Adamo Construction, LLC has filed a new appeal with the Michigan Court of Appeals challenging a Wayne County Business Court ruling that, for the second time, rejected the company’s bid to unwind American Tower’s rights to a cell tower site on Detroit property Adamo bought secondhand for $45,000 after it was sold off in a tax foreclosure.
American Tower’s interest in the site at 17737 Fenkell Avenue in Detroit dates to a 1990 lease between the property’s then-owner, Western Properties Corp, and Detroit SMSA Limited Partnership for a telecommunications facility, including a cell tower. That leasehold interest changed hands over the following decades — from Detroit SMSA to SBC Tower Holdings, then to Southern Towers, a SpectraSite subsidiary. American Tower acquired SpectraSite in 2005 and, in 2007, formally took over Southern Towers’ interest in the property outright.
The easement underpinning the site was established the following year, in 2008, when Western Properties sold its interest in the underlying leases to Global Signal Acquisitions IV, LLC (GSA) — itself a former American Tower acquisition — and separately granted GSA a $461,464 perpetual easement to construct, maintain, and operate a wireless facility on a 523-square-foot slice of the property. The easement explicitly stated that the tower would not constitute a fixture and gave GSA sole discretion to lease the site to operators such as American Tower.
The Foreclosure That Started It All
The property’s owner stopped paying property taxes, and a Wayne County judgment of foreclosure was entered in March 2018. Under Michigan law, that foreclosure extinguishes existing property interests except visible or recorded easements. The property sold at public auction that October for $13,500 to Cres Fund I, LLC. Cres Fund then sold it to Adamo Construction in September 2021 for $45,000.
Adamo wasted little time challenging American Tower’s presence on the site. In April 2022, the company told GSA that the foreclosure had wiped out the easement; a month later, it served GSA with a notice to quit—a formal demand to vacate the property, the same type of notice used to initiate an eviction.
GSA and American Tower sued jointly. The trial court ruled in 2023 that the easement survived the foreclosure and that the cell tower itself was not a fixture—meaning ownership of American Tower’s infrastructure never passed to Adamo with the land. Adamo appealed, and the Court of Appeals largely affirmed in July 2024, but sent one narrower question back down: whether the leases held by American Tower and the other carriers operating on the site survived the tax foreclosure along with the easement itself.
Round Two, Same Result
On remand, GSA’s position was that the Court of Appeals’ ruling meant those underlying leases had in fact been extinguished — so GSA simply issued new ones to American Tower and the carriers, exercising its right under the easement to lease, license, or encumber the site at its sole discretion. American Tower and Detroit SMSA moved jointly for summary disposition, alongside separate motions from GSA and the tenant carriers.
Adamo argued this maneuver was illegitimate on three theories: that GSA lacked authority to sign new leases after the foreclosure, that removing American Tower’s tower would improve its enjoyment of the property, and that removal could somehow prompt GSA to abandon the easement entirely, which Adamo claimed would benefit it.
Judge David J. Allen wasn’t persuaded by any of it, and didn’t need to reach the merits to say so. Citing a similar 2025 case involving a billboard easement, the court held that Adamo simply lacks standing to challenge leases it isn’t a party to — a third party’s dissatisfaction with how an easement holder chooses to use its rights isn’t grounds for a lawsuit, the court found, absent some showing the use exceeds what the easement actually permits.
With Adamo’s standing argument gone, the rest of its claims — quiet title, declaratory relief, trespass, and quantum meruit, a claim for payment for value it says it provided without a contract in place — fell with it.
The Parking Lot Adamo Actually Owns
City of Detroit parcel records reviewed by Wireless Estimator confirm that what Adamo bought in 2021 is, and has only ever been, a vacant lot — Parcel No. 22-0107714, a 0.59-acre parking lot with no building attached. That detail matters: it clarifies exactly what Adamo’s ownership rights cover and what they don’t, since the 523-square-foot easement carved out for American Tower’s cell tower sits within that same lot but remains entirely outside Adamo’s control under the terms of GSA’s easement.
That lot is now for sale. A commercial listing has the parcel on the market for $125,000, describing it plainly as a “Parking Lot For Sale” and specifying in bold that the cell phone tower is NOT included in the sale.
What Adamo Might Actually Be After
Whether the Court of Appeals gives Adamo a third look remains to be seen. Given the panel’s narrow remand instructions were fully satisfied the first time around, Adamo’s path to reversal here looks considerably steeper than its last trip up. But the active listing raises a real question about what Adamo’s endgame actually is: a multi-carrier tower — and this site appears to host leases tied to the big three carriers — doesn’t diminish a property’s value if the owner controls the ground lease; it can substantially increase it. Industry lease-rate data puts a single carrier’s monthly rent on a multi-tenant tower anywhere from roughly $1,500 to $4,000, meaning a three-carrier site can plausibly generate somewhere in the neighborhood of $4,500 to $12,000 a month, or well over $100,000 annually, once fully leased.
If the appeals court were ever to hand Adamo full control of the easement, Adamo would hold real leverage. It could threaten to force American Tower off the site entirely, or negotiate a new ground lease at a rate far above what GSA currently pays Western’s successors. American Tower would have every incentive to deal rather than fight that scenario to the end — finding a new site, tearing down the existing structure, building a replacement tower, and relocating three carrier tenants would almost certainly cost far more than simply paying an equitable market rent to keep the site running as-is. For now, though, Adamo appears content to sell off the parking lot around the tower rather than wait years for an appellate outcome that, on this record, looks unlikely to go its way.
