[robk1982]

http://www.mlive.com/flintjournal/in...wner_have.html

City, Genesee Towers owner have three weeks to select a new arbitrator after judge's ruling
by Joe Lawlor | The Flint Journal
Monday May 19, 2008, 11:23 AM

FLINT, Michigan -- It's back to the drawing board for Genesee Towers.

Genesee Circuit Judge Geoffrey L. Neithercut vacated an arbitrator's ruling that granted the owner of the dilapidated Towers -- Kumar and Sasikala Vemulapalli -- $6 million.

The city and the Vemulapallis have three weeks to choose a new arbitrator, Neithercult ruled.

"It was a wonderful decision," City Attorney Trachelle Young said this morning. The city would have had to pay the Vemulapallis $6 million to take over the building if the arbitrator's ruling had stuck. "We thought that the arbitrator's award was a manifest injustice to everybody."

The city has plans to demolish the Towers once it gains ownership.

Neithercut ruled that arbitrator Valdemar Washington overstepped his authority by considering whether the city had contributed to the dilapidation of Genesee Towers.

"....it is clear that instead of merely determining a fair value for the building, that (Washington) found that the City abused its powers against the Vemulapallis to their detriment. Accordingly, because the Arbitrator had no authority to make those determinations, the City was necessarily denied a fair arbitration process," Neithercut wrote in a ruling issued on Friday.

Vemulapalli has owned the towers, located on East First Street in downtown, since 1997, when he purchased it for $500,000. The city listed the value at $7 million then, and did not reassess the building's value after it was damaged in a flood, according to Washington's initial ruling.

Attorneys for the Vemulapallis could not be reached for comment.

Neithercut confirmed the ruling to The Flint Journal on Friday, but details of the case were not available until today.