Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel 'Matty' Moroun dead at age 93

**Bigdd** · July-13-20, 06:42 PM

Originally Posted by Satiricalivory

He was awful

Is there any reason why you think this?

I keep hearing how he was a meanie, and awful, and greedy, and one of the worst people in Detroit etc.

But I have NEVER heard anyone explain why exactly.

If he was really awful,. there MUST be some easy to point to examples.

Not wanting a competing bridge? OK,. but that's natural for a businessman to want to protect his massive investment right? Does that make him evil?

A second bridge will send toll money to Canada, instead of to a local businessman. I.m not sure that's a win for us.

A second bridge will allow corporations to send more of our manufacturing jobs to Canada. Not sure that's a win either.

He didn't do much to the train station while he owned it [[until pressured to in recent years), OK,...but his buying it also kept it from being torn down, and he paid for some security, and paid the taxes. That's better than what would have happened otherwise isn't it? Neither you or I stepped up and did that.

Started a trucking company locally and employed a lot of people. That's OK right?

Again,.. I just can't find an example of something he did that was bad.

Just unfounded name calling and trashing of his reputation.

**gnome** · July-13-20, 07:05 PM

Originally Posted by Richard

It was over 7 years ago a few months before the bankruptcy and I was looking to bring a substantial investment to the city of Detroit.

I ran into more roadblocks then a roadblock producing factory,I approached pretty much all the “billionaires” in the city for help including the mayor.

Mr Moroun and Mr Stamper were the only two in the entire city that was tasked with encouraging investment within the city that actually asked.

How can we help.

At that time I was perplexed why a city that was in such dire straights would actually go out of their way in order to make sure outside investment did not touch the city of Detroit soil.

That showed me at that time who actually really cared about the city and it’s future,and it ment a lot to me anyways.

You guys may not for your reasons but I have a lot of respect for him and I hope he rests in peace and condolences to his family.

For some reason I’m not surprised you, dear Richard, would find someone like Matty M a man to be admired.

**Burnsie** · July-13-20, 09:33 PM

Moroun bought the depot in 1995. Granted, it was already in rough shape. But that did not excuse him, an extremely wealthy individual, from doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for 20 years [[until the forced window installation in 2015) to maintain the building at even the most rudimentary level to keep it from being a dangerous hazard. For the vast majority of his "stewardship," there was nothing but a half assed fence riddled with gaping holes.

It was a wide-open playground and repeated media reports had no effect on his stance. No security guards until very near the end of his ownership when he felt the heat on him. Moroun left the building wide open to trespassers and the elements, causing further destruction of the building's historical integrity that can never fully be restored by Ford. It would have been one thing if a well-meaning but cash poor entity had owned the depot and struggled to secure it, but Moroun had plenty of means, and thus moral responsibility, to at least secure the building from the elements and vandals.

So, that's one bad thing he did. Another is how he illegally seized and fenced off part of Detroit's Riverside Park, complete with fake, misleading signs.

Do some casual internet searching and you'll find lots more.

**Burnsie** · July-13-20, 09:38 PM

Moroun bought the depot because of its strategic location near his bridge, not because of any good intentions toward the building. It was a happy break that it survived long enough under him to be sold to Ford. But that does not excuse his decades of criminal slumlord negligence to the extremely historically important and architecturally significant structure.

**softailrider** · July-13-20, 10:31 PM

Originally Posted by Burnsie

Moroun bought the depot because of its strategic location near his bridge, not because of any good intentions toward the building. It was a happy break that it survived long enough under him to be sold to Ford. But that does not excuse his decades of criminal slumlord negligence to the extremely historically important and architecturally significant structure.

A lot of buildings in the city are historically important and architecturally significant and they’re in about the same shape as the train station, which is to say fucked up and falling apart or way worse.

**Gistok** · July-14-20, 03:38 AM

Here's a 2013 article from the Windsor Star... discussing how Moroun turned a nice neighborhood in Windsor into a virtual slum.

Maybe a few of you who get a chubby out of Moroun business practices can start a Go-Fund-Me to raise money to build a statue to Windsor's biggest former slumlord....

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-n...he-billionaire

**401don** · July-14-20, 06:30 AM

Originally Posted by Gistok

Here's a 2013 article from the Windsor Star... discussing how Moroun turned a nice neighborhood in Windsor into a virtual slum.

Maybe a few of you who get a chubby out of Moroun business practices can start a Go-Fund-Me to raise money to build a statue to Windsor's biggest former slumlord....

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-n...he-billionaire

Not to mention how much in time and money he caused the state with his illegal I-75 ramps/entrances to the bridge.

