“Stop being part of the lies”
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Welcome to Episode 7 of Hollow Hype. In Episode 6, Heidi promoted a new project, called Southtown, that would cover an entire city block in Ann Arbor. She emphasized how it would meet city goals for sustainability. Heidi was now working closely with the city’s director of sustainability, Dr. Missy Stults.
[Meeting background sound effect]
In 2024, a developer held a public engagement meeting at Heidi’s business, the former grocery store, now called Venue. Residents gathered in the room at Venue to hear about a proposed development in Ward 4.
[2024 recorded presentation]
RAYMOND PHILLIPS:
we specialize a lot in multi-family we've done thousands of units in multiple States um and we think we can bring a very good project here
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Heidi was there, standing next to Council Members Jen Eyer and Dharma Akmon. Some residents at the meeting were highly skeptical of the project. At one point, Heidi gave a lengthy speech in support of City Council.
[2024 recorded presentation]
HEIDI:
I'm only a lowly developer. I'm not a resident of this area, I am a resident of Ann Arbor. it's changed a lot since I moved here in 1972 with a break in between, so I'm very sympathetic. I'm also not a council member and God help all of us I never will be but you know the big picture numbers that I feel pretty confident sharing are there are 64,000 people commuting into Ann Arbor every day and I think a lot of those people would like to live here.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Heidi argued with one resident who criticized the city government
[2024 recorded presentation]
HEIDI:
It's just a problem and I think our elected officials have to contend with problems like that and it makes it tough. Pardon me?
RESIDENT [cross talk]
Only if we had competent elected officials and planning commissioners.
HEIDI:
I'm not I'm not going to go there, I'm not because I work hard with them every day and I don't always agree with them
[MUSIC]
ELIZABETH NELSON:
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.
I was there when Heidi claimed to work with local elected officials “every day.” That comment shocked me when I heard it. She worked with elected officials EVERY DAY?
When I served on City Council, I felt the responsibility of representing thousands of people. My attention was constantly divided among whoever happened to reach out to me. Residents had specific questions or issues they needed help with, problems that could often be solved in a day or two. Making changes to city policy or local ordinances took much longer, sometimes months, but that work never focused on one person. A policy idea from one person would inevitably expand to conversations with many other stakeholders and community members.
[MUSIC]
I couldn’t think of how or why any Council member would work closely with one developer or local business person for any extended period of time, nevermind every day. What Heidi said sounded crazy to me.
She may have been exaggerating when she claimed to work with them every day, but Heidi definitely had connections at City Hall. A unanimous City Council was helpful to someone like Heidi. Earning the support of one or two members was typically enough to get support from all of them. They were in the habit of agreeing. It was easier than asking questions.
Heidi’s plan for Southtown had faced some resistance at the Planning Commission and among residents. There were concerns about new zoning that would allow more dedicated short term rentals on a block where such businesses were not currently permitted. Heidi had no trouble finding support among elected city leaders.
Council Member Erica Briggs praised the plan.
[2023 recorded meeting]
COUNCIL MEMBER ERICA BRIGGS:
I am really grateful for the local development team that has made my decision really easy tonight.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Council Member Dharma Akmon defended short term rentals.
COUNCIL MEMBER DHARMA AKMON:
And, you know, I ran on a platform of providing more housing of all types.
We have visiting scholars, We have people that are making use of our hospital. We have people that are having extensive repairs done to their house that need a place to stay. Not to speak of all of the, you know, startup development people that I think that these developers are interested in. So I think, you know, this is a need that needs to be met. I think this development's exciting.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Council Member Linh Song attempted to connect Heidi’s short term rental business to the plight of refugees.
COUNCIL MEMBER LINH SONG:
So I began this meeting reflecting on refugee families coming to Ann Arbor much like how my own parents were welcomed in the 70s.
So we know SouthTown might not meet refugees immediate needs either unless, say, they employ refugees and other low income residents. So what's the connection? The connection is that we cannot truly be a welcoming community without addressing housing supply, all types of housing.
[MUSIC]
ELIZABETH NELSON:
At the time of this vote, Heidi had begun making political donations to City leaders. She had already donated $2,000 to the campaign of Mayor Taylor and $750 to Council Members Jen Eyer and Dharma Akmon. Weeks after that vote, Heidi gave another $1,000 to Council Member Jen Eyer and $5,000 to the Mayor’s new political action committee. The Mayor’s PAC would support the campaigns of other city council members. When the mayor and City Council opposed election and campaign finance reform, Heidi gave $2,000 to the anti-reform campaigns.
In the space of five years, Heidi donated over $11,000 to City political campaigns.
Heidi was a cheerleader for the people in power and the people in power became cheerleaders for Heidi.
