By Joel Thurtell
Doggonit!
There goes my plan for a shopping mall on Detroit’s Ambassador Bridge.
The Michigan Court of Appeals put my hopes on the skids with its ruling January 10, 2012, that billionaire Manuel “Matty” Moroun must show up in Wayne County Circuit Court so Judge Prentis Edwards can levy penalties for Matty’s refusal to comply with the judge’s order to get rid of a duty-free store and gas pumps that line his pockets with cash but defy his agreement with the state to improve the vehicular approach to the bridge in Detroit.
Matty’s lawyers said The Big Man shouldn’t have to appear in court because he doesn’t really own the bridge.
Matty claimed the bridge is really owned by family members through a holding company.
Since he’s not the owner, why should he have to show up in court like any other citizen summoned by a judge? Come on — he’s a billinonaire!
A lot of people made fun of Matty, because his claim to not be the bridge’s owner seemed self-serving and downright absurd.
Silly, really.
Well, that’s how it appeared to others.
It seemed reasonable to me, because I saw my golden opportunity.
If Matty claims not to own the bridge, and the idea that it’s really owned by a holding company is ludicrous, then who really owns the Ambassador Bridge?
Me!
Come on, why not me?
It makes sense.
Why, unlike Matty, I have a brilliant plan.
Well, HAD a plan.
I was going to turn the Ambassador Bridge into a pedestrian shopping mall.
Who better qualified than me for such a grand project?
I know something about these bridge shopping areas.
I grew up in Lowell, Michigan, where there has been a shopping district on the Main Street Bridge, aka M-21, since the 1800s.
I call it Lowell’s Ponte Vecchio, after the shopping mall bridge in Florence, Italy, that dates to the Middle Ages.
QED: I’m the guy to run this project.
But the appeals court pulled the bridge out from under me.
By ordering Matty to show up in court, the judges signaled that they didn’t buy the billionaire’s claim not to own the bridge.
With Matty revealed as the true owner after all, my big idea is dead in the water.
I can see it now, floating downstream, another dream swept away by the current of pettifoggery.
But not all is lost.
Now that he’s back in the saddle as Ambassador Bridge owner, maybe Matty will see the light.
Tomorrow in court, he could tell the judge he never meant to stall the state.
That duty-free store and those gas pumps he put where the access ramp is supposed to go?
First steps in creating the biggest international shopping mall bridge in the world!
Who knows, maybe the judge will buy that line.
It makes more sense than Matty not owning the Ambassador.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
