There is a widespread perception among the people of Ludington that certain individuals game the system due to their connections and ability to get favors from public officials, at the expense of everybody else.  We have looked at a lot of these in the past on the pages of the Ludington Torch, this will be what amounts to be a review and update of one that was recently noted at the July 11th Ludington City Council meeting and has been germinating since late 2020. 

The title references Kelly Parker (formerly Kelly Lenius) who swung a great deal during the middle of the pandemic, one where she couldn't lose by her modest investment and potential for a great windfall.  It's a play on words of the FOX teen sitcom of the 1990s called "Parker Lewis Can't Lose", a shameless, blatant redo of the film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" for the small screen where the title character generally makes some plan to solve some difficult adolescent problems with the help of his friends. 

At the aforementioned meeting I condensed into a minute what the issue was with Kelly Parker and her friends:

" (Former) Councilor Joe Lenius' daughter, Kelly Parker, who also served as Councilor Brandy Miller's administrative assistant in the chamber of commerce, created an LLC and purchased a downtown property.  She sought favor through the council late in 2020 for a Brownfield grant application extension without that conflict of interest being admitted to by either former councilor or entered into the minutes, even after I pointed out their error and Mr. Foster admitted the extension would provide additional funding to the Parkers over the original $46,000-- it grew to $600,000.  A couple months later the Parkers went before the Planning Commission and sought approval for building 5 townhouses at the site, construction beginning in the spring of 2021.

Apparently, they got the $600,000 grant because the old gas station was razed and the contamination issues were mitigated.  We now see that the Parkers are trying to flip the property, newly improved by our tax dollars, to some other potential developer for what will surely be a big profit for them.  At the same time they found an extra $200,000 from somewhere to buy property across the street with designs to do something very similar.   My local government condones this because it's ethical compass is broken." [END]

Everything I brought to the table is easily verified by public sources without a lot of heavy lifting.  This 302 S James Deed shows that PJP Holdings, a limited liability company with Kelly Parker named as the registered agent and whose address is the same as Nader's Lakeshore Motor Lodge (which she is the owner/registered agent through yet another LLC) and purchased the James property for $158,000 in early September 2020 from the neighbor.  The property featured a long-abandoned gas station with undoubtedly some contamination issues in its past.  

The next month, Kelly and her husband Michael went through review at the special land use committee of the Ludington Planning Commission (LPC) for building five-units of townhouses at the site:

Before coming to the LPC, however, PJP Holdings wanted to shore up more funding for taking down the building and cleaning up the lot from the Michigan Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) Department   The prior owner had only been able to wrangle $54,000 in order to determine the extent of the environmental damage.  At the October 26 city council meeting, the council voted on extending the timeline for the grant process, which the city manager admitted would allow the potential for more money to be granted to the developers.  

After the council unanimously approved the grant amendment without any disclosures, I spoke up during the second comment period:

"Transparency is more than just providing public records on request and properly holding public meetings.  It also means that councilors avoid appearances of impropriety and disclose any conflicts of interests they might have when deliberating and deciding issues.  Tonight, you approved an amendment to an extension of a grant timeline for a Brownfield Redevelopment grant for 302-304 S James, noting that a new developer has came into the picture with bigger plans and will have more funds available to them by grant to rehab the site.

Pages 27-29 of your packet has three records that give no indication of this new developer, one has to look in the city assessor site to determine that there was a September sale of 302 S James to a PJP Holdings LLC, with an address of 612 N Lakeshore Dr, likewise looking through LARA's list of Michigan business entities, the agent of PJP is a Kelly Parker. 

Kelly Parker is the daughter of Councilor Joe Lenius, Joe has not made that disclosure.  Joe voted to extend this grant, and likely deliberated and voted for recommending this grant extension while in the Finance Committee immediately before this meeting without disclosure of that fact at either meeting.

One could say this violates section 2-72(a) of the city code and even MCL 15.342(7) of state law regarding standards of conduct for public officers.  If not illegal, it is at least unethical to fail to report that an impropriety is present, disclose that fact publicly, refrain from discussions and voting on the issue and follow the procedures required by law to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.  More systemic rot [END]."

