Illustration by Tabitha Walters
At the far northeast corner of the Ann Arbor School District, past Frains Lake, a new subdivision is taking shape. Across from United Memorial Gardens on Curtis Rd. south of Joy Rd., nearly 150 acres of undeveloped land recently sold for $3.7 million.
It won’t be the answer to Ann Arbor’s family housing shortage: the land was immediately subdivided into just seventeen custom home sites ranging from 5.66 acres to 17.88 acres. Each will need its own well and septic field, because Superior Twp. forbids water and sewer utilities north of Geddes Rd.
The developer of these country estates is Shelby Twp.–based Cranbrook Custom Homes. Casablanca Real Estate will be selling the lots, and the community will be known as Ann Arbor Superior Estates. The generic names might have been drawn out of a hat—or generated by ChatGPT.
But then there’s the seller: What could have possessed someone to call their company “Sonimod Farms”? It took some internet sleuthing to figure out why the owners, Eddy and Zach Lieberman of Florida, gave their real estate holding firm that name:
Eddy once owned fifty Domino’s Pizza franchises in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Sonimod is Domino’s spelled backward.
Related: Building Faster