Gayanga Co., the Detroit-based demolition contractor accused by city officials of using contaminated dirt to backfill properties and now at the center of a federal investigation, announced Thursday that it is shutting down and filing a defamation lawsuit.

Brian McKinney, founder of Gayanga Co., stated in an email that the company is officially closing its doors “as of Thursday, May 7.” He touted the company for creating opportunities for Black workers in Detroit by providing them careers and living wages, and advocating for “smaller Black contractors who struggled to gain access to opportunities in the city,” he said.

However, McKinney found himself at the center of controversy last year when a series of ethical concerns involving Detroit officials, including Mayor Mary Sheffield — then the City Council president — prompted criticism of the city’s conflict-of-interest rules.

Sheffield, while on the council, voted to approve $4.4 million in contracts for Detroit-based Gayanga in 2019, the year her office said she and McKinney were in a relationship, according to a Detroit Free Press review of council records available online. She voted to approve at least $54.6 million more for the company from 2020-22, according to the review.

Also, Detroit’s Office of the Inspector General in September 2025 suspended Gayanga from performing work in the city after investigators said they found the company was using contaminated dirt to backfill residential demolition properties. The suspension was lifted on March 11, because the city’s debarment ordinance limits suspensions to 180 days.

“Over the past year, we remained largely silent while navigating an intense public and legal process,” McKinney stated in the email. “Beyond the temporary OIG suspension of Gayanga Co. and myself, much was discussed publicly about my personal relationship with Mary Sheffield, and I understand it became a tactic during last year’s mayoral race. I have already acknowledged the pain my affair caused while I was married, and it is not something I am proud of. Out of respect for my ex-wife and my family, I will not discuss private details further.”

McKinney noted that after privately defending himself and his company for the past year, “we believe it is finally time to seek answers through the courts.”

He noted that he and his company have filed a defamation lawsuit against the city (OIG) and Kamau Marable individually.

“This action arises from false and materially misleading public statements made by Defendants City of Detroit Office of Inspector General (the “OIG”) and Kamau C. Marable (collectively, “Defendants”) that portrayed Plaintiffs Brian McKinney, Sr. (“McKinney”) and Gayanga Co LLC (“Gayanga” or the “Company,” collectively, “Plaintiffs”) as responsible for widespread environmental contamination in the City of Detroit (the “City”) and resulted in the destruction of a Detroit-based, Black-owned demolition company and its owner,” the lawsuit states.

Last year, ex-Mayor Mike Duggan asked the Detroit Police Department to investigate potential fraud by Gayanga, which may have used backfill dirt from unapproved sources. Duggan pointed out that removing and replacing dirt at the site of a single home demolition costs about $18,000 and replacing the dirt at hundreds of sites could cost at least $8 million. However, the FBI took over the investigation without notifying Gayanga officials, company spokesman Shaun Wilson previously told the Detroit Free Press.

“Much has been made publicly about investigations by DPD and now the FBI,” McKinney stated in the email. “We want to make clear that no investigation has resulted in findings of wrongdoing by myself or anyone at Gayanga Co. We also find it deeply troubling that the OIG referred this matter to DPD despite never interviewing any of the contractors, truckers, or other parties directly involved before making sweeping public statements.”

City data obtained through a public records request that indicates 533 properties where contamination is suspected shows 297 locations are connected to Oakland County-based Iron Horse of Michigan — where the city found it sourced potentially toxic dirt to Gayanga — and 235 are connected to Gayanga. The city has said 100-plus additional locations of suspected contamination are privately owned and that it is seeking permission from those owners to test them.

Detroit officials are currently mulling over whether to spend millions of dollars to hire an environmental consultant to test neighborhood demolition sites that may contain contaminated dirt.

City Council members Gabriela Santiago-Romero and Denzel McCampbell said during a committee meeting on May 7 that they are concerned about safety, due diligence and the hefty cost. McCampbell said he could not support the $4.5 million contract given to Mannik & Smith Group because the city “should have been doing more” to protect residents.

Santiago-Romero said she was conflicted with spending millions of dollars; however, she does not want to dismiss the issues Detroiters are facing by living alongside contaminated sites.

“I think this is just gonna be a hard pill to swallow, and a conversation that I welcome at the full table,” Santiago-Romero said during the committee meeting regarding the contract.

