Foxconn-area landowners seek to stop village from taking property

The Creuziger family, owners of more than 400 acres in the Foxconn development area, are seeking an injunction to stop Mount Pleasant from taking a key slice of their property by eminent domain.

The development opens another challenge to the village’s authority to take property, if necessary, for the massive Foxconn project. None of the challenges have succeeded to date.

Site preparation and initial construction of what Foxconn Technology Group has said will be a $10 billion manufacturing campus is well underway.

The Creuziger lawsuit, filed in Racine County Circuit Court, doesn’t threaten the primary factory site, where the vast majority of property owners agreed to sell their land and construction has begun. The Creuzigers’ land is to the north of that area, in an adjacent tract earmarked for future Foxconn expansion.

But the Creuzigers occupy an unusual position. They are easily the largest landowners in the 2,800-acre corner of Mount Pleasant the village has been moving to acquire for the Foxconn project. And the family so far has spurned the village’s offer of $50,000 an acre — or more than $20 million — for their largely agricultural property.

In their lawsuit, the Creuzigers say the village has moved to condemn and take 8.7 acres of their land along Durand Avenue — Highway 11 — which will be widened to accommodate expected Foxconn traffic.

If that happens, the Creuzigers say, they will lose access to about 400 acres of their property, which would become landlocked.

Further, the 8.7 acres the village wants to take includes the home of David and Brenda Creuziger, even though it isn’t needed for the highway widening, the lawsuit says.

The village’s goal, the lawsuit says, “is to force the plaintiff from its remaining property and convey it to Foxconn.”

“That objective has nothing to do with the stated purpose of the condemnation, which is highway improvement,” the lawsuit alleges.

The Creuzigers also say the condemnation would force them to close their business. The family operates a retail pumpkin farm called Land of the Giants. The farm’s website indicates it will open next Friday.

The village has given the Creuzigers until Oct. 8 to vacate their property.

The Creuzigers contend that the village has unlawfully declared their property to be blighted and is trying to unlawfully take property for a nonpublic purpose.

The family’s attorney, Daniel P. Bach, could not be reached Friday. A spokesman for Mount Pleasant said he could not comment because the village just received notice of the lawsuit.

The Village Board paved the way to use eminent domain power in June when it declared the 2,800 acres earmarked for Foxconn to be a blighted area.

The decision was controversial, because the open farmland and few dozen homes in the area don’t exhibit such commonly understood markings of blight as dilapidated housing, overcrowding and high crime.

But in making the declaration, the village used a section of state law that broadly defines blighted areas. The statute says an area can be deemed blighted if it is predominantly open and, for any reason, “substantially impairs or arrests the sound growth of the community.”

Controversy over what constitutes blight notwithstanding, owners of all but 450 acres of the 2,800-acre total area have sold their land or agreed to sell.

Besides the Creuzigers action, a small group of property owners who object to Mount Pleasant’s efforts to take their parcels is fighting on two legal fronts.

The group lost a decision in federal court in Milwaukee, but has appealed. Meanwhile, some members of the group are pressing their case in Racine County Circuit Court. Others, however, subsequently agreed to sell to the village and were dismissed from the lawsuit last month.