Rob Crookston of Kalamazoo met up with friends at a West Michigan vacation rental last summer. The advertisement for the house sparked his curiosity.
“There’s an Airbnb in Fennville that claims to be, for a lack of a better term, a 'cartel house,'" Rob explained.
The listing says the six-bedroom home is “Locally known to the residents of Fennville as the ‘Spanish Compound.’”
It goes on to say that “local legend believes that the builder of the property was connected with the Mexican Cartel and ran a local illegitimate restaurant/nightclub.”
For Rob, it was unsettling.
“The story almost kind of gave it a little bit of creepy tone, you know, staying there.”
Is it true? I went to Fennville to ask, but first I went to see the house.
The Fennville Airbnb that the current owner calls the Spanish Compound is a stone and brick two-story home that sits on five city lots. It is enclosed by a distinctive brick scalloped fence with a variety of concrete statues on each peak.
Gargoyles, saints, fairies, cupids, animals and even a reproduction of Michelangelo’s David perch on the fence facing the street. There are even more statues in the expansive side yard that has a gazebo, sport court and a pool.
The house doesn’t look particularly Spanish. Built in the early 1990s, there’s no white stucco or red clay roof tiles.
Do locals know the so-called legend? I went all over town to find out.
In the downtown shopping area, I ran into Chris Gonzalez. Fennville is his hometown.
“Have you heard of the Spanish compound in Fennville?” I asked.
“I have not,” Gonzales said.
None of the librarians at the Fennville District Library had heard the “local legend” either.
“I’ve never heard it and I’ve lived here all my life,” said Kendra Onken, 57.
Melissa Benefiel was shopping at Supermercado La Poblanita, the Mexican grocery store on Main Street. She had never heard the story either.
Chrissy Ciokiewicz, a stylist at Cris Hairstyling, was cutting a client’s hair when I walked in. When I told them the legend of the “Spanish compound” she was shocked.
“Oh my gosh. No, I’ve never heard of it.”
“It doesn’t sound like a local legend if the locals know nothing about it,” said Viokiewisz' client, who didn’t want to give her name.
Locals knew the house, but I could not find one person who knew it as the Spanish Compound, with ties to a supposedly cartel-owned nightclub restaurant.
Fennville is a small town, with about 2000 residents. Between Saugatuck and South Haven, it’s just eight miles from Lake Michigan and a popular dining destination for people from Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids.
Katie Beemer has been the city administrator for about two years.
“We are about 50/50 Hispanic and white population. Forty percent of our population actually speak Spanish as their primary language,” she said.
Beemer didn’t know the alleged legend of the Spanish Compound. Neither did the city intern, Renato Recillas, 18, who moved here in 2011.
“I’ve only known it being called as the gargoyle house.”
Back at the house that no one calls the Spanish Compound, David Davidson pulled into his driveway across the street. He’s lived here eight years.
“It was always told to me to be the Su Casa house, the old Su Casa house. The owners of the Mexican restaurant in town had this house,” Davidson said.
The Suarez family opened a Mexican restaurant and grocery store in Fennville in 1986. Su Casa Restaurante, in South Haven, is owned by one of the children.
Knowing that the home’s first owners were Mexican, the legend described in the listing seems racist.
Gelato maker Pete Palazzolo, the owner of Palazzolo’s Artisan Dairy, called the Suarez family “pillars of the community.”
“[The] restaurant was so popular people drove in for it.”
Palazzolo has lived in Fennville most of his life and was offended by the so-called “local legend.”
“There’s a country justice around here that I don’t think would have allowed that,” Palazzolo said.
“And definitely not the people that owned Su Casa. They were a wonderful, normal, you know, loving family. And the community loved them.”
I heard similar sentiments from others. Like the store clerk at the Mexican market, who did not want to be recorded. The market was once the Su Casa grocery store.
Eric May lives in Chicago but was first introduced to Su Casa in Fennville when he was a teenager summering with his family near New Buffalo. He got to know the restaurant owners better a few years later.
As the summer chef at Ox-Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, May bought the school's avocados, chips and salsa from the Suarez family for 15 years. And he published a tribute to the original Su Casa restaurant in Fennville when it closed in 2013.
He laughed when I told him the “legend of the Spanish compound” and added that “they seemed like, you know, hardworking folks from Mexico.”
It’s one thing to ask a community about the cartel claim. It’s something altogether different