**Smirnoff** · July-14-20, 07:04 AM

Wonder how many inmates get their dinner from the DAC:

Refusing jail chow [[baloney sandwich) & getting dinner from the Detroit Athletic Club for his 1-nite chaperoned stay for numerous delays in a construction project linking the bridge to area interstates.

**Richard** · July-14-20, 07:46 AM

Originally Posted by Gistok

Here's a 2013 article from the Windsor Star... discussing how Moroun turned a nice neighborhood in Windsor into a virtual slum.

Maybe a few of you who get a chubby out of Moroun business practices can start a Go-Fund-Me to raise money to build a statue to Windsor's biggest former slumlord....

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-n...he-billionaire

Kinda like the go fund me that was set up for the neighborhood and COD tax base that was permanently removed from the neighborhood where the new bridge is going?

Funny how a property owner is chastised for failing to keep scrappers,trespassers and picture takers out.

Even a house that was publicly advertised as having stolen tiles removed from there.

There have been some on this site bragging about holding wedding photo shoots at the station,so it was deemed a perfectly acceptable practice.

So it was okay for the public to damage the property but the landlord is a slum lord because he did not prevent it. Sounds not even in the least bit logical.

It does not matter if one has $100 or 1 billion,nobody takes their $100 and invests it into something that will cost them $1000s with zero return.

Who is going to pay $500 for a car and put $10,000 into fixing it up and sell it for $1000 as a business you will not last long.

**iheartthed** · July-14-20, 10:50 AM

Some people take being contrarian to such a ridiculous extreme that they end up looking foolish. If you don't know why everybody thinks this guy was an asshole, you have not been paying attention.

**iheartthed** · July-14-20, 10:53 AM

Originally Posted by Bigdd

Have yet to hear anything concrete that was bad about the man. It's not like he was running the city downhill, stealing millions, or funding his empire with taxpayer dollars like Coleman Young, Kwamee or the Illiches,

Some think he shouldn't have protected his businesses,... but that's not a good reason to speak evil of someone.

You do realize that Moroun basically had Kwame Kilpatrick on payroll, right?

**aj3647** · July-14-20, 01:44 PM

Originally Posted by softailrider

A lot of buildings in the city are historically important and architecturally significant and they’re in about the same shape as the train station, which is to say fucked up and falling apart or way worse.

How many of them are owned by billionaires?

**jcole** · July-14-20, 02:09 PM

Originally Posted by aj3647

How many of them are owned by billionaires?

His father built the family trucking company. As the family's only son, he simply inherited it by virtue of birthright.

Anyone can make it in America if their dad owns his own company and gives it to you to run one day!

Or loans you a million dollars...

**Gistok** · July-14-20, 02:40 PM

Originally Posted by Bigdd

For my part,.. I wasn't trying to make the guy out to be a saint,.. BUT,.. of the things he did that weren't to our liking,... Mr. Illich did far worse, and he did so with OUR dollars and properties. Yet there wasn't NEAR this much venom for him when he passed.

Mr. Maroun deserves perhaps 1/3 as much hate as Mr. I did,.. not 10x as much.

That's sort of apples and oranges...

When the Ilitches moved their Little Caesars to the Fox Building and restored the theatre... they were looked upon very positively by city boosters. They did buy the Red Wings and the Tigers and were looked upon as pro Detroit. Things didn't start going sour for them until they decided to move the Tigers to Comerica Park, and abandon Tiger Stadium. Also, all the condemnation of historic buildings to build the Tigers and Lions new home was done by the Wayne County Stadium Authority, thus sparing the Ilitches much of the boogie man of historic preservation.

It wasn't until the Madison-Lenox destruction and eventual razing of Tiger Stadium that folks started really disliking them. They became more widely disliked once Mr. Ilitch died, and his son Chris Ilitch was continuing to raze old buildings for parking after the completion of LCA. The Ilitches did do some good... they paid off some of the Masonic Temple's utility bills to prevent closure of the complex, and they did do other charitable work... but in the last 3 years their failure with District Detroit caused a lot of anger not only among Detroit boosters, but also people in city government [[and later a US Representative in Congress). But one thing that the Ilitches did not do was to sue the city or state... they stayed in their good graces [[so they could feed at the public trough).

Now as for Moroun... besides his stubborn desire to build a 2nd crossing, he actually did very little for Detroit [[or Windsor). He filed lawsuit after lawsuit against the city/state/feds to try to block the new Gordie Howe bridge. He also failed to maintain the MCS, despite the city trying to force his hand. And having Kwame Kilpatrick in his pocket didn't help his cause. Also, Moroun's company never moved to Detroit... it is still based in Warren.

