Court Opinion

ID: 9663571
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:43:07.758618+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:52.136427
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(dissenting). “This is admittedly a case of first impression, not only in Michigan but throughout the land. No court has ever been presented with the issue of the validity of a redevelopment project* such as is proposed here.”
*528Such is the candid salutation of the defendant city’s brief. It brings to focus the portentous nature of our decision and its impact as other mall-bent municipalities wait upon release of these opinions.
I agree, with Mr. Justice Carr, that the assessment of property for special benefits cannot be based upon assessed valuations and that assessments so levied should be pronounced invalid. I do not agree with his denial of applicability to this case of rules discussed and adopted in Fluckey v. City of Plymouth, 358 Mich 447. If it is to be the law, henceforth, that an aggrieved special assessee must prove a detriment as well as an absence of benefit, then I must protest the precedent. Fluckey does not so hold. If such were the case Fluckey’s opinion would not bear my signature.
Whether such was necessary or not, these complaining property owners have proved a discriminatory detriment to their property rights. The levies questioned in this case are not just special assessments. Laid as they are “by the superficial area” (see Thomas v. Gain, 35 Mich 155, 159-161 [24 Am Rep 535]), they are very special assessments. Specially favoring one group of taxpayers over another, they would force the latter to contribute toward strengthening the former as business competitors.
In analogous fact and applicable principle, the special levy on plaintiffs’ properties duplicates that which came to review in New York Central R. Co. v. Detroit, 354 Mich 637. There the plaintiff railroad was specially assessed for benefits allegedly bestowed on it by 4,300 longitudinal feet of heavy duty trackside pavement designed in manifest part to facilitate the competitive carriage of freight by motor truck. Here the properties of the respective plaintiffs have been specially assessed as “specially benefited”*529* when the beneficial cream of the special manna is dne to rain upon that area which includes and surrounds — within convenient walking distance from automobile to shop — the planned mall.
I am unable to perceive that such properties (they truly are “on the other side of the tracks”) will receive any specially beneficial avails from the planned redevelopment of Royal Oak’s Washington avenue business district. To the contrary, it would seem that such development is due to decrease the value of their properties by diverting some little business and trade therefrom to the proven magnet of convenient parking of cars and “promenading the mall.” It is difficult to conceive, for instance, that milady would park her car in any one of the attractively located free lots surrounding the Washington avenue mall and shopping district only to walk several blocks, away from the mall to the other side of the Grand Trunk tracks, to shop in the Main street business district where the properties of plaintiffs are situated. Nor would she be apt to park and shop about and on the mall and then drive across the tracks for more parking and shopping in the traffic-congested' Main street district, where there is no mall. Such habits are no more, as modern shopping trends visibly tell judges when on rare occasion judges do go out in the noonday sun.
Now let us examine the facts. Facts, after all, determine the validity or invalidity of special assessments when such assessments are challenged for want of special benefit.
The district of proposed special assessment is a square made up of 42 blocks and connecting streets of downtown Royal Oak. The square is bounded north by Eleven Mile road (formerly First street); *530east by Troy street; south by Lincoln avenue; and west by West street. Extending diagonally and northwesterly through this 42-block area are the main line double-tracks of Grand Trunk Western leading from Detroit to Pontiac:* The railroad extends along the hypotenuse of a right angle triangle formed by that part of the special assessment district which lies southwesterly from the railroad right-of-way. Plaintiffs’ specially assessed properties aré situated on the other — northeastward—side of the ri'ght-oNway.
On the southwesterly side of the right-of-way is Royal Oak’s north-south Washington avenue business district. Here the city proposes to close Washington avenue and construct the mall as I shall endeavor now to describe. The mall will utilize entire Washington avenue from Seventh street north to and beyond Fourth street. There it will terminate at the intersection of Washington avenue with the southwesterly line of the railroad right-of-way.' It 'will include connecting plazas, formed on both sides by the complete widths of east-west Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth streets for variable distances. Around the mall, on the southwesterly side of the railroad right-of-way, the plan calls for inclusion of extensive and mall-convenient free parking areas.
On the northeasterly side of the right-of-way is Royal Oak’s north-south Main street business district. On this side the city proposes to leave Main street open for local and through traffic and, as a part of the total project, plans to locate and construct like free parking areas a half block or more *531from either side of Main .street with 5 separated plazas, each consisting of half-blocks of Second, Third, and Fourth streets. One only of these plazas (the smallest) is to be adjacent to Main street.
Such is the physical plan of the combined-into-one project. The picture of planned assessment for special benefits is as follows:
The total assessment, to be laid over the described special assessment district, is $2,660,526.04. An additional $143,131.36 is to be contributed by the city “at large.” The total to be specially assessed is summarized in exhibit 6, appearing in the joint appendix, as follows:
“Total assessment ........ $2,660,526.04
Total assessment levied against parcels lying east of the railroad and Main street........ 1,225,575.13 (46.07%)
Total assessment levied against parcels lying west of the railroad and Main street.......... 1,434,950.91 (53.93%)”
This brings us to the specific location of plaintiffs’ properties. All of them are in the special assessment district on the northeasterly side of the railroad right-of-way. Subject to 3 exceptions, designated in the joint appendix as parcels “C”, “L-4”, and “L-5”, plaintiffs’ properties are not only northeast of the right-of-way but are also east of the Main street business district.