I was on City Council in 2019, when we directed the Housing commission to evaluate ten under-utilized city-owned properties. My Council colleague, Ali Ramlawi, was particularly interested in one of the properties.
ALI RAMLAWI:
415 West Washington was in my ward. I walked by it going back and forth to work every day. It was a very difficult site for a lot of reasons. You had the floodway, you had a floodplain, you had contamination, you know, the Tree Line Trail, you had the chimney swifts. So it had a lot of issues when it came to repurposing it, redeveloping it, what we're going to do with it. They didn't have the money to tear down the buildings either. They left. It was an eyesore, it was a dilapidated building.
We knew that there was some benzene and some other carcinogens that were on the site that were leeching into the groundwater there. So I looked at it and I worked with my colleagues and tried to do some things with it.
[MUSIC]
ELIZABETH NELSON:
In 2020, Ali brought a resolution to City Council, asking staff to move forward with a plan for the re-development of 415 W. Washington. A new development would address the blight and pollution. The city could direct what kind of development might happen there.
Private developers could take advantage of state brownfield programs to cover the cost of cleanup.
Nearby residents expressed concerns about how a new development would fit in the historic district. Neighbors wanted the pollution cleaned up but they also worried about flooding issues. One city staffer had offered the opinion that nothing should be built on the site, due to flooding concerns.
ALI RAMLAWI:
There was a neighboring property owner, his name was Joe, who wanted to make the city an offer and take a look at the site. He had property right next door. He was a successful small business entrepreneur and he was going to look at the site and try to evaluate it and then give the city an offer and a proposal. But what he needed, he needed access to the site. He needed the ability to have engineering firms come in and take a look at the site. And he wanted an agreement from the city that would allow him to do this, to do the due diligence.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Some of the neighbors asked City Council to give Joe a chance. Ali tried to find a way forward that wouldn’t derail the City process but would also satisfy the neighbors, his constituents.
[2020 recorded meeting]
COUNCIL MEMBER ALI RAMLAWI:
We have obviously been approached by Joe Lambert in an idea that he has regarding the site.
So if this were to be approved, would it be possible to give someone like Joe three months or four months to do some of his own work, not mutually exclusive, not keeping staff from proceeding, but allowing a concurrent thought?
ELIZABETH NELSON:
The city’s director of community services, Derek Delacourt, explained that it would be inappropriate to give Joe Lambert any special access.
[2020 recorded meeting]
DEREK DELACOURT:
We would never recommend handing over any exclusivity on a publicly owned site without some type of RFP process or consideration by council. We have from day one on the site told developers we're not interested in talking with them about this site because we've made assurances through our entire public engagement process that this would not be a developer driven process. And I understand Mr. Lambert is a neighbor and has nothing but the best considerations in mind for this site. But as staff, we'd have a hard time making that recommendation at this point after we've said that repeatedly throughout this entire process. if council were to offer him exclusivity, or if you were asking if we should set aside the entitlement process to give him a window to do this on a non-competitive basis. That wouldn't be our recommendation.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Then City administrator Tom Crawford weighed in.
[2020 recorded meeting]
CITY ADMINISTRATOR TOM CRAWFORD:
If you want to talk to private developers, we need to go out. I have personally spoken with multiple private parties who would love to work with you on this site, multiple, over the last five years. So if you want to have the private developers do it, we can do what we did about ten years ago, go out for an RFP and actually open that up for multiple developers to bring you proposals.
[MUSIC]
ELIZABETH NELSON:
An RFP is a request for proposals. An RFP creates an open, public process where anyone can make an offer to do work for the City. Staff review all the offers and determine which one is best. With an RFP, anyone can apply to work with the city and staff recommend who the city should do business with. All the offers become a public record that anyone can look at and compare. This system is a safeguard against corruption so that elected leaders can’t just direct city business to their friends.
In order to create an RFP for the development of 415 W. Washington, City Council would first need to approve zoning. The property would be zoned as a PUD, planned unit development, which would include specific guidelines for what could be built.
ALI RAMLAWI:
So they wanted to put it together first on the city side and then present that to outside developers and investors to bid on. They were going to do the work in some ways, pre-entitle it, and then go look for investors.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
PUD zoning for 415 W. Washington was not approved until early 2023, the first few months of the new unanimous City Council. Council members praised the process led by City staff.
Council member Lisa Disch
[2023 recorded meeting]
COUNCIL MEMBER LISA DISCH:
We are often in the situation of leaving it up to the developer who is an interested party to give us their opinion on what can and can’t be done. In this case, staff from multiple departments have provided counsel and they have reached agreement.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Council Member Jenn Cornell
COUNCIL MEMBER JENN CORNELL:
It is walkable. It's close to town and transit. And I think that this would be a highly desirable property for a developer to acquire.
