opinion

The Morouns in Detroit - the way the Morouns see it

What's it like to own the train station?

I'm not going to say that question keeps me up at night, but driving around Detroit with Matt Moroun — the son of Manuel (Matty) Moroun, the 87-year-old industrialist and Ambassador Bridge owner (and dilapidated train station owner, vast property owner and billionaire) — I couldn't help but wonder.

Opened in 1913 and closed in 1988, Michigan Central Station is a building so iconic, so emblematic of Detroit's up-and-down arc, that it doesn't require a proper name — say "the train station," and there's no question which building you mean.

The train station looms over Corktown with a majesty even dereliction can't dim. A universally recognized symbol of Detroit's decline, tourists come from around the world to photograph it.

I'm no different. In the years after I moved here, it was a regular fixture on the nickel tour that I gave visiting friends and family members: "Look, you can see through it." These days, the building is secured, but for decades, the train station was open to all — urban explorers, scrappers, amateur historians, the homeless. For people of a certain age, getting in was almost a rite of passage.

Owning such an important, devastated piece of Detroit's history would be like owning the Eiffel Tower, or maybe the moon. I simply can't imagine it.

But Matt Moroun can.

Moroun's father bought the depot in 1995, shortly after 41-year-old Matt joined the family business, and I suppose the Morouns and the train station have something in common: No one has casual feelings about either.

In terms of wealthy philanthropists, "Moroun" doesn't have the same cachet as "Penske" or "Taubman" or "Ford."

They've loudly opposed the construction of a second, publicly owned span across the Detroit River, spending $33 million on a seemingly last-ditch attempt to pass a state constitutional amendment restricting construction of border crossings. Moroun the elder, then 84, was sent to jail in 2012 for contempt of court when he refused to fulfill his end of a deal with the state on the Gateway project at the Ambassador Bridge.

A past Detroit City Council ordered the train station demolished; it didn't happen. In the mind of council members, it was an oppressive reminder of the city's failures. It had to go. Others hope for renovation, of seeing productive reuse sooner rather than later.

Both are likely to be disappointed.

"We could never tear it down," Matt Moroun said. "First of all, I don't want to, which should count for something."

He pauses.

"It would be like the mark of Cain. We could never rub it off."

Two years ago, new windows started appearing in the train station. Now, the family has contracted with Chamberlain Metal and Glass of St. Clair to replace the station's 1,000-some windows. It's welcome news, but it's a long time coming. For 20 years, the station's been largely untouched. Why wait so long? And why now?

Moroun pauses, again. "I have no good answer," he says. "And I'm not going to make something up."

Apparently, it's not a lot of fun to own the train station, not when its dereliction provides constant fodder for criticism of your family, particularly your father. And yet Moroun is not prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to rehab the train station without, as he says, a feasible economic development opportunity.

None of which explains to you how I came to be in an SUV chauffeured by Matt Moroun, touring his family's Detroit properties.

Most of the time, writers on the Free Press editorial page don't take individual credit for specific editorials. They're different from columns, which represent one staffer's viewpoint — editorials convey the collective opinion of the Detroit Free Press Editorial Board, and carry our newspaper's institutional voice.

But I'll cop to this: I'm the gal who penned a March 11 editorial critical of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp.'s decision to sell acreage on the city's east side to a Moroun company.

One of the country's richest men, Moroun owns the most notorious blighted building in Michigan — and perhaps the Midwest — and (so I thought) more than 600 parcels in the city at large (more on that later). Why should we sell him anything, I wrote, until he makes good on the stuff he's already got?

Matt Moroun took exception to that piece, and called to say so. They're not slumlords, he said — the vast majority of land that the family owns in Detroit, he said, is vacant and well-maintained. When the company acquires parcels with blighted structures, they're eventually demolished (sometimes to the chagrin of historic preservationists). Did I want proof? He'd be happy to show me.

A week later, off we went.

For the most part, the properties that Moroun and I (accompanied by an assistant and former state legislator Shanelle Jackson, now director of public relations for the Ambassador Bridge Co.) visited were exactly as represented: Neatly maintained vacant lots, clear of debris and mowed. One parcel with a decrepit building — Moroun says it's on his company's demo list — was adequately secured.

Along the way, Jackson counters my contention that the Moroun family isn't as generous as some metro-area billionaires: She's currently reviewing about $100,000 worth of requests for funds. The family simply doesn't choose to publicize its donations, she says.

One tenant-occupied property had some fence-line debris, the kind that accumulates toward the end of winter. Moroun said he'd have the tenant told to clean it up. Many of the properties Moroun showed me were in productive use — trucking hubs, logistics centers — including a facility built several years back at the I-94 industrial park where the Morouns' just-purchased property is located.

The family's businesses employ about 2,000 people, about 1,000 of them in the city, and Moroun says the company spends between $100,000 and $150,000 maintaining its land each year. So I'll concede Moroun's point — though we didn't visit anything close to all of the family's Detroit parcels, the ones I saw were in good condition.

Yet the family's holdings in Detroit are overwhelming. A 2011 Detroit News investigation found that the Morouns were one of the city's largest private landowners, acquiring land through a variety of companies (purchasing and controlling property through multiple business entities is what makes quantifying the family's holdings difficult). That report pegged the Morouns' parcel count at slightly more than 600. Matt Moroun tells me it's 924, and that about 900 of those parcels are vacant.

It's a lot of land, most apparently acquired from the vague sense that it might come in handy someday.

The Morouns own about 200 parcels in proximity to Coleman A. Young International Airport, because Matt Moroun believes that someday something will happen out there. Moroun sat on a cluster of land on Detroit's Freud Street for 10-12 years before development made sense. Though the company has a real estate team, I get the feeling Matt Moroun likes to take a hands-on role in property acquisition, much of which happens during the county's tax-delinquent property auction, when parcels are sold for as low as $500. It's the long game, for a family with a singular kind of tenure and investment in Detroit.

It's a controversial strategy. The city is struggling desperately to reinvent itself, to provide adequate services to its 139 square miles. There's an argument to be made that speculators who acquire vast quantities of land stand in the way. Moroun disagrees.

He pulls out his phone, multiplies 924 by $500: $462,000. "It's not that big of a risk," he says.