ELIZABETH NELSON:
Welcome to Episode 5 of Hollow Hype. In Episode 4, new members of Ann Arbor City Council directed a shift in policy, to protect Heidi’s Airbnb businesses. A new majority added loopholes to the ordinance we had worked on for over a year.

In 2021, five new Council members were ready to protect Heidi’s short term rentals or STRs, with the promise that there would be no more. Council Members Lisa Disch and Erica Briggs explained:

[2021 recorded meeting]

COUNCIL MEMBER LISA DISCH:
There will be no permission for you… for a residential STR… commercial STR in residential zones except for those that have been in operation before March 1st.

COUNCIL MEMBER ERICA BRIGGS:
There is no opportunity for new short-term rentals to be created in our community in residential neighborhoods after March 1st of 2021

ELIZABETH NELSON:
Not only would there be more, but City Council would give Heidi approval to develop more.

[MUSIC]

My name is Elizabeth Nelson. From 2018 to 2022, I served on Ann Arbor City Council. That experience taught me a lot. Mostly, I learned: people will say just about anything if they think you’ll believe it. This is HOLLOW HYPE.

Elections in November 2020 brought big changes to City Hall. Five new members of City Council were allied with the Mayor and would vote as a block. The 11 member Council now included seven people who would consistently support Heidi’s property investments.

Around the same time, Heidi adopted the name of her wife, Marge. She was no longer Heidi Mitchell. She was Heidi Poscher.

[MUSIC]

TOM STULBERG:
I've been in real estate for over 30 years.
I moved back to Ann Arbor a little over 30 years ago, having gone to university here for undergrad and graduate before that. Moved away for a few years for work and came back in 1994.

ELIZABETH NELSON:
That’s my friend Tom.

TOM STULBERG:
We wanted to ban short term rentals in generally residential areas. We're talking short term rentals that are not owner occupied, but there was a challenge by certain existing operators of those properties because they were going to lose money, not being able to operate that way. They ended up being grandfathered in, which I think was a wrong move. They could have been sunsetted. So, OK, you get to operate that way, we're not going to cut you off cold, but you get to operate there that way for a certain period of time in which time you can convert your units to long term rentals or you could sell them, whatever you want to do

You give them time to adjust their business model. People are not permitted a certain business use for all eternity. Market forces change. Government regulation changes. Businesses have a different risk that they assume just by being in business. I'm a business person. I understand it. The rules could change.

We grandfathered them and let them just go on forever that way. And that also kind of creates a monopoly for those people who are already here. So we're not going to allow any more, but you can keep this. So now they've given a value to that property. That's a bit of a gift because now others can't compete. You've reduced competition. So it was a pretty big financial benefit to those people

ELIZABETH NELSON:
For the Henry Street project alone, the benefit to Heidi was huge and she had more plans.
Before these plans went to City Council, Heidi would need support from the City Planning Commission, appointed by the Mayor.

In July 2018, local architect Lisa Sauve attended her first regular meeting as a member of the City Planning Commission.

COMMISSIONER ALEX MILSHTEYN:
We have a new commissioner that’s joining us.

BRETT LENART:
Commissioner Lisa Sauve… she had her first meeting at the working session but this is her first live on television appearance on behalf of the Planning Commission. I don't know if you would like to say a few words about your background.

COMMISSIONER LISA SAUVE:
Thank you for having me on the commission. My background is I am principal architect at Synecdoche design studio, I founded here in Ann Arbor. Working session was a great primer for the agenda tonight, so ready to rock and roll!

ELIZABETH NELSON:
As a member of the City’s planning commission, Lisa helped approve Heidi’s project on Henry street. Soon after, she and Heidi established a professional relationship. Sauve’s firm, Synecdoche, worked on multiple properties owned by Heidi.

In 2021, Lisa Sauve was a guest on a podcast sponsored by Heidi’s company. Heidi’s employees hosted the podcast.

HOST A:
And there is a little birdie that's told me that there's a bigger project on potentially 4M and Synecdoche's Horizons.

LISA SAUVE:
Absolutely

HOST B:
If you love Thrive, if you like Studio Studio,

LISA:
if you like placemaking,

[CROSS TALK]

HOST A:
You guys are going to like this.

