- State taxpayers have funded the acquisition of 165 houses near Flint Bishop Airport for a megasite
- Homeowners say they faced a tough choice. A handful still refuse to sell
- Some who sold say they’re happy with offers, but others who live nearby fear being stuck next to a 1,300-acre manufacturing complex
MUNDY TOWNSHIP — Donna Aumick measured the threat of losing her home to Michigan’s largest megasite by the sound of heavy equipment toppling tree after tree and house after house.
For months, it grew closer to her home of 30 years until her sons told her it was time to sell. If she waited longer, they reasoned, she’d be surrounded by a complex of factories 3.5 times the size of Cedar Point amusement park.
Last July, Aumick relented. Sitting on a covered patio overlooking the 2 acres she tended since her husband, David, died in 2002, she signed papers to sell her home — and agree to never disclose the purchase price.
Then she cried.
“I feel like I was hijacked,” Aumick told Bridge Michigan, echoing a sentiment shared by dozens of her neighbors in the path of a megasite still being assembled a few miles west of Flint Bishop Airport.
Aumick is at ground zero of the Mundy Township megasite, a 2-mile-long industrial site that Michigan taxpayers have spent $261 million assembling to attract a major employer. Boosters say the project could help lure high-paying jobs to a region that has lost thousands since the early 1980s.
About 84% of costs are for property acquisitions that began in 2024. So far, the managers of the project have purchased 155 houses plus 1,000 acres of farmland. Another dozen properties in the area remain unsold.
State and local advocates hope to attract a major industrial facility that will create at least 2,000 and as many as 10,000 jobs.
“We do not force anyone out,” Tyler Rossmaessler, executive director of the Flint and Genesee Economic Alliance, the nonprofit that is assembling the megasite with the state of Michigan.
“We cannot force anyone out.”
Related:
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- Michigan Gov. Whitmer pushes for subsidies, as $261M megasite awaits deal
- Mundy Township megasite won’t house data center; demolitions continue
- Hope, anger on display at town hall as $261M megasite forges ahead near Flint
But records obtained by Bridge Michigan show that state and local officials eyed as many as 218 properties for acquisition in spring 2022, even as some residents didn’t learn of plans for the megasite for another 2 ½ years.
During that time, at least 10 residents bought a house not knowing it was in the path of the project, property records indicate.
Aumick and others say that left them with little choice: They could either sell or live next to a hulking factory complex — including one that plans indicate could reach 12 stories high.
“We took their tax dollars, and we bankrolled a lose-lose situation,” said state Sen. Thomas Albert, R-Lowell.
“Either sell your house or you’re going to have your property value destroyed, and you’re going to have a large megasite for your neighbor. What type of value proposition is that?”
Unlike other large-scale economic development projects during Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s tenure, the Mundy site is being assembled without a specific occupant in mind.
The state eventually began negotiations with Western Digital for a $63 billion semiconductor plant on the site, inking a letter of intent until the company’s spinoff, Sandisk, eventually backed out in summer 2025.
The project is one of the biggest in the past 50 years to involve large-scale home demolitions in Michigan.
Some 1,300 houses were razed in Detroit and Hamtramck in the early 1980s for General Motors Corp.’s Poletown factory, while 220 homes were acquired and sold by the state for the Gordie Howe International Bridge that opens this year in southwest Detroit.
‘My house isn’t for sale’
Rhonda Miller is one of four holdouts remaining in the Maple Creek Preserve subdivision, which consists of 100 homes and lots in Mundy.
“My house isn’t for sale,” she told Bridge this winter.
Miller said she and her neighbors found out by accident in fall 2024 that buying them out was a plan in motion, after Sandisk asserted that it wanted the 2 square miles without berms to save the neighborhood.
Michigan is “going to buy most of the homes in our sub,” according to board notes from a drain commission conversation in October 2024, “and the area is going to be consumed by the Megasite.”
Disbelief gave way to anger, and for some, action. Within a month, the economic alliance purchased the home of Miller’s neighbor for $296,097, records show.
Some neighbors took offers and didn’t look back, said Erika Reico, who lived in the area and struggled with the decision. By last fall, 90% of the neighborhood had been sold, and the condominium association for the subdivision was controlled by representatives from the economic alliance.
Proponents said payments topped market value for the houses, suggesting a good deal for each.
But “market value” isn’t the baseline in mass acquisitions, said Alan Ackerman, a Bloomfield Hills attorney who has represented homeowners in land seizure cases for decades.
When governments take property through eminent domain, homeowners are entitled to at least 125% of appraised value plus relocation costs. But the seizure law doesn’t apply in Mundy Township because Michigan voters in 2006 banned property seizures for economic development projects.
