Richard Ruelas

The Republic | azcentral.com

A historic adobe house in Tempe sits on land that has been in the middle of a property dispute

A court ruled that the Sussex family has been trespassing on state trust land for more than a century

The historic house is in disrepair%3B the area around it filled with junk

Two restaurants -- Culinary Dropout and the Lodge -- are opening across the street.

The adobe house was built back around 1880 by a Mexican immigrant when the area along the Salt River was mostly farmland. There were no fences or signs as there are now, indicating that the land belonged to the Arizona Territory, entrusted to it by the federal government.

As the years passed, the adobe house stayed put. The city of Tempe changed around it.

The river was dammed up and stopped flowing. The area around the dried-up riverbed became easily ignored. Who would want to live by the dried-up riverbed, where people dumped trash in the shadow of a railroad trestle?

The dirt just outside the adobe house stopped holding crops and hogs and started filling up with construction equipment, the new preferred trade.

Then, the water flowed again, filling a man-made lake. The area drew restaurants, bars and high-rise condominiums.

Meanwhile, the adobe house became lost in a place that started looking more like a salvage lot and, increasingly, more out of place.

Today, the lot around the house is home to, among other things, three motor homes, the cab of a semitruck, a bus, an antique car, two jet-powered skis, two attachments that would turn a bicycle into a pedicab and one tub of motor oil.

Across the street to the south, a multimillion-dollar restaurant has been constructed. Just east of the house, another million-dollar restaurant is being built.

And while the blocks around it have been subjects of scores of real-estate deals, the adobe house and its junk-covered lot have passed hands only once. The place was sold by a family named Gonzalez to a family named Martinez. That happened in 1892.

Jesus Martinez died at that adobe home. So did his grandson. The great-grandson, Steve Sussex, was born in the adobe home and spent his childhood there. His children, the great-great-grandchildren of Jesus Martinez, have lived off and on in the adobe home in recent years. One lives there right now.

But probably not for much longer.

Arizona has prevailed in court action that essentially says the Sussex family has trespassed on state land for more than 120 years.

Sussex's attorney has appealed the case to the Arizona Supreme Court. The high court has yet to decide if it will hear the case.

But even if he wins, Sussex sees the end is in sight. The land is too valuable to be used the way he has used it for decades — filling it up, spot by spot, with with motor homes, building supplies and engine parts.

"It's a high-rent district now," he said during a tour of his property.

Sussex, 74, only hopes that when he does move, he is treated as a longtime owner being forced off his land. He wants a cash settlement.

The state says he's a squatter. He's due nothing.

A historic junkyard

"Let me see if I can find the light switch without tripping over something," Sussex said as he walked in what was his grandmother's bedroom, part of the original adobe structure.

What Sussex feared tripping over was all the stuff, relics left behind from those who have inhabited this historic property.

The Gonzalez-Martinez house, as it is known on the National Register of Historic Places, is not a typical piece of architectural history.

The floors have boxes of videotapes and knick-knacks stacked on unsteady cabinets. Some windows and doors have been boarded up to keep out drifters, efforts that have proved partly successful.

And the exterior of the property has taken on the cluttered look of the interior.

Sussex, who was raised in the home, said he moved out in the 1960s and into a Tempe neighborhood less than a mile away.

However, the dirt lot around the adobe home became handy. In back of it, he built additions to the original homes, as well as a shed or two for tools and storage.

In the 1980s, he started running a painting and drywall company out of the property. He leased offices to another contracting company that parked its vehicles on the lot. He also became fond of racing motorcycles and midget cars. The 1.75-acre parcel became an outdoor garage.

"I'm kind of a junker at heart," Sussex said.

Once he retired, the lot became less organized.

"(My wife) don't let me keep this stuff around the house, so I have to keep it here," Sussex said.

A recent incomplete census of the property showed the motorhomes, the truck cab and the bus and a variety of other vehicles.

There's lumber, bricks and two ovens. Sussex said he spotted a stack of windows at a construction site ready to be thrown out. They were too good to become trash, he said. So, he hauled them here, figuring that someone he knew could eventually find some use for them.

Then, there's the furniture. Sussex looks for discarded chairs and couches that would fit into the collection around the fire pit. Sussex gathers friends there to drink beer.

The fire pit draws the attention of the residents in the condominium complex across First Street. Firefighters come responding to complaints. They tell Sussex he's not doing anything wrong, but they have to check it out because somebody complained.

"Them people over there hate looking over here, and I like it when they hate that," he said. "They're looking at the junkyard," Sussex said.

City steps in

Before the city created Tempe Town Lake, the area around the Salt River bed, dry since the construction of Roosevelt Dam, was no showplace.

"It's where old refrigerators and things went to die," said Dennis Cahill, a former Tempe city councilman who grew up in Tempe. "It was pretty nasty."

The riverbed was the spot where industrial businesses, like Sussex's contracting company, flourished.

Then, four developers bought the neighboring property, which had held a dive bar called Sail Inn. The four thought the recently opened Tempe Town Lake would bring new development to the area.