In addition to resolving potential environmental impacts on Detroiters, Santiago-Romero pressed City Attorney Graham Anderson about whether the city would be repaid for the work. Anderson assured her the city would look to recover costs and total damages, though it could be considered in court.

Santiago-Romero echoed McCampbell’s concern, pointing out that the city gave Gayanga a lot of contracts and went through layers of government, “and still, we’re here. And this is why people don’t trust the government,” she said.

“We’re being asked to pay and fix, but still, we have more contracts and so we have more work. Where are we going to truly ensure protections and ensure good service?” Santiago-Romero said.

McCampbell said he also has issued a memo with nearly a dozen questions to Timothy Palazzolo, director of the Construction and Demolition Department, on flagged properties, testing timeline, plans to replace contaminated dirt, safety measures and how often the department inspects those sites.

“Now, we are dealing with a situation where we are having to be asked to pay to rectify this. We also now have holes throughout the city that pose a safety threat. We also have questions now about whether or not … the soil is safe for our residents,” McCampbell said. “At the table here, as we push for caution on a lot of things that are happening, it is because of this reason that we’re not trying to get to a place where we’re having to go back…”

Editor’s notes: Detroit Free Press investigative reporter Violet Ikonomova contributed to this story. This article first appeared in the Detroit Free Press and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

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DETROIT — A controversial plan to create space for a new Detroit apartment building by possibly demolishing two old houses in the city’s West Village neighborhood received tentative approval on Wednesday night.

Historic District Commission members heard a mix of praise and criticism during a public hearing for the proposed four-story, 47-unit development known as The Coe at West Village Phase II. Following a lengthy discussion, they voted 4-0 to grant the project’s developer a “notice to proceed.”

However, the commissioners attached two conditions to their approval that the developer, Clifford Brown of Woodborn Partners, must fulfill before any work can begin. First, a good faith effort must be made to market the two old and empty houses to anyone willing to save and relocate them. And second, the apartment building must be redesigned to be less monolithic in appearance, and the new drawings submitted to the commission for approval.

The commissioners briefly considered issuing a temporary denial until presentation of the new building design drawings, but changed tack once Brown told them that approval with conditions would allow him to obtain financing for the $16 million project while the design is adjusted.

“Our goal is to have a beautiful building,” he said.

Prior to the vote, about a dozen people voiced their opinions — with slightly more opposition than support — during the public hearing. Some were firmly against razing the two houses on the development site at 1514 and 1532 Van Dyke. They are among the oldest houses in the West Village and are believed to date to at least the 1890s.

Others spoke out against the proposed design for being out of place in a historic district.

Resident Joanne Warwick called the design “boxy, bougie, ugly.”

“There is so much vacant land in this city that this does not need to be done here,” Warwick said. “It is totally out of character for a historic neighborhood.”

And Robert Rhoades noted how The Coe at West Village Phase I, which opened in 2017 with 12 apartments, was also a contemporary architectural design.

“Maybe something can continue to look like a historic neighborhood when one modern building is built,” Rhoades said, “but if you build another and yet another … when does it stop being an historic neighborhood?”

But other speakers praised Brown for holding numerous community outreach meetings about the project and said there are many groups and individuals who do support it.

Resident John Bolt said it would be wrong for the commission to reject the plan and the developer’s significant investment in their neighborhood.

“I just can’t think of a more parochial institution than a historic district blocking real growth for a community for plainly subjective reasons like this,” Bolt said. “No one wants to buy those houses. They’re not nice homes. They’re damaged dramatically — it’s going to be very costly to fix them.”

Brown told the commission that he hopes to essentially give the houses away for $1 to someone who can relocate them. The cost for such a relocation, he said, could be about $400,000.

Although the commission previously issued a “notice to proceed” for the development in 2022, including with potential demolition approval of the houses, the developer recently revised the project’s design for cost reasons, so a new approval became necessary.

Following Wednesday’s meeting, Brown said he believes he can satisfy the new approval conditions and get the development built.

“I appreciate everybody’s patience, even the people who weren’t for it,” he said.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Detroit Free Press and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

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DETROIT — Before the arrivals of sprawling suburban malls featuring amusement park rides and stores peddling anything from jeans to jelly beans, there was Hudson’s in downtown Detroit.

The towering department store mirrored the growth and opulence of the auto-manufacturing town, but its fortunes — like the city’s — soured with population shifts and economic downturns.