HOST B:
But we'll share more info about that when the time is appropriate, but we're excited for that one.

LISA SAUVE:
Yeah

HOST B:
Are you guys?

LISA SAUVE:
Absolutely. We're having a lot of fun. A lot of brainstorming.

HOST A:
A lot of brainstorming happening.

LISA SAUVE:
A lot of wild ideas mashing up into physical space.

HOST A:
That’s right, you can count on Heidi Poscher for some wild ideas.

HOST B:
It's all wild ideas

HOST A:
It’s always wild. We love it. We love working for it.

ELIZABETH NELSON:
That wild idea was Venue, a co-working restaurant space just a stone’s throw from Heidi’s airbnbs on Henry Street.

[MUSIC]

ELIZABETH NELSON:
In 2019, the site of The Henry was just across the street from a grocery store called Lucky’s. This grocery store was one reason I liked the idea of more people living at that location. People on Henry Street could walk to Lucky’s, bike to campus, and take the bus downtown very easily.

Lucky’s occupied the corner of Industrial Highway and Stadium Boulevard. The space had been a Kroger grocery store, but Lucky’s was much nicer than Kroger. In a seating area toward the front, customers could get together and enjoy coffee or a glass of wine or a beer. Like Kroger, Lucky’s had big weekly sales and it was affordable. People in the surrounding neighborhoods loved Luckys.

In early 2020, the Lucky’s store closed abruptly with no plan for what might take its place. Heidi saw an opportunity to control more property in the neighborhood. Her idea for a project called VENUE would repurpose the big grocery store space into something more upscale. Lisa Sauve’s firm filed permits for the redesign.

Venue launched in the summer of 2022 and it marked a new beginning. Heidi’s portfolio of airbnbs had used the business name Prentice Partners. With Venue, Heidi introduced a “lifestyle assets brand” called 4M or sometimes Prentice 4M.

Heidi’s wife, Marge, became the public face of Venue and 4M. Local media featured profiles of Marge, which explained her background as a physician. Early in her career, Marge worked in San Francisco, treating AIDS patients at the height of the epidemic. After ten years in medicine, Marge worked as a consultant in real estate. When that industry crashed in 2008, Marge returned to practicing medicine. After meeting Heidi, she set medicine aside again to work in real estate

Marge promoted 4M and Venue

MARGE POSCHER:
4M is a sort of take on the word forum, F-O-R-U-M, which is a place to gather and to establish community. So we have an umbrella company of 4M Consolidated Brands, and you can learn more about all of them on the website. Our goal is to form a community, a place to socialize and Venue was really sort of the epitome of that. It was like, oh, this makes sense. We need to do this.

[sound of footsteps]

ELIZABETH NELSON:
On football game weekends, a steady stream of pedestrians can be seen walking to Venue on Friday evenings. Many of them come from Heidi’s short term rentals on Henry Street, Golden Avenue and other homes in Lower Burns Park. The community Heidi and Marge built was for tourists, occupying apartments and homes in this residential neighborhood five minutes from the stadium.

In television promotions, Venue sounded like a paradise.

[MUSIC]
[television news recording]

MARGE POSCHER:
This evolved over a period of about eighteen months, and I really just wanted to create something different and something very beautiful with great food. And so we have now these menu lines that are varied and delicious. Everything made from scratch, authentic ingredients. In a space that is expansive yet flexible and can feel really intimate. And you know you can be there on a date night or you can be there with 23 to 30 of your friends sitting right in the dining room having a blast.

HOST:
I love it. It's what you make of it, right?

MARGE POSCHER:
Exactly.

[television news recording]

MARGE POSCHER:
Guests often come in and feel like they're transported to San Francisco or New York, certainly the bay area. I think this kind of invokes that sort of semi-industrial open, bright space,

HOST:
The teal blue of the ceilings and palm trees also invokes an island feel, making it hard to believe what once occupied this space.

MARGE POSCHER:
This used to be a supermarket that went out of business.

HOST:
That was in 2020. Now, not only is this a thriving business, which includes a full bar shared and private workspaces, a cafe and marketplace. and check this out. They even have a podcast studio for rent.

