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Brainard Hills Park (Photo by Steve Neavling)
The Archdiocese of Detroit purchased land at Brainard and Cass in Detroit's Cass Corridor in 1969 for $200 to build a park, which became known as Brainard Hills Park.
This spring, George McMahon, 77, who has been the park’s volunteer caretaker for nearly a half century, learned that the Archdiocese, without notifying him or the community, traded the property for a parking lot near Sacred Heart Major Seminary at Chicago and Linwood, writes Steve Neavling of Motor City Muckraker.
“For all those years, we cut the grass and maintained the park, locked it at night and stopped people from drinking and doing drugs,” said McMahon, who has lived next door to the park since it opened.
Now, the new owner, Kimberly Williamson, has padlocked the gated park with no explanation.
Williamson's husband Lawrence Williamson, associate director of housing for the city of Detroit, told Motor City Muckraker last week that she doesn’t know what she plans to do with the property.
“Our concept consists of creating living communities that naturally support health and wellness through the intersection of healthy food, community, architecture, nature, and physical activity,” Kimberly Williamson told Neavling in an email. “It is our hope that the built space can help to prevent and mitigate chronic health illnesses in urban cities, such as Detroit."
The Cass Corridor Neighborhood Development Corporation plans to file suit alleging that because the church hadn’t maintained the park in decades, the land swap was illegal under a Michigan law called “adverse possession," Neavling reports. In some cases, the law allows people to claim ownership of land by virtue of possessing and maintaining it for at least 15 years.
