’t mince any words when it comes to what he sees as the bridge company’s total lack of empathy.

“They could care less about the children and the city of Detroit,” he said. “They care most about the almighty dollar.”