ELIZABETH NELSON:
The concept of Venue got mixed reviews among neighbors, who were unsure about the combined restaurant, coffeeshop, catering, podcast studio, coworking and special event space in what had been a full-service grocery store.

ANNE BERGGREN::
We had a lovely grocery store there. That was a wonderful neighborhood grocery store. And then all of a sudden we've got this very ugly building that looks like something from, I don't know, some postmodern hell. I haven't been in it, but I'm told…

KURT BERGGREN:
I went in once just to see what it was.

ANNE BERGGREN:
The food is extremely expensive and they do have event space and apparently space you can rent for an office and stuff like that. But there are never any cars there. So I don't know how it sustains itself.

ELIZABETH NELSON:
Almost as soon as it opened, Venue found community partners. It earned lucrative contracts as a vendor to the University of Michigan. A local economic development corporation called Ann Arbor SPARK held events there. Venue hosted monthly meetups for New Tech, sponsored by Spark. These meetups were promoted by the Michigan Venture Capital Association. Heidi featured in at least one event sponsored by Spark.

In 2022, SPARK invited Heidi to give a Tech Talk. They introduced her as someone who spent most of her career consulting with domestic investor owned utilities, with two decades of experience in energy, communications, and real estate development.

HEIDI POSCHER:
My name's Heidi Poscher. I'm a founder, a founding partner of 4M. We do real estate development and management here in Ann Arbor. I'm also a founding and managing partner of Dynamic Energy Group. We consult with electric utilities, and I'm a founding partner and the COO of Restream Energy.

ELIZABETH NELSON:
Around the time of this presentation, Dynamic Energy Group listed three employees on LinkedIn. Two of them were Heidi. She appeared as two separate profiles with different photos. Heidi Mitchell was Senior Vice President of Smart Grid Strategy. Heidi Poscher was Strategic Technology Integration professional. Real estate and renewable energy advisor, Microgrid devotee, and Energy M&V expert. A website for Dynamic Energy Group is no longer available.

A team member at Restream Energy confirmed that Heidi was not a founding partner. She was never COO of the company.

[MUSIC]

ELIZABETH NELSON:
I was up for re-election in 2022. As happened in 2020, these city elections were flooded with money, much of it from out of town and much of it from special interests, through Political Action Committees.

State law limits what an individual person can donate to a political campaign. For city council campaigns, that limit was about $1000. A political action committee, or PAC, could donate ten times what an individual could. More importantly, these PACs could collect unlimited amounts of money from anyone. The Mayor and his allies crafted a system to make the best use of this PAC money across multiple campaigns.

Every campaign must track and report donations and expenses. In 2022, the Mayor and his five Council candidates filed reports that included tens of thousands of dollars in payments to the same campaign manager. These payments satisfied state reporting requirements and no more details would ever be known about how the money was used or for whom. This money amounted to a slush fund of resources for six different candidates.

In 2022, two City Council races were uncontested. The Mayor’s candidates had no opponent and would be elected without any campaign. Those uncontested candidates collected thousands from Political Action Committees, then paid that money to the shared campaign manager. The PAC money donated to those two uncontested candidates almost certainly supported the campaigns of the other four.

It was technically legal.

I raised over $20,000 for my re-election campaign, mostly from my ward and virtually all of it from city residents. My opponent - endorsed by the Mayor - had more campaign donors from outside the city than from people in the ward we were competing to represent. I was out-spent two to one and I narrowly lost.

This is how a small, wealthy network of special interests and PACs gained full control of City government in Ann Arbor.

Heidi and Marge were still getting Venue off the ground when they started publicizing a new project nearby, another collaboration with Lisa Sauve.

SOUTHTOWN would occupy the entire block bounded by White, Henry, State, and Stimson Streets. This block already contained about fifty rentals on ten parcels. It was a mix of older homes, duplexes and small apartment buildings with mature trees in between. This area appealed to grad students who wanted a quiet, affordable place to live relatively near campus. The Southtown project would level the whole block and replace it with an eight story building, 216 new luxury apartments. Southtown was just one block away from Venue.

On social media, architect Lisa Sauve announced a public engagement meeting for Southtown and friends wished her luck. She replied that “it helps to be on the planning commission.”

