Dante Dallago
Audio By Carbonatix
Arizona State University is abandoning its attempt to seize the historic Louis Emerson House, a 124-year-old structure that the university previously claimed it needed to raze to make room for its new medical school. Earlier this year, ASU filed an eminent domain lawsuit against the home’s owner, 89-year-old Robert Young.
In a statement, ASU spokesperson Jerry Gonzalez said the university was dropping that suit.
“ASU has been working for about 18 months with the owner toward a resolution to satisfy competing interests with regard to the house, which sits next to land being developed for the headquarters of ASU Health,” Gonzalez wrote. “To honor the homeowner’s desires, the university has agreed to withdraw its court proceedings and allow the house to remain.”
No motion to dismiss the suit has yet been filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, according to attorney James Braselton, who represented the school and the Arizona Board of Regents in the case. Grant Frazier, whose firm represented Young, said the firm is aware of ASU’s statement but will be looking out for a motion for dismissal.
The about-face came as a surprise to Young, who had steeled himself for a fight against the university. He said he received a call at 4 a.m. Friday morning from controversial civil rights activist Jarrett Maupin, who had taken an interest in the case — “The guy gets into trouble often,” Young remarked wryly — and Maupin informed him that ASU President Michael Crow had called him to say ASU would drop the case.
“They saw the light,” Young told Phoenix New Times. “I applaud that. You don’t typically get a bulldozer turned around and just say, ‘We think we’ve made a mistake.’ That’s what it amounted to.”
In its filings in the eminent domain case, ASU had insisted it needed the lot of the 833-square-foot home at North Fourth Street and Pierce Street for its brand new medical school headquarters, which is planned for the neighboring lot and set to open in 2028. However, plans submitted to the court showed that the Louis Emerson House lot would be used only for outdoor space and not any actual medical school structure.
Young said his attorneys initially suggested he settle the case, which he refused. “I said, ‘No, I’m not settling,'” he said. “I wanted to go to trial. I would have beat it at trial.” He said razing the house, which was built in 1902 and is a registered historic property in Phoenix, “would be a tragedy.”
He’d already moved the home once, in 1990, to make room for the Arizona Center. He said in court documents that moving it again would cost between $2 million and $3 million. ASU disputed that estimate and ultimately offered Young $990,000, he has said.
It’s unclear what persuaded ASU to change its mind about the house. Young said there had been no recent settlement talks and he was preparing for an evidentiary hearing in the case set for Sept. 4.
However, saving the house had become something of a cause célèbre among the Turning Point USA crowd, with which Maupin has recently aligned. Trump-associated country singer John Rich claimed on social media that he spoke to Crow and personally advocated leaving the house alone.
Whatever the case, Young thinks that ASU ultimately decided a protracted fight over the property wasn’t worth the effort. He was determined to fight it out, but also relieved that he no longer has to.
“I was under Damocles’ sword. It’s held up by a single horse hair,” he said. “It’s been hell.”
