Detroit gives leg up to Canadian government’s bridge rival
City backs Ambassador Bridge land swap deal
After months of heated public disagreement, the City of Detroit has agreed to make a deal that will help a controversial local company develop a privately owned U.S.-Canada bridge that will compete with a new bridge being planned and backed by the Canadian government.
Detroit city councillors voted seven-to-two in favour of the deal with the Detroit International Bridge Co. Tuesday. The city agreed to hand over three acres of parkland the bridge company needs to build a second span next to the existing 86-year-old Ambassador Bridge, North America’s busiest international border crossing.
In exchange, the cashstrapped city will receive five different acres of park currently owned by the bridge company and US$3 million for park improvements up front. The city stands to receive an additional US$2 million later if state and federal governments approve the land swap.
Councillor Mary Sheffield, who voted for the deal, told the Detroit Free Press that, while it was a hard decision given the controversy over the Detroit International Bridge Co.., the deal still doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the company will get the bridge it wants. “I do believe there are enough layers in this agreement that they have to come before this body for approvals,” she said.
The Moroun family, which owns the Ambassador Bridge, has been battling for years with the City of Windsor, the Canadian federal government, the governor of Michigan, and community organizations on both sides of the border, against plans for a new publicly owned bridge. The Canadian government is paying for a new span to be called the Gordie Howe International Bridge scheduled for completion in 2020, with Canada’s taxpayers funding construction, land purchases on the Michigan side, and building on-ramps from U.S. Interstate 75 — although the government plans to eventually recoup costs through tolls on the Canadian side.
The Morouns argue the government’s backing of a competing bridge is unfair and unnecessary since they’re more than willing to foot the bill for the new Ambassador span themselves.
But critics of the Morouns’ plans to twin the Ambassador Bridge point to the poor highway infrastructure surrounding the existing span, which funnels traffic into Windsor’s residential west end, where commercial trucks burn time idling at traffic lights and residents complain about exhaust. To build its second span, the bridge company plans to bulldoze homes adjacent to the existing bridge and build an expanded truck plaza, which the City of Windsor says will cause unacceptable harm to residents of the troubled west end neighbourhood.
The bridge company also has a long history of litigiousness and a hardball approach that has cultivated enmity in cities on both sides of the border.
Councillor Raquel Castaneda-Lopez said that the history of tactics used by Moroun and the company are why she voted against Tuesday’s deal. While the city’s agreement for the land swap states that the bridge company must receive the necessary approvals from all levels of government on both sides of the border before starting construction, she said she’s concerned the Moroun family might just start building it anyway once he has the land he needs.
“Unfortunately, we can’t rely completely on trust,” she said. “There are multiple red flags.”
The bridge company has been criticized for buying up, and then boarding up, most of the houses on the Windsor street next to the bridge, leaving them derelict while it waits to demolish them to build a second span. Five years ago, the company fenced off the portion of the Detroit park the city is now agreeing to hand over, claimed it for the company’s own, and installed security guards to keep out visitors.
And in 2004, the bridge company signed a contract with the state of Michigan to finish ramps connecting the bridge to nearby highways; instead, the company built roads that directed traffic around its own dutyfree store and gas pumps. That last conflict ended with billionaire bridge owner Manuel “Matty” Moroun and bridge company president Dan Stamper spending the night in jail for contempt of court in 2012.
Matthew Moroun, the company’s president, vowed that he would cooperate with the city.
“We’ve committed to a number of important things to the city ... and the opportunity to provide for a second span to the bridge, but also to change our relationship with the city and the community,” Moroun said in the Detroit News. “Now it’s time to work on those.”
Jack Lessenberry, a longtime observer of Detroit politics and head of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University, said the beauty of the Tuesday’s deal is the fact the city gets the money up front, regardless of whether Moroun ever gets approval to build the bridge. And Moroun’s chances of success, he said, are about the same as if he told the City of Detroit he would give them US$5 million to build a rocket to Saturn.
“It’s very tempting to want to do something to spite Moroun,” Lessenberry said. “But for the City of Detroit, this makes perfect sense.”