ELIZABETH NELSON
Council member Erica Briggs
[2023 recorded meeting]
COUNCIL MEMBER ERICA BRIGGS:
What I do think is important is that we would go out to the development community with an expectation of the type of building that we would like to see back.
Hopefully we'll have a lot of competitive responses to this
ELIZABETH NELSON:
One year later, that plan was set aside.
[MUSIC]
Heidi’s company, 4M, was interested in 415 W Washington.
In March 2024, Heidi’s wife, Marge, sent a letter to City Hall, addressed to Derek Delacourt in Community Services. On behalf of the 4M team, Marge requested a “definitive agreement with the City of Ann Arbor for the purchase and redevelopment” of 415 W. Washington. She asked for a due diligence period of six months, for 4M to have an exclusive option to buy the property.
In June, Derek Delacourt prepared a City Council resolution that would give 4M even more. His resolution granted 4M a “six month negotiation period” plus an additional 12 months for “due diligence”. The deal would give 4M a full 18 months of exclusive rights to the city property. Delacourt’s resolution was tucked in the middle of the consent agenda– a list of items that City Council typically approves without any discussion at all.
ALI RAMLAWI:
When 4M was given the exclusive inside track on the development, it was a head scratcher to say the least because it was not what was being discussed, practiced, used, prescribed, etc. prior to that. It was a 180 degree different approach to the property than anything else we've seen before. Yeah, it surprised me.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
It surprised me, too. I wrote about it on my blog. I pointed out how this deal contradicted everything that city staff and even city council members had previously said about the development of this parcel. I pointed out how much money Heidi had donated to current members of City Council and the mayor. At that point, Heidi had made political contributions adding up to about $8,000.
[2024 recorded meeting]
MAYOR CHRISTOPHER TAYLOR:
It is 7:02 and welcome to the June 3rd meeting of the Ann Arbor City Council.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
At the City Council meeting, public commenters raised concerns about the process and the optics of making this deal with a campaign donor.
[2024 recorded meeting]
PETER ECKSTEIN:
Selling and developing a property this important and sensitive does not belong on the consent agenda buried among 33 other items. It would give the inside track to buy and develop a city-owned property to a major donor without widely soliciting and comparing other bids.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
In the video recording of this meeting, Heidi and Marge are visible, sitting front and center, just a few feet behind the podium. When residents made critical comments, Heidi and Marge can be seen making faces and snickering.
Neither Heidi nor Marge offered any public comment about their own proposal.
Derek Delacourt took credit for the idea.
[2024 recorded meeting]
DEREK DELACOURT:
I as much sought this out from the developer as they offered it.
Because of some of the uniqueness to it, some of what they're proposing as far as the sustainability components,
When we saw an opportunity to partner with someone like this, it was actually, I will tell you, it was me who pursued it. It wasn't them who submitted a proposal. It was actually me who went after it under those considerations.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
City Council Members were defensive but enthusiastic in their praise of Heidi.
Council Member Lisa Disch.
COUNCIL MEMBER LISA DISCH:
The sustainability features of this project and the innovations of this project, the mass timber that will probably be used here as it is being used in Southtown.
This will be a carbon neutral process, project with respect to scope one and two emissions, which is consistent with our A20 plan.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Council Member Jenn Cornell
COUNCIL MEMBER JENN CORNELL:
And so the idea that this is somehow us giving a gift to a developer that actually has to go through a lot of work and invest a lot to come to us with a proposal that could still be shot down, again, can't be understated. So I'm excited to approve this.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Council Member Jen Eyer
COUNCIL MEMBER JEN EYER:
We have local developers here who are just really doing great work in the community. It does, I'm just briefly going to touch on the allegations and insinuations that are made. It's just so unwarranted. $8,000? Really? Have you seen the work that they're doing to bring new housing where it's needed, you know, with the options for transit? No, I'm really impressed with the team.
I absolutely think it's amazing. And we should be so lucky to, every community should be so lucky to have developers like 4M in their community.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Council Member Travis Radina
COUNCIL MEMBER TRAVIS RADINA:
And I really wish that some of the wild conspiracy theories about bribery and payoffs would end because, frankly, there's just no there there,
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Mayor Christopher Taylor
MAYOR CHRISTOPHER TAYLOR:
What we have here today is a local developer who has demonstrated commitment to doing good work in the city
We are seeing whether this successful community-minded community partner can put together a proposal that works.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
The resolution was approved.
