The internet is great for a lot of things. It allows the collective experience of humanity to be recorded and saved for posterity. It allows collaboration and sharing thoughts across borders and across oceans. It allows fact-checking, and corroboration of rumors. Unfortunately, it also allows the dissemination of fake news, vigilante justice, false hype, and some of the worst misinformation grifts humanity has ever seen. I used public records, freely available on the internet, for the vast majority of the research on this post.
The famous Grand Castle in Grandville, Michigan, is polarizing. It's unique, sure, but some consider it to be an eyesore. It's certainly a distinctive bit of architecture. And, because it's so weird, a lot of rumors have sprung up about it.
There are entire threads of rumors that have been brought up on the Grand Rapids Subreddit, ranging from accusations of money laundering, to political grift, to covering up structural inspections. And, it's weird, don't get me wrong, but as I've dug into this article, I couldn't find any distinctive or alarming weirdness. Everything I've found has been pretty standard boilerplate, late-stage capitalist corporate shell games (for tax purposes and stuff).
About the shadiest thing I've found was that the architect behind the building passed in 2021, and is still listed as director of one of the LLCs involved in the project. That can be explained away as a paperwork error. Having worked in construction myself, I've been contacted months and years later by contractors asking for information on specific jobs...like, homie, I don't work there anymore. It's not that unusual to have incorrect contact information on jobs like this.
The rumor that the project went nearly 100% over budget, and that the owner of the castle also owned the precast concrete company (therefore, the owner was paying himself via investors...which is embezzlement...which is a crime) seems to stem from the fact that the company who owns the Grand Castle has a main office in an industrial park that shares an address with a precast concrete company.
Accusations of grift seem to stem from one of the directors of Land & Co being "politically connected," according to a local paper. His wife is Terri Lynn Land, former Michigan Secretary of State.
While everything seems fishy on an idealistic, superficial level (you know, like how the average Redditor looks at everything)...this is how business is done. This is how projects get financed, started, and completed. There are reasons the wealthiest people among us throw their assets around in various LLCs - it benefits them by minimizing their taxable assets (and they can pay accountants to pistol-whip their income statements and balance sheets into shape). I'm cognizant enough to recognize that these things happen all around me, but I'm also aware of the fact that I'm not smart enough to do this for myself.
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