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Salty contractor threatens to flood subdivision if town doesn’t pay up

By Patrick W. Rollens Community Producer Feb. 20 at 7:21 a.m.

Mark Michelsen accidentally bought a 3-acre plot listed at auction as two buildable lots. He says he is afraid of being liable if someone gets hurt on the property. "I don't want to do anything, but if a kid climbs that tree and falls, someone's going to sue me," he said. (Antonio Perez, Chicago Tribune / February 15, 2012)

Besides the kids who ride through on their bikes or the homeowners who keep the grass neatly clipped, nobody ever really noticed a triangular 3-acre plot that’s a functioning but humdrum component of New Lenox’s flood-prevention system.

Things changed last month when residents got a letter from a salty Channahon contractor telling them he was about to bulldoze it.

Heavy-equipment operator Mark Michelsen, 49, is threatening to rip up or fill in the subdivision retention pond he unwittingly bought for $11 at a tax sale if the village or homeowners don’t pay up.

He said he’s within his legal rights and is playing hardball only because New Lenox refused for more than four years to pay about $200 to take the property, which it apparently never owned, off his hands. Now he’s seeking substantially more.

“It’s pretty obvious I’m an (expletive) — I’ve been an (expletive) my whole life,” Michelsen said jokingly, surveying his unwanted dry-bottom pond recently. “But I do what’s legal … and they think they’re going to ignore the laws.”