[2023 recorded meeting]

COMMISSIONER SHANNON GIBB RANDALL:
Welcome to the May 16th, 2023 regular meeting of the Ann Arbor Planning Commission.

ELIZABETH NELSON:
When the Planning Commission considered Southtown, Lisa Sauve was recused from discussion. Her business partner, Adam Smith, presented the plan.

[2023 recorded meeting]

ADAM SMITH:
We're really excited to talk about this project. Myself, I'm Adam Smith. I'm the director of design of Synecdoche. We've been working together for a year on this project so far to get it to the point where it's at now. So the three points of this are the rezoning, the alley vacation, and the site plan.

ELIZABETH NELSON:
The rezoning was crucially important. That block was zoned for residential, only. Heidi could build apartments there, but commercial uses would not be allowed. Heidi needed a rezoning to permit commercial uses, so she could have more full-time short term rentals.

The chair of the City planning commission understood the significance of Heidi’s request. She also remembered what happened before, with the Henry Street project:

[2023 recorded meeting]

COMMISSIONER SHANNON GIBB-RANDALL
There's been some history here, which a few of us have been around. And when you deviate a little bit, people remember. Frankly, I don't think I even would have thought about this if it hadn't been her coming forward, but she did. So I need some sort of assurance that this thing is not going to become short-term rental land, because that is completely antithetical to our housing issues here.

ELIZABETH NELSON
One City Council member serves on the Planning Commission in Ann Arbor, as a liaison. Council Member Lisa Disch was ready to defend Southtown and she relayed a message from Heidi, through Council Member Jen Eyer.

[MUSIC]

[2023 recorded meeting]

COUNCIL MEMBER DISCH:
There was an exchange which I think might have been from the… between the owner and Council Member Eyer. I can't tell because the way the communication was forwarded, I couldn't tell who wrote to Council Member Eyer, but I wanted to read you the words of this communication because, in my mind, it suggests that there might be other, conditions that might be offered with this project. So I'll just read it.
We will use a number of the South town units for short term rentals. The preponderance, though will be long term rentals. Here is another important point.

And I'm still quoting.

We will convert 63 short term beds in the same neighborhood from the current short term rental status to long term rental status once Southtown is complete. Once that is done, there will be a net reduction in 4M short term rentals. Another important point is that we are actively partnering with others to draw young, mostly female entrepreneurs to Ann Arbor with the hope of creating opportunities for current and future residents. Our STR properties are at the center of this. Anyone should feel free to confirm this with our various partners, including Ann Arbor SPARK.

So I actually called Ann Arbor Spark and I asked, how it was that STR properties could be at the center of a partnership to draw young female entrepreneurs to Ann Arbor. It was… the person with whom I spoke couldn't explain the connection. And so I'd love to hear you clarify that. That is interesting to me. And I'd love to hear what that connection is.

ELIZABETH NELSON:
Like Ann Arbor SPARK, Adam Smith struggled to confirm Heidi’s theory that short term rentals promoted young female entrepreneurs. He did make clear that the Synecdoche firm was not involved in the Henry street project

[2023 recorded meeting]

ADAM SMITH:
We haven't been designing in a way that it's meant to be, like short term rentals with six bedrooms or like big group spaces like, we weren't involved in, in their past projects… they can be if they are used for short term rentals, because that's what makes the project get built, because that's what can make money, to get going for a year or two. And then it can transition. They also do offer pretty, affordable short term rentals. They offer ones less than $100, in, in their buildings. And I think that's really good for, for the neighborhood and also to making it…, you know, it's represented by two women that own it and, and STRs that are owned by women. And a business that's run by women makes it, I think, safer.

ELIZABETH NELSON:
Heidi’s email and Adam’s explanation about transitions, were not legally binding. Their statements were as unenforceable as Heidi’s previous assurances about Henry Street. The chair of the planning commission pointed this out.

[2023 recorded meeting]

COMMISSIONER SHANNON GIBB RANDALL
I just want to reiterate that I’d really like this to be real housing and that we’re talking about housing as we’re going along here and that by doing this we are essentially making it possible for them to have no long term in here….so just realize that. As we have it right now, there is no guarantee that there’s long term housing as part of this, which would not be addressing our housing needs..