Some jump at chance
Sales reviewed by Bridge show that many residential properties sold for prices ranging from $300,000 to $600,000, with many in the $400,000 range; a farmhouse on nearly 2 acres sold for $1.7 million. The median home value in Mundy Township was $214,200 in 2024; Realtors report it was about $50,000 higher last year.
If you bring in that kind of workforce here, it is going to be a boon for everybody. Any county that wouldn’t go out and grab this opportunity for that many high paying jobs … (is) not doing their proper job to look out for their citizens
Bryan Lovett
A few sellers received roughly double market value, depending on negotiations.
“My top goal is ensuring that not only jobs come, but that they benefit the local community,” said Ridgway White, CEO of the CS Mott Foundation and an early supporter of the megasite. Sacrificing homes in its path works “if people are compensated fairly.”
(Editor’s note: The Mott Foundation is one of several funders of Bridge Michigan. The foundation had no influence in reporting, writing or editing this story.)
To be sure, some sellers told Bridge they are satisfied. Bryan Lovett sold his house of 35 years on Hill Road a year ago. He and his mother, who lived next door, knew there had been some sales and wondered what was going on.
“When they came to us, it was a bit of a surprise,” Lovett said as he paused from cleaning his garage last fall. But they both were weary of maintaining a combined 7 acres and a barn.
The offer, he said, “was very fair” and he found a new place nearby.
“This was a catalyst to actually change my life a bit and to downsize,” Lovett said, adding that he’s enthusiastic about the potential for jobs with the megasite.
“If you bring in that kind of workforce here, it is going to be a boon for everybody,” he said. “Any county that wouldn’t go out and grab this opportunity for that many high paying jobs … (is) not doing their proper job to look out for their citizens.”
‘Hard to watch’
Still, the costs to replace homes add up quickly, township residents say, depending on a seller’s equity. Sellers face higher interest rates if they’re borrowing and higher materials costs for remodeling or new construction.
The only house listed recently that matched Miller’s house costs over $400,000. Across the community, just eight were listed for under $350,000 in early February. Four were in neighborhoods within yards from the future factory site.
“They can’t offer me enough to make it worth my while,” Miller said.
Outside the megasite zone are thousands of residents in subdivisions, large-lot homes and mobile home parks. Many live just across the zone’s boundary roads, well within earshot — if not with a direct view — of the property.
In these areas, there are no offers to sell.
On Maple Road, thick sawdust extended across dozens of homes in bordering Flint Township on a recent day, blown from a mountain of wood chips from trees felled for the megasite. Those living in a neighborhood along Hill Road can see cars a mile to the north on Maple now that crops are gone and trees, houses and barns are cleared.
In February, Leah Downs stood in her front yard on Linden, pointing west toward the vast expanse of the megasite, where crews are leveling trees and homes.
“This is hard to watch,” she said.
In all directions surrounding the megasite, people are left to wonder what it could be like to live this close to a semiconductor factory employing thousands operating around the clock, as the failed Sandisk project had promised before the company pulled the plug last July.
Neighbors had asked for years what to expect, with officials saying there was no site plan. They didn’t learn any specifics until last year, when Whitmer announced that Sandisk canceled plans.
More than just land, this is affecting hundreds of people’s lives. But it is so hard to get anyone to listen and to get anyone to care.
Leah Downs
Downs said she and her family moved to the area from Ohio and thought the location was perfect: close to highways, but rural enough that the backyard felt like an oasis.
Now, she fears she could be “stuck” living next to massive factories.
“More than just land, this is affecting hundreds of people’s lives,” she added. “But it is so hard to get anyone to listen and to get anyone to care.”
Staying put
While public officials met secretly, offered her property and hired marketers to downplay opposition to the megasite, Miller bought specialty baseboards, hung new doors, installed a marble counter with backsplash and built a big patio.
Adding a gazebo and hot tub were on her calendar last year. But after moving trucks lined the neighborhood streets last fall, she put those plans on hold.
People’s lives are “stagnant,” Miller said. “It’s like you’re not really living your life like you should be in your own home that you paid for.”
Today, Miller is among a cadre of homeowners — including one farm owner and two people with homes on large lots — who are resisting all pressure to move.
Also staying put so far is Leonard M. Morrish Elementary, after the Swartz Creek Board of Education voted against a $40 million sale last year. The school is on one edge of the megasite. Most of the community expect another offer. That could prompt the district to build another school within just a few miles.
Aumick, who cried after signing purchase papers, is getting ready to move this spring. Searching for a house felt depressing until the day in early February when she spotted a new listing: “I knew it was my house.”
While preparations continue for a massive factory complex across the street, Downs said her best hope is that someone someday will want to build a factory on her land, too.
Then, she said, “we can get to another rural place. Which is what we were hoping to live in to begin with.”
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