One of them, an attorney Sussex recalls, came over and talked to him about buying his land. Sussex said the thought was the city would abandon the dead-end street between the two lots and make for "one whole giant piece of property."

Sussex said he told them he didn't want to sell. And looking back, "that's what started the whole big rigmarole," he said. "They went to the state and started stirring (things) up."

Joseph Lewis, a developer and former City Council member, said he wasn't the reason for Sussex's troubles.

Although, from the sound of it, he sort of wishes he were.

"He's been trying for years to get a payday on property he never had title to," Lewis said. "I can't go plant myself on a city park and say years later that just because I've been there awhile that I own it."

Lewis said he tried to purchase Sussex property in 2007, thinking of assembling a parcel of land that would include the upscale Traxx nightclub and a residential tower.

But Lewis was well aware of the trouble behind the Sussex parcel. When he was a member of the council, from 1992 to 2000, he said, the property was discussed at City Hall.

"The city's always been trying to find a resolution to that," Lewis said.

Records and legal papers show that Tempe first approached the state about the parcels in 1988. The state agreed to sell the trust land at auction, and the city was the highest bidder. But there was a dispute with the railroad, which had a right-of-way along its tracks adjoining the parcel. The deal was halted for years.

This was around the time the state first took steps to get Sussex off the land. Court records show that the State Land Department ordered Sussex off the property in 1992.

Lewis said he remembered it being at Tempe's behest. "The state never really paid attention to it, it was such a small piece of land," Lewis said. "The city said, 'Can you work on getting this taken care of?' "

The city reached a deal with the railroad in 2002. The deal made the city owner of the eastern half of the Sussex property, land that includes the adobe house.

In 2004, the State Land Department sent Sussex a letter. It asked him again to leave the property and sign a deed that relinquished any claim of ownership. He refused.

The state filed legal action against Sussex in April 2005.

The court case

The tussle has dragged on ever since. And the arguments reach back to the establishment of the Arizona Territory in 1863.

At that time, the government ordered the territory's land surveyed. Each square-mile section was given a number, and the federal government decreed that certain numbered sections be given to the territories and eventual states for use in funding schools.

By the time Mariano Gonzalez, a farmer, built his adobe house in 1877, the land had already been surveyed as part of Section 16 and had been given to Arizona for its sovereign use.

Gonzalez worked for Charles Hayden, who had established a ferry service across the Salt River and would establish a flour mill powered by the river's flow, according to Tempe's historical office.

Jesus Martinez bought the home in 1892. According to Tempe's historic preservation office, Martinez would raise hogs on the land with Carl Hayden, son of Charles Hayden, who would become a long-serving senator from Arizona.

An Englishman named Alfred Sussex, who came to Tempe by way of Canada to work on construction of the first railroad bridge over the Salt River, married Belen Martinez. They would end up living at the adobe home, which had the address of 302 W. 1st St.

During the Great Depression, hobos would hop off the freight train and stay at shacks that the couple had built on the property, at least one of which still stands.

In 1930, according to state records filed in court, Rosario Martinez, mother of Belen, applied for a lease for the property — legally known as Lot 1E of Section 16. She was granted the lease. But it was canceled for non-payment in 1934.

Stephen Sussex, the son of Belen, married a woman named Betty and the couple had a son, Stephen, in 1940. He grew up his whole life believing, wrongly, that his family owned the land. At the time, the adobe house stood on railroad right-of-way. The western half of the property — the part that contained the outhouse and the clothesline — was on state trust land.

In 1956, the land was sold at auction. Belen Sussex filed a notice with the state saying she had built structures on the land and wanted compensation. The state paid her $1,510.

The land was sold to Ernest C. Mohamed, who was a fixture in stock-car racing and ran an earthmoving company on the site. The state took back the land for non-payment 15 years later. Sussex claims his family still treated the land as theirs during this time. He said Mohamed paid his family for a right-of-way to land near the river bottom where he parked his trucks.

Sometime in the 1970s, Sussex started up his contracting business. By 1986, he leased out office space and land to Cahill Contracting, court records show. The business was co-owned by the former city councilman, Cahill and his brother.

The state said that activity was the first clue they had that Sussex was on the land.

The state's legal case was fairly simple: The family had no documents to show they owned the land; there was ample evidence to show they were trespassing on what had been trust land since 1860.

Sussex's attorney, Jack Wilenchek, argued history and common sense. In his opening argument before a jury in August 2005, Wilenchek said, "The Sussex family has been on this land since 1892." He repeated the year 1892 while banging on the lectern. He then pointed to the state seal above the judge's bench, and the year 1912, commemorating statehood. "They were here before Arizona was even a state," he said.

The court had already ruled before the trial that the Sussex family had trespassed. The jury was simply asked to determine how much money the family owed the state. Arizona asked for around $450,000. The jury awarded the state $1,500.

The state enforced the court's ruling of trespassing by erecting a chain-link fence around what it deemed the borders of the property. The fence stops when it hits the boundaries of the parcel owned by Tempe. Sussex drives around the fence with his pickup to get to his property.

