Officials expect litigation to wrap up sometime early next year
Local leaders don’t know exactly when the litigation that has tied up development of the old Mighty Marysville site will end.
It has been two years since Marysville officials first announced their hotel and commercial waterfront concept for the area at 301 Gratiot Blvd. — an October 2015 unveiling that preceeded implosion of the former DTE plant by a few weeks.
Several months later, the company contracted to dismantle the structure sued its subcontractors, claiming negligence and breach of payment. The sprawling federal lawsuit has kept potential property buyers and developers at bay.
Litigation may stymie development of Mighty Marysville site
A stipulated order filed in U. S. District Court last month set a schedule that puts prospective court dates into October 2018 and a trial the month after, but Marysville Mayor Dan Damman said he believes it will be settled sooner.
“We think it will (settle).… We know that they’re very close. We just don’t know what some of the last strongholds are for any of the sides,” he said.
The city can use its zoning authority to have final say in what happens at the site.
Marysville officials said their latest hope is based on conversations they have had with representatives from the Missouri-based Commercial Development Company, which owns the riverfront property as CDC Marysville LLC and purchased it in 2014 to oversee demolition.
Damman said the city keeps in touch with CDC and has a monthly call scheduled.
City Manager Randy Fernandez said the next conference call is Monday afternoon.
“We’ll continue to do that on a monthly basis,” Fernandez said. “Yes, possibly by spring of 2018 the legal issues could be cleared up and that would allow them to sell the property if there was a prospective buyer, and there have been at least three or four interested purchasers over the last year. Having said that, when you tell them it could be in litigation a couple years, it turns them off, as you can imagine. So we’re hoping for the good news.… It still could be a (few months), but not two or three more years.”
Attorneys for the half a dozen entities named in the lawsuit did not return requests for comment.
Marysville unveils hotel, waterfront concept for DTE site
John Fonke and Randall Jostes, executive vice president and chief executive officer at CDC, said they are hopeful to settle the suit out of court.
However, they said they couldn’t discuss details of the litigation.
“We have been marketing the site, although we have pulled back because you really can’t sell an asset when it is in a state of flux like this,” Jostes said. “But once that’s all cleared, we’ll go back to marketing the site and hope that we’ll come through with an end user a who shares the vision we all have, which is a mixed-use destination.
“We consider the site to be shovel-ready for development. It’s ready for vertical development. The key is to attract the right users to the site. We’ve done a national campaign. We’ve had nibbles. We haven’t had takers. But we are hoping one of those nibbles will materialize.… We’re looking for that first bite. Once that gets in place, developments tend to pick up on that energy. But I can’t put a timeframe on it.”
The attorney for the contractor that originally filed the lawsuit has previously acknowledged being aware of the former DTE site’s local prominence — something Damman has said is a regular topic of conversation among residents.
City attorney Gary Fletcher also said earlier this year that it can be difficult to sell such a property because of any liens on unpaid services attached to it, and if someone forecloses on a lien, they may not be able to at all without a clear title.
There are still multiple liens filed by different parties associated with 301 Gratiot, Sitetech, CDC Marysville and other subcontractors.
According to the initial complaint filed in March 2016, the Ohio-based Sitetech sought $75,000 in damages from a Florida-based firm for allegedly failing to complete the site cleanup on time and within code and leaving behind material containing asbestos, as well as the insurance firm that they obtained a bond from.
Crews still met the 2016 deadline to clean up remnants of the old plant implosion, though the litigation still grew in both cross and counterclaims and defendants. CDC itself is named a cross-defendant and claimant in Sitetech’s suit.
City officials have also previously mentioned buying or being gifted the 30-acre Mighty Marysville site as part of the conversation, in addition to helping locate a developer.
Jostes said they’re still enthusiastic about acquiring “an anchor tenant” or “anchor user” to jump-start development, which could including a marina, hotel, retail of any sort, or “someone who can do all of that.”