Fellow Councilor Les Johnson defended Lenius' conduct by saying that Lenius had made that disclosure during the Finance Committee's discussion on it that Johnson chairs, the minutes of that committee show that it's a boldfaced lie.  Lenius actually moved it forward, and Kelly's boss seconded it, all without any discussion of a conflict-- just like they did at the council meeting.  

When it came in front of the LPC the next week, Michael Parker is noted as having said/presented the following in seeking approval for his special use:  "[EGLE] have already had a base line environmental assessment and the Phase 2, dated November, 2018... [PJP] will take remedial action... Mr. Parker said there was contamination and they are working with EGLE on a cleanup plan. He said that it is worth doing... Mr. Parker said there would not be presales. They will all be built. Commissioner Terzano asked the timeline. Mr. Parker said the site work would be done this winter and construction would start in the spring [of 2021]."

Mr. Parker's timeline was ambitious but seemed to be predicated on a swift approval of his grant.  That grant wasn't formally approved until August 2021 as announced by EGLE:

"The city of Ludington received a $54,000 grant in 2018 to complete environmental assessment and pre-demolition surveys at a property located on South James Street in downtown Ludington. In 2020, the grant was amended to add an additional $645,000 to help facilitate the redevelopment of this property. The proposed development will consist of a five-unit townhome with private parking...

The site is believed to be contaminated as a result of the historic uses of the property. An environmental assessment confirmed the presence of volatile organic compounds, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, and metals in both the soil and groundwater.

The grant will pay for additional assessment and investigation, excavation, transport and disposal of contaminated soil, and installation and commissioning of a vapor mitigation system, if needed.

The current state equalized value of the property is $72,500 and is expected to increase to $1.3 million following redevelopment. Construction is expected to begin in the spring of 2022."

By the end of 2021, the old gas station was removed totally, remediation measures were adopted to environmentally clean the site, and now in July 2022, the site has a good-looking lawn on it, with no development as of yet.  One thing that has changed in July 2022 is the signage on the property.  At the beginning of the month a "for sale by owner" sign graced the lot with one of the Parker's phone numbers on it:

After I made my comments at the July 11 meeting, I noticed the next day that the sign was taken down.  I wondered if the Parkers had learned that their profiteering had been noted publicly at that meeting and had decided to either go with their original plans or whether they decided to take a more low-key approach to selling their lot.  

But it turned out neither of those predictions were correct.  Rather than follow through with their 'plans' of building townhomes, a plan more than a year past due, or test the waters by seeing who gives them a call after offering it up for sale as they indicated in a recent COLDNews article, they have decided to list it officially for sale, as indicated by a new sign erected late last week:

The asking price is easily found on-line.  $550,000 on Realtor.com, Realty.com and many others that announce such offerings, that amount being posted since I saw that sign.  The Parkers and PJP Holdings bought that property in late 2020 for $158,000.  Without doing anything other than signing some paperwork and allowing the taxpayers through an EGLE grant to foot the $645,000 bill for cleaning up their property, they are now asking for nearly $400,000 more than that investment, a profit of 248% for themselves in a quick flip of the property.  

It seems likely that this flip was the actual plan all along.  The City of Ludington and the Chamber of Commerce could only benefit from getting the property cleaned up and put into use, which is why Kelly Parker's strong connections to both come into play.  Neither Parker has any history in property development, Michael is primarily a pilot, and she runs the motel inherited from her parents.  Getting the townhome plan through the LPC early on with unrealistic timelines offers any future developers a wider latitude of options and makes the property even more valuable.  

They will profit greatly from the $699,000 in public financing of the 302 S James lot's cleanup, which makes their recent acquisition across the street extremely likely to have similar public financing occur.  The Parkers went back to their Motel's LLC (Nader's Motel Investments LLC) to purchase 301 S James for $214,000 this February (coincidentally after the completion of the environmental rehab on 302 S James supposedly costing up to $654,000), which is an older brick commercial building with four apartments on the second floor.  Recently, they announced they will be planning on doing renovations on this property that will necessitate taking down the "Ludington's Own" mural on its north side.