His attorney, Wilenchek, appealed the Superior Court ruling of trespassing to the Court of Appeals.

The thrust of Wilenchek's legal argument is that the state knew that the Sussex family was on its land but didn't do anything about it until 2005. If the Land Department had brought a case earlier, the Sussex family might have had a chance to unearth documents that could prove rightful ownership. But because the state waited so long, it made for an unjust case. In legal terms, he was arguing the concept known as "laches."

The state said — and the court has so far upheld — that "laches" doesn't apply here. Maybe it would apply if the state were buying or selling an ordinary piece of land. But this land is part of a sovereign duty found in the state's originating documents. State arguments and court rulings have emphasized that the state Constitution can't be ignored.

Wilenchek's briefs have a flair for the dramatic, quoting both "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and John Locke. The final words in the appeal to the state Supreme Court are: "(W)here the law ends, tyranny begins."

Meanwhile, the near-decade of legal wrangling has not slowed down development around the parcel.

Vacant parcels are rare in Tempe, said Lewis, the developer and former council member. And the two next to the Sussex property have proved valuable despite the eyesore.

Sam Fox, owner of a Phoenix-based chain of regional restaurants — Sauce, Olive and Ivy, Arrogant Butcher — purchased an old furniture factory on Farmer Avenue and First Street 18 months ago. Culinary Dropout at the Farmer Arts District, the restaurant with the biggest kitchen in the Fox empire, is set to open in early December.

Meanwhile, the old Sail Inn, on the opposite corner of Farmer and First, is becoming the Lodge, a high-end tavern run by Scottsdale-based chef Aaron May.

"Only in Tempe," Lewis said, "could Sam Fox look at a building like that, knowing there was a junkyard across the street, and decide this is where he's going to build his biggest property to date."

Downtown reimagined

One late afternoon in November, Tempe's mayor and council, along with city leaders and businesspeople, walked a red carpet into the newly built meeting space at Culinary Dropout at Farmer Arts District.

Guests snacked on pretzel fondue, goat cheese and kale salad and downed grapefruit cocktails. They pointed out the original wood beams from the factory that Fox, the restaurateur, was able to preserve.

There was polite applause as Kate Borders, executive director of the merchants group, christened the rebirth of downtown Tempe. "We hope Farmer Avenue becomes the next generation of what Mill Avenue is today," she said.

Across the street, Mike Ghormley, 68, a friend of Sussex's, was working on an engine. He had been looking around for a knife or other sharp object. He wanted to cut off the top of an antifreeze bottle and catch motor oil with it.

"I know a lot of people would like to see it gone," Ghormley said. "But then again, this has always been an industrial property."

In the restaurant, after the speeches, Mayor Mark Mitchell gave a brief interview with a radio reporter saying how he was glad Tempe was "repurposing the area."

Asked by The Republic specifically about the Sussex property across the street, Mitchell said he didn't know the status of it.

"It's been in dispute for years, but I don't know what's going on with it," said Mitchell.

Robin Arredondo-Savage, a council member, said her family had known the Sussex family. She said it was important to hold on to the city's past, "but yet progress into the future, too."

"It's about a good balance," she added.

She called over the city manager, Andrew Ching, for an update as she said she also wasn't sure of the details.

Ching said the city was waiting for the state's legal battle to finish. But if the state does prevail, "we will make the same arguments, sure," he said. "Whatever rights they have to one-half of the parcel would be the same as whatever rights we have to our half of the parcel."

Arredondo-Savage said she wouldn't want to boot Sussex, though. "You don't want to step on anyone's toes," she said. "We want to work with them."

Ugly history

In 1986, Tempe petitioned to place the Gonzalez-Martinez house on the National Register of Historic Places. The adobe structure, according to the Office of Historic Preservation, was one of only three structures remaining from the first 10 years of the city's existence. It is a "rare local example of a house type illustrative of the lifestyle and settlement pattern of the predominantly Mexican population of early Tempe," the city said.

While it is rare and illustrative, it is a structure only a historian could love. The adobe walls appear sturdy. But the wood frame at the roofline is rotted in spots. Most of the wood shingles on the roof are gone. Sussex first tried covering up the roof with cardboard. Last year, he put on corrugated tin.

Sussex frequents Casey Moore's, an Irish bar that has also been deemed historic. The owner of the bar told Sussex that he received a plaque to put on his building. He asked Sussex when he would get a similar plaque.

Sussex laughed, recalling the story. "My place looks so ugly," he said, "they don't want to put no plaque on it."

Sussex stood by a guardrail in front of the house. Behind him, construction crews put finishing touches on Culinary Dropout. To his right, a light-rail train zoomed past. Freshly broken glass lay in the dirt a few yards in front of him, a casualty of Sussex trying to move a busted dining-room table during a tour.

Sussex thought about what will happen to the house when someone else inevitably owns it.

"I think they'd probably bulldoze it, because it's worth more money to the city than to do something," he said. "But it'd be a shame. It is history."