A co-owner of a former Airbnb said her back is to the wall and she’s running out of options, after battling with the city of Cadillac over her short-term rental.
Sarah Glidewell, along with four other partners, bought the property in downtown Cadillac two years ago with the intention of turning it into an Airbnb.
However, after some misunderstandings with the city, that included a lawsuit, they are just trying to cut their losses and get out from underneath the property.
Glidewell said the property, dubbed ‘Orange Cadillac’ that she dreamed of turning into a high-end destination in the area, has now turned into a nightmare.
“My only goal in this is just to get it rezoned so we can sell to a new owner who is interested in running whatever they want in that property as another business,” said Glidewell.
She said despite close contact with the city every step on the way, and approval from the Downtown Development Authority and Planning Commission to rezone for a short-term rental, they later discovered they weren’t operating legally.
“We thought we were zoned, we thought we were operating legally. Come to find out, we weren’t. June of last year, the city emailed us, opening up a lawsuit with us, to get us to stop Operation. And at that point in time, we discovered that they had sent a series of letters, suggesting that we needed to stop operation,” said Glidewell.
Glidewell said they never got those letters because they were sent to a business partner who was in the middle of a move, and that there was more to the rezoning process than they were aware of.
“There was another step of attending a city council meeting to officially rezone it. And we didn’t know that that meeting was taking place. And so, we completely missed it, and we didn’t get rezoned,” said Glidewell.
John Wallace, Community Development Director said he chalks it up to not knowing.
“I think it was a mistake on their part not to have the proper expertise to know how a rezoning process works,” said Wallace.
Glidewell said they settled with the city over the lawsuit and tried to get a public hearing set up to rezone but it was denied.
“I think the issue came from the belief on the part of some, that they were perhaps aware of it being operated illegally and just chose to, to do so anyway,” said Wallace.
Wallace said he expects she will get another hearing, but he has no predictions on how the council will vote. He did acknowledge that the DDA, the Planning Commission and several people in the community support the rezoning.
“The business community felt it was a good economic engine for their businesses,” said Wallace.
Glidewell said time is of the essence.
“Come April, I mean, there’s no way that I can carry a $6,200 mortgage payment. And we’ve just explored every option just have had brick wall after brick wall,” said Glidewell.
Glidewell said she has posted a podcast to social media to get her story out before the property goes into foreclosure or just ‘sits and rots’.