“We’re gonna rehabilitate the building,” Michael Parker said. “It’s a beautiful corner building on James Street in downtown Ludington. It’s just a special historical building that’s due for overhaul, and we want to give that to it. To do so requires removal of the sign. It’s as simple as that. We just want to redo the building.”

How altruistic, they just want to redo the building.  It would take most people a lot of money to overhaul and rehabilitate their own property, but we can be assured that the Parkers will seek the maximum they can get in facade grants for the external improvements (hence the mural's removal being needed), rental rehab grants for fixing up the apartments (after they vacate each and claim they need to be fixed to be habitable again), and any other public largess they can qualify for after claiming the property as functionally obsolete.  After they game the system with their city hall friends and hundreds of thousands of publicly funded dollars are used for fixing up this private property, the only question left is how much profit the Parkers will receive when they flip this property after its value goes up dramatically.  

They will have a hard time doing better profiteering than what they did across the street.

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Wow! Great job X. Ludington doesn't deserve to be infested with all of these snakes slithering around City Hall  and  posing as descent citizens, while being engaged in corruption on a large scale. Cheating the tax payers out of their money seems to be the name of the game.

Don't tread near that sign!  I did fail to mention an additional connection that makes it even harder for Parker/Lenius to lose.  The Parker and Tykoski family have done quite a lot of things together.  Community Development Director, titular planning director and regular violator of ethics, Heather Tykoski, the city's writer of grants, is reportedly close friends with Kelly Parker.  Here they are with their kids buying water gear:

Here they are dressed coordinated-gaily at an event:

And here's the power couples together:  

It's easy to get grant funding when the grant application writer doesn't have a shred of integrity, you have multiple LLCs, and you are best buds.

Odd how the 2 local powerhouse couples posted a picture of the boathouse restaurant which is closing this oct. because of the Leftist using Covid restrictions to shut down restaurants and businesses.  I wonder if any of the boathouse's 163 soon to be laid off employees would have welcomed these four knowing how involved they were with aiding the Government in  throwing away taxpayers money.

Great sign Willy! Disgusting story, X, and great job at uncovering the unethical charades. Looks like the Tykoskis and Parkers party together on vacation in Florida. How can any one of the Councilors, mayor, employees of the City, Treasurer, Or Clerk put up and cast a blind eye with this corruption? I'd like to see this prosecuted.

Thanks, FS, I think the blind eye comes from all those officials who rationalize it by saying "If we don't get this grant money, some other city will get it instead."  without any pushback from those who would say it's either an impractical and unethical distribution of wealth from the public sector to favored private developers for personal gain, or that the grant's expense will result in a product that costs much more in upkeep than it was worth and be less useful than before the grant (the West End Slab is the best example of this).

I can see them defending this one by saying:  "Look what we had: a contaminated property that was a liability and an eyesore for the downtown, we now have a rehabbed green space that can be developed into townhouses without a lot of additional expense."  They won't admit that a well-connected private individual will make $400,000 profit or more from flipping the property at the expense of $700,000 in taxpayer money which may have better uses-- definitely better uses if the taxpayers had that money to advance their own position rather than foot the bill for the wealthy speculating on land.  

I strongly believe that this project didn't cost $700,000.  The EPA recently noted the average environmental cleanup cost for a gas station is around $275,000, I would argue that this concrete covered site was average or below average in difficulty to mitigate.  Add in demo costs, the project was likely less than half of the $700K granted by the generous taxpayers, and had the Parkers did this mitigation themselves, they could have still recognized a profit if they get someone to buy it for $550,000.  

Instead, they might not get only the $400K profit from a sale, but also around $350K in excess remediation funds that may have been shared with their contractors.  This is why they should be investigated and prosecuted, but it will never happen.

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