[MUSIC]
KITTY KAHN:
I've lived in Ann Arbor most of my life. I have seen a lot of changes go down here. I went away to school. I lived in California for a while. And then I came back and I bought this house on the old west side in 1971, before it was the old west side. I could never afford it now. I love Ann Arbor. It used to be a wonderful, quirky place full of creative people. Before I bought this house, I lived in a lot of old houses that had apartments in them and they were affordable. I mean, I had housemates, roommates, apartment mates. In fact, when I bought this house, I had two of my friends and we split the land contract three ways, but anyway, it was affordable back then.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
That’s my friend Kitty.
KITTY KAHN:
I used to watch city council meetings live. Now I sometimes watch the recordings, but I watch pretty much all city council meetings and a lot of planning commission and historic district. Those are the basic ones that I'm interested in.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Kitty lives near 415 W. Washington. She was paying close attention to City Council discussion about what might happen to it.
KITTY KAHN:
A lot of people over the years wanted that property to do different things about it, to do like maybe artists spaces. They were never approved, never approved. All of a sudden, the city gives Heidi this no bid contract for 415 West Washington, I thought this is crazy. How can they do this? Well, Heidi is a big donor to the mayor and some of his council members.
When Kitty raised these concerns on social media. Heidi jumped in with responses.
[MUSIC]
KITTY KAHN:
Heidi just came after me insisting that she had absolutely nothing to do with 4M or Southtown. And I thought this is crazy because right on the 4M website, it proudly mentions it's woman owned and there's pictures of Heidi and Margaret as the two owners. And I thought, why is she denying this? This makes no sense. She was so proud of this development before and now all of a sudden she’s so angry at me.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
In response to Kitty, Heidi claimed
I literally don’t own anything in Ann Arbor
What I am saying is that I don’t own any part of the company
I am not employed there
I am just saying I am not an owner or an employee
I don’t have any ownership interests and I’m not employed there
I am not a co-owner or an employee. I was at one time, but that was long ago
I’m not the owner.
My career has been in energy development and
I spend most of my time on my business in Philadelphia
KITTY KAHN:
How could she say that? That makes no sense. It's everywhere that she's a you know owner partner. Makes no sense.
Then she started sending me personal Facebook messages, private messages threatening me. And I thought, this is nuts. Why is she doing this? And she kept insisting that she had nothing to do with 4M or Southtown.
Why would she be so upset? Well, it came to the point where she was threatening me with legal action. And I kept saying, stop, stop. Leave me alone. And then she said, well, you're going to have to get your lawyer to talk to my lawyer.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Heidi messaged Kitty to “stop being part of the lies and you have nothing to worry about”
KITTY KAHN:
Just to keep things on the up and up and then I promise to leave you alone.
But please consider yourself on notice. If you continue to be part of public defamation you will be pulled into legal action. That's what she said to me. Because I asked her to stop messaging me and she said not a problem but please consider yourself on notice. If you continue to be part of public defamation you will be pulled into legal action.
[MUSIC]
ELIZABETH NELSON:
Just days after City Council approved the plan to negotiate a sale of 415 W Washington to 4M. Heidi announced that their offer was withdrawn.
It’s hard to know exactly what triggered Heidi or why she was trying so hard to deny her association with 4M. Virtually every local news outlet had identified Heidi as a partner or co-owner of the short term rentals on Henry Street, the business at Venue, and many other properties in Lower Burns Park. Heidi was now claiming that all of the journalists were wrong in their reporting. There was another paper trail, though, from Heidi herself.
When Heidi made political donations, she had to identify her job and her employer. This information was listed in campaign finance reports. According to those reports, Heidi changed jobs and employers virtually every year.
In 2019, Heidi was a partner at Prentice Partners
In 2021, she was an executive at AHFLP LLC
In 2022, she was an executive at Circa 1919 LLC
In 2023, she was again an executive at AHFLP LLC
In early 2024, Heidi was both a professional at 4M and an executive at Prentice 4M.
In the fall of 2024, after her online arguments with Kitty - Heidi made a donation and described herself as unemployed.
She apparently forgot about her energy development business in Philadelphia.
[2026 court recording]
JUDGE:
Case number twenty-six dash four zero eight zero five, South Town by 4M LLC
Anybody else?
Hello, Ms. Poscher. Nice to see you again.
ELIZABETH NELSON:
The 4M company is now in bankruptcy. Shortly after the death of her wife Marge, Heidi took full control as her representative. The innovative sustainable development at Southtown was never built, but the homes that were on that block have been levelled. It’s been a vacant lot for over a year.
Thanks for listening. Visit HollowHype.com to find more information about this episode.
Coming up in episode 8: Heidi has a new idea for Southtown to make it more sustainable. Rumors start to spread about her criminal past but local journalists don’t think it’s newsworthy.
If you have something to share about Heidi’s activities in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, or California. Please reach out to hollowhypepodcast@gmail.com
