CADILLAC \u2014 A grieving Northern Michigan business owner is still fighting the city over a sewage flood that damaged her building.<\/p>\n
Ashley Clark said the costly damage was not caused by her or her tenants and said the city is responsible.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey know how much we\u2019ve invested into our business and our building. They know how much we planned to invest further into it, and they still just expect me to take the loss,\u201d said Clark.<\/p>\n
Clark said she started the Charming North with her husband Ted back in April of 2019 and bought the building in 2022 located on Mitchell Street in the downtown area.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe loved the building. I love the history of it. Loved the location,\u201d said Clark.<\/p>\n
That dream was shattered when Ted passed last year from cancer. They had closed the store in 2024 to deal with Ted\u2019s illness with hopes to possibly reopen at some point.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have asked if we\u2019re going to\u2026. if I\u2019m going to reopen the store now that Ted has passed. That\u2019s not an option anymore,\u201d said Clark.<\/p>\n
Items from their store were stored in the basement underneath WildFlour Bakery, another retailer that rents space out of her building<\/p>\n
Those items ruined when sewer water flooded the basement twice in one week back in September of last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just for merchandise that we\u2019re talking about. Between fixtures and merchandise. My conservative estimate was in the tens of thousands. But there\u2019s probably a lot that\u2019s not accounted for in that,\u201d said Clark.<\/p>\n
WildFlour also had to temporarily close because of the flooding.<\/p>\n
She said her insurance only covered a small portion because the issue was caused by a blocked sewer line outside of the building.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s insurance denied her claim, arguing governmental immunity protections unless negligence could be proven.<\/p>\n
Clark said she feels the city was negligent, because their main sewer line was plugged with grease, and that caused the flooding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey knew this was an ongoing issue three years in a row, and they didn\u2019t hold the responsible party accountable. They didn\u2019t even put any sort of maintenance in place to monitor this line after that, knowing that it had happened every single year,\u201d said Clark.<\/p>\n
She says she plans to fight it. <\/p>\n
\u201cI have a lawyer, and if we have to fight this in court, then that\u2019s what we have to do. But I\u2019m not just going to take this loss. I can\u2019t afford to just take this loss,\u201d said Clark.<\/p>\n
Cadillac city manager Marcus Peccia declined our request for an interview, but said in a statement, \u201cThat it\u2019s an unfortunate situation for all parties involved but the city can not comment at this time given the potential this may be litigated.<\/p>\n
He did add that the city does care about its property owners, including downtown merchants, and wants nothing less for them to be successful in the city of Cadillac.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CADILLAC \u2014 A grieving Northern Michigan business owner is still fighting the city over a sewage flood that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-482173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}