In 1998, more than a century after J.L. Hudson’s Co. opened shop, the 25-story building was demolished, leaving — literally and figuratively — a deep hole as a reminder of Detroit’s past.

Until this year.

Standing on the Woodward Avenue site are a gleaming 45-story tower and a 12-story office building. The new 1.5 million-square-foot Hudson’s Detroit development also contains retail space and will feature high-end condos. General Motors Corp. is relocating its headquarters there and a five-star hotel is slated to open in 2027.

“People are saying this isn’t your father’s or grandfather’s Detroit anymore,” said Dan Gilbert, whose property management company Bedrock developed the $1.5 billion project. “You don’t even have to look at the numbers. You can just feel it walking around — you’re going to feel a different Detroit.”

The old Hudson’s building commanded attention and demanded respect, according to Jeremy Dimick, director of collections at the Detroit Historical Society. The new one is just as impressive. Its tower rises 685 feet over downtown Detroit.

Its arrival is the latest chapter in the city’s recovery.

Mired in debt, Detroit once struggled to pay its bills and keep the streetlights on. It filed for bankruptcy in 2013, when its credit rating was at junk bond status.

The city emerged from bankruptcy in 2014, built up a general fund balance of more than $1 billion, and has since recorded 10 consecutive years of budget surpluses. Moody’s Investment Services gave Detroit its 11th consecutive credit rating upgrade this year and named the Hudson’s development in its report.

“You feel the energy when you’re walking downtown,” Gilbert said. “There’s been just significant change.”

In support of it, Bedrock now owns more than 100 properties in downtown Detroit.

J.L. Hudson’s initially specialized in clothing for men and boys when it launched in Detroit in 1881. After occupying various downtown spaces, the business moved to the Woodward Avenue site a decade later and expanded its wares, according to the Detroit Historical Society.

The building grew over the years. About a dozen of its eventual 25 stories were used as retail space in what was considered the world’s tallest department store for more than half a century.

Dimick called it a Detroit institution.

“That was the reason to go downtown,” he said. “It had been around so long that it became this multigenerational experience of shopping. ‘I went there with my parents and I’m going to take my children.’”

The grand department store offered fine linen, tableware and kitchen appliances. Factory workers could find overalls there. But most of all, Hudson’s provided holiday magic.

Bedecked in color, sounds and excitement, it was the center of downtown festivities. Thousands of shoppers entered the store every day, moving from department to department on escalators and in elevators.

For 76-year-old Randye Bullock, a childhood trip to Hudson’s was far more than shopping.

“My grandparents made a point of dressing me up and we’d take the streetcar to Hudson’s. It was like we were going to Sunday dinner somewhere,” said Bullock, a retired public relations executive.

Her most vivid memories are of the store’s toy department.

“I did look forward to going every year around Christmastime because that’s when they introduced their new toys,” Bullock said. “I liked dolls and stuff, but I also liked trains.”

Detroit historian Michael Hauser remembers Hudson’s as a “store for everybody.”

“You had the budget basement store,” Hauser said. “Two whole floors of fashion, home goods. They had their own cafeteria. You didn’t have to be wealthy in order to dine or shop.”

Reminiscing about hot fudge sundaes at Hudson’s soda counter, Gilbert — the billionaire owner of Quicken Loans and the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers — said the new Hudson’s will try to replicate that magic.

“It will feel like back in the day,” he said.

It was a grand and exciting time to be a Detroiter until — like many big manufacturing hubs — the city began to change. New freeways were built. Middle- and upper-class families left the city for new suburban homes with big yards.

In the mid-1950s, Northland Center — then the largest mall in the U.S. — opened just north of Detroit, providing more options for suburban shoppers.

Detroit reached its population peak of 1.8 million that decade before a trickle of people leaving became a flood, taking their money with them. The city’s population only started to see growth again in 2023.

Hudson’s downsized and eventually closed in 1983. The building was imploded into a hulking mound of rubble, stone, steel and dust on Oct. 24, 1998.

“It was sad,” remembers Bullock, who watched the implosion from her brother-in-law’s downtown apartment.

What was left was worse.

“If you put all your stock, memory and nostalgia into this one place, when that place goes away it leaves you with a literal and figurative hole,” Dimick said.

Gilbert, 63, says it will take decades to get a return on his Hudson’s investment, but that isn’t the point of the development.

“We’re doing this for ourselves,” the fourth-generation Detroiter said, “but we’re also doing it for the city.”

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