ELIZABETH NELSON
Southtown did not get approved by the Planning commission that night. It was postponed.
Lisa Sauve was furious.

[MUSIC]

She lashed out on social media about the injustice of the postponement and delay. As a member of the planning commission, she expected her projects to be approved. Presumably, Heidi expected that, too. On a local podcast, Lisa reacted to the postponement.

[2023 Podcast]

LISA SAUVE:
I've been sitting at that table for five years. If I get dragged through and questioned on my intentions, then what is any other petitioner going to feel comfortable and welcome to propose projects?
The narrative of like the greedy developer, it's like the greediest developer should have a long vision about improving this thing, this whole community, to get their returns as well. And the amount of risk, the amount of hundreds of thousands of dollars in time that they have put in and seen no dime, that this, specifically this project, could just completely collapse, right? They're owed their dues, right? Risk, reward.

ELIZABETH NELSON:
Heidi had picked the right advocate for her project. She and Lisa shared the same sense of entitlement.

They offered similar arguments against any kind of skepticism.

[MUSIC]

Twenty years earlier, in West Virginia, Heidi lobbied the Governor for money in support of her company, Sequelle. She sent letters and emails to staff in the state development office, arguing that she had performed $168,000 in uncompensated consulting hours. She believed she should get unsecured loans, based on all the time she had theoretically put into the project. When staffers pushed back on the irregularities of extending loans with virtually no collateral, Heidi reminded them that she had already received a highly competitive federal grant. That was evidence enough that the state of West Virginia should give her access to even more money.

This was her pattern: Heidi leveraged whatever approval she had extracted from others, to convince new people to set aside their own concerns. In Ann Arbor, Heidi expected the Planning Commission to trust her, based on her recent collaborations with SPARK. Lisa Sauve expected her fellow Commissioners to approve Heidi’s project, based on their history as colleagues.

After the postponement, Southtown was presented again, with the condition that no more than 30% of units could be used as dedicated short term rentals.

TOM STULBERG:
The developer has to ask for the conditions to be put on. So they're voluntary and they have to be voluntary the way conditional zoning works. But it's meant to limit what the developer gets, not give the developer any kind of bonus or any kind of financial benefit.
So in this case, the status quo for the block that Southtown was built on was zero short term rentals that are not owner occupied. For example, if they're getting 200 units in their development and they're asking for 30 percent to be short term rentals, that's 60 units. That's not a limit. Limiting it to 60 units. The status quo was zero. That's a bonus of 60 units.
You could not ask for a more lucrative location to be gifted a number of short term rentals. It's highly lucrative and it wasn't appropriate to start with.

ELIZABETH NELSON:
When Southtown was first presented to the Planning Commission, without any conditions, Heidi persuaded nine people to submit letters in support of it. Only two of those letters came from people in the neighborhood. Other letters came from residents across town, the CEO of a tech company, a representative from the Climate Citizens Lobby, a former planning commissioner, and the founder of a local nonprofit, Equitable Ann Arbor Trust.

After the postponement, when the Planning Commission considered Southtown again, Heidi had one, very big letter of support. She persuaded then State Representative Felicia Brabec to write an endorsement of the project, on the letterhead of her elected office. Then Representative Felicia Brabec gushed with praise for the project and the “character” of its developers. She described Heidi and her wife Marge as "the kind of business owners we should want to partner with in order to enhance our community."

[MUSIC]

ELIZABETH NELSON:
Eighteen months later, when Felicia Brabec launched a campaign for State Senate, Marge Poscher was among early donors, making monthly contributions. Brabec’s campaign received eleven donations before Marge unexpectedly died in October of 2025. According to one account, Marge had renewed her medical license the day before she was found dead. After a brief investigation, the county medical examiner declared her death a suicide. Heidi told police that she was not home when it happened.

Thanks for listening. Visit HollowHype.com to find more information about this episode.

Coming up in episode 6: Ann Arbor City Council approves Heidi’s plans for Southtown plus a new idea for the energy to support it. Heidi represents the City, travelling with the director of Sustainability. As her influence at City Hall becomes more obvious, Heidi denies her involvement with 4M, and threatens a resident who talked about it online.

If you have something to share about Heidi’s activities in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, or California. Please reach out to hollowhypepodcast@gmail.com