So there has always been more contempt for Moroun than there has for the Ilitches. Morouns only saving grace was his determination in not tearing down the MCS... and that could have been due to the fact that it would have cost a fortune to demolish and dispose of the debris.

**aj3647** · July-14-20, 03:59 PM

Originally Posted by jcole

Or loans you a million dollars...

It's just your standard rags to riches story, starting with the part where his parents paid for him to go to the private University of Notre Dame at a time when very few people could afford college and then he came back and took over his father's trucking company as the eldest son.

Are you telling me that your dad DIDN'T hand you an already-successful company to run when you came of age? Perhaps if you had worked harder, you too could have been born the son of a successful trucking magnate.

**jcole** · July-14-20, 04:22 PM

When I came "of age" [[18) my dad took me out for a legal beer. When I graduated HS, he took the family out to a nice dinner. When I got engaged, he took me and the fiance out to Chinese food. He died before I turned 20, so we can only guess what festival of fun and finance he would have given me at 21. Could have been a drink AND dinner.

Originally Posted by aj3647

It's just your standard rags to riches story, starting with the part where his parents paid for him to go to the private University of Notre Dame at a time when very few people could afford college and then he came back and took over his father's trucking company as the eldest son.

Are you telling me that your dad DIDN'T hand you an already-successful company to run when you came of age? Perhaps if you had worked harder, you too could have been born the son of a successful trucking magnate.

**Richard** · July-14-20, 06:41 PM

Originally Posted by aj3647

How many of them are owned by billionaires?

His father built the family trucking company. As the family's only son, he simply inherited it by virtue of birthright.

Anyone can make it in America if their dad owns his own company and gives it to you to run one day!

Yes,what was the name of that beer company?

Many long time businesses that were handed down just to crash,given to or not you still need to know and have a work ethic.

**Burnsie** · July-14-20, 08:52 PM

Originally Posted by Richard

...Funny how a property owner is chastised for failing to keep scrappers,trespassers and picture takers out...
So it was okay for the public to damage the property but the landlord is a slum lord because he did not prevent it.
...

That's like saying I shouldn't bear the responsibility for picking up trash from my lawn because "somebody else threw it there."

When you're a property owner, yeah, you do have responsibility to meet city building code and secure a building from becoming dangerous. And just because I'm blaming Moroun doesn't mean I also don't blame the vandals or a city government that looked the other way. If you're also extremely rich, you have an especially strong ethical and moral responsibility to meet those minimum code requirements.

Moroun was a slum lord at the MC Depot because he bought a structure with zero plans to do anything with it, and proceeded to let its rotting continue with absolutely no efforts to minimize it.

All evidence points to him buying the property so he could keep other landowners away from the strategically important area near the RR tunnel. For a time, it was thought that the RR tunnel would be turned into a truck tunnel and a new RR tunnel built next to it. Moroun wanted to ensure he was adjacent to any of that potential action.

He didn't keep the station standing because he wanted to save it; he kept it standing because to demolish it would have required him to spend money on the property, which he did not do for 20 years. He only spent money when the city mandated he signed an agreement to put the windows in.

The people on this thread who say Moroun is fine and dandy either are purposefully misdirecting, or lacking in the most basic knowledge of how to search for freely available news stories on the Internet.

**softailrider** · July-15-20, 05:01 AM

Originally Posted by aj3647

How many of them are owned by billionaires?

His father built the family trucking company. As the family's only son, he simply inherited it by virtue of birthright.

Anyone can make it in America if their dad owns his own company and gives it to you to run one day!

Point well taken.

**sirrealone** · July-15-20, 09:13 AM

Also, from what I heard, both of them let neighborhoods rot, but the Illitches would largely let them go deserted while the Moroun's would continue to charge rent for people to live in houses that were literally falling down around them.

Maybe one isn't really better than the other, but it seems like killing neighborhoods while at the same time adding to their bottom line on the backs of people that had no options, is quite a bit more reprehensible.

**DeLemur** · July-15-20, 11:25 AM

Such an entertaining thread.

I'll never forget his one night in jail for disobeying state orders and they brought him a meal from the Detroit Athletic Club.

How one man came to own an important international bridge crossing in the United States is just incredible. Had to have been a tough SOB m'fer.

**SyGolden48236** · July-15-20, 06:34 PM

Alav ha-shalom Manuel Moroun!

**jcole** · July-16-20, 11:36 AM

I thought Matty was Lebanese?

Originally Posted by SyGolden48236

Alav ha-shalom Manuel Moroun!

**admin** · July-16-20, 03:40 PM

Several off-topic posts discussing ideologies, race, or other members have been purged from this thread and moved to Non-Detroit. Likewise any post in response to such posts have been and will lmoved.

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