ambassador bridge

The Detroit International Bridge Company (DIBC) owners of the Ambassador Bridge have appointed a former state transportation commission chairman and an earlier director of Michigan DOT to a three-person committee that will take over control of their construction of the contentious Gateway Plaza project.

The Michigan DOT inspired jailings of Ambassador Bridge company officers, Matty Moroun and Dan Stamper recently over the Ambassador Bridge Gateway contract dispute was one of several examples cited of "overciminalization" at a recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington DC.  Most of the Republican candidates for president attended as did a bunch of governors, congressional leaders, activists and lobbyists.

Michigan DOT's arrogant approach to relations with the Ambassador Bridge company, and incompetence, has a history that goes back well before the vilified Manuel 'Matty' Moroun took over the bridge and two decades before Dan Stamper his 'aide' as the local media derisively style him, was on the scene as Detroit International Bridge Company (DIBC) president. Think mid-1960s.

At the Wayne County courthouse today, a 20 story 1950s office building in downtown Detroit, at the school classroom sized courtroom of county judge Prentis Edwards one of the Ambassador Bridge company (DIBC) people noticed two uniformed court deputies inside. That was normal. But there were an unusual three deputies outside. He asked the three deputies lightheartedly: "What's this army doing here?"

Faced with orders to appear before a vindictive and unconstrained county judge - 'Jailin Judge' Prentis Edwards - tomorrow (Thursday) the Ambassador Bridge company (DIBC) had a morning, Wednesday, of emergency meetings of its board of directors, senior executives, and lawyers.

The widely accepted narrative on the Ambassador Bridge Gateway legal battle repeated endlessly in the bridge company-hating Detroit media is that the details of the contested contract were clear, simple, and well understood, and that the bridge company has stubbornly refused for years now to stick to the contract or to obey a judge's order to rebuild to contract specs. And not just the local media.

A state court of appeals has overthrown the jailing of two top officials of the Ambassador Bridge, Matty Moroun and Dan Stamper by Wayne County Court judge last month.

Secret reports on the bridge company's activities at the Gateway Plaza that were the main basis for Judge Prentis Edwards jailings of two top bridge officers January 12-13 will be released after all - a partial acknowledgment of the company's complaint about abuses of procedure and lack due process.

The depth of Michigan DOT senior officials' determination to destroy the reputation of the Ambassador Bridge company (DIBC) people, and their animus, is reported in a lawyer's letter from 2009. The lawyer Kenneth C Harrison was working at the time for Walter Lubienski who owned strategically located land in the middle of the planned expanded plaza area and ramps of the Gateway project.

Now exposed as a principal obstructionist in the Gateway Project, Michigan Department of Transportation is at last moving to build the  S32 missing ramp that the local press had previously hung on the bridge company. MDOT says in a statement that it will begin work on the ramp "within several weeks" and it should be completed before Memorial Day holiday weekend.

The state is "expediting a contract for the work," the statement says.