MOUNT PLEASANT, WI March 28, 2022 – After four years, and multiple offers to sell their home to the Village of Mount Pleasant, Jim and Kim Mahoney remain the only homeowners left in Area I of the ill-fated Foxconn LCD factory development. The village, having abandoned them after illegally attempting to take their home and property by eminent domain, and falsely claiming the Mahoneys had ended negotiations.
On Tuesday, March 22, 2022, during a joint meeting of the Mount Pleasant Village Board and the Racine County Board, convened for the first public update on the Foxconn development in three years. Attorney Alan Marcuvitz was questioned by County Supervisor Fabi Maldonado why the village had not pursued purchasing the Mahoney property with the same zeal they had purchased others?
Marcuvitz stated that the village had made an offer to the Mahoneys four years ago, which they rejected. Marcuvitz said that the Mahoneys had ended further negotiations with the village.
In the audience was Kim Mahoney, who spoke up to say that Marcuvitz’s statements were false. She stated that she and her husband had obtained their own appraisal, and had made four offers to the village—which had never been brought to the village board for consideration. Mahoney also stated that she and her husband had even attended a mediation session with Marcuvitz and Village Project Director Claude Lois, who refused to negotiate on the single and only offer the village has ever made.
“Alan Marcuvitz and the Village of Mount Pleasant never negotiated with the Mahoneys in good faith,” said Kelly Gallaher of local watchdog group A Better Mt. Pleasant. “They made one low-ball offer based on an eminent domain formula that never applied to them and then left them stranded.”
Records show the village paid several property owners far more than the $50k per acre for farmland and 140% of fair market value for residential homes the public was told—in some cases, paying five and seven times what their neighbors received—making the single Mahoney offer even more insulting.
Gallaher continued, “Kim and Jim Mahoney publicly refused to allow the Village of Mount Pleasant to take their home illegally through eminent domain. They are being punished while Foxconn millionaires, Alan Marcuvitz and Claude Lois, made sweetheart deals with others—one, who was an undisclosed former client of Marcuvitz.”
“That’s not how we treat our neighbors in Mount Pleasant. It’s long past-due to make the Mahoneys whole. They deserve a good faith offer.”
A Better Mt. Pleasant calls on Alan Marcuvitz to reopen negotiations with Jim and Kim Mahoney immediately.