The question is whether plaintiffs have preponderantly proved that no benefit will accrue to their respective properties on account of the resolved project.' Persuaded principally by. the physical facts of relative location and discrimination occasioned by mall plus an absence of traffic on one side of the railroad, compared with no mall plus correspondingly *532added traffic on tbe other, I hold that they have so proved their case.
Counsel for the city themselves attest the special advantages of that which the city would bestow solely on the Washington avenue district. They say, in their brief:
“It takes no great imagination to see that an area easily accessible to pedestrian and motorist alike in safety, free from fast moving through traffic and congested local traffic with its attendant noise, fumes, and general commotion, systematically and conveniently planned and laid out, generously interspersed with large free parking areas, and beautified with landscaping and decorative malls and plazas, is to be preferred far and away over its opposite counterpart.”
. This is quite true. The “opposite counterpart” is planned for the Main street district, on the other side of the tracks. That counterpart is to get the through and local traffic, the “noise,” the “fumes,” and “the general commotion”; whereas the Washington avenue district is to get the mall and its perfectly painted advantages.
The railroad, like it or not, is an effective separator of downtown business in Royal Oak. These are no rusty weed-grown rails of a bygone age of steam. Here is what railroad men call the “high iron” on which through rail traffic passes back and forth at high speed. Michigan’s only commuter trains pass here, back and forth between Detroit and Pontiac, 10 per day. The timetable included in the joint appendix shows that all stop at Royal Oak, the passenger depot being just north of the special assessment district. The switching of freight cars, to and from the main line to the Grand Trunk freight depot (this depot is on Sixth street 1 block east of the planned mall), takes place in the approximate center of such district. All of Grand Trunk’s mani*533fest freight trains, passing between Detroit and Chicago, thunder over the same rails. Each street in the district, crossing the tracks at grade between Washington avenue and Main street, is guarded by flasher signals and automatically operated traffic control gates. Here we find one of the busiest (if not the busiest) local and through railroad divisions in all Michigan. Here, too, we find the city’s principal expert witness conceding that the railroad “has some detrimental effect on the area” and another of the city’s expert witnesses, when questioned with respect thereto, alleging a want of knowledge of the nature and extent of rail traffic through the district.
This is not all. The closing of Washington'avenue and construction of the mall will automatically increase traffic on Main street. This is conceded by the city’s witnesses. On completion of the resolved project, Main street will form the only “through” north-south street in the special assessment district. Through traffic, as pointed out by counsel at oral argument, does not benefit business on either side of such “through” street. Thus Main street, provided no mall, is to assume an additional traffic burden of which Washington avenue is to be relieved. This, it seems to me, is detriment rather than benefit so far as concerns those whose properties are so located as to be a part of the Main street business district.
Looking at the exhibit maps and the testimony of the respective partisan experts, it seems clear that this plan of business redevelopment is designed primarily to make shopping specially attractive in and about the unitary area of the mall and its connected plazas. With utmost convenience and without traffic and rail dangers or delays people are due to park their cars near and around the mall and to walk in and around the adjacent stores and places of business for shopping and like purposes. Such a project benefits, yes. The shopper is convenienced and at*534tracted by comfortable ways of spending money, and the adjacent places of business do more business. But that business, so attracted, must be taken from other less attractive spots. Such is Confucius’ law of competition. It affords no basis for compulsive contribution of those adversely affected, or at least those who receive no like benefit.
There is no occasion for review of applicable authorities. That was both exhaustively and divisively done in the New York Central Case, and again with unanimity in the Fluckey Case. If Cooley’s test— applied in Fluckey (pp 453, 454) — is good, then these plaintiffs have made out a case for relief upon 4 ultimate and firmly established facts. They are:
1. The resolved project is duplicitous in nature, and so is a proper subject of separate plans, separate resolutions, and separate districts of special assessment.
2. The project contemplates one mall development only, on the southwestward side of the tracks.
3. The project contemplates relieving the mall development of annoying traffic and casting the burden thereof on the business district which is on the other side of the tracks.
4. Plaintiffs’ properties, all of them, are on that other- — the wrong — side of the tracks.
I would reverse and remand for entry of decree granting plaintiffs the injunctive relief they seek, observing at the same time that the longer we as chancellors avoid the dreadful drudgery of testing legislative discretion or indiscretion against disclosed facts in tax cases, just so much more will the judicial process decline in the critically focused eyes of public esteem.
Kavanagh, J., concurred with Black, J.

 The project is resolution-entitled:
“Improvement and enlargement of automobile parking facilities, retiring of. outstanding parking revenue bonds, widening, of certain public streets, opening of a new public street, and development of a pedestrian mall and plazas in the central business district of the city of Royal Oak.”

 Royal Oak’s charter authorizes the speeial assessment of property “specially benefited.”

 The railroad is a part of the Grand Trunk-Canadian National System and forms an integral division of Grand Trunk’s main liiie between Detroit and Chicago. Its visible bisection of downtown Royal Oak into separate business districts is the principal basis of plaintiffs’ complaint of discriminatory special assessment and was the subject of comment by and opinion of expert witnesses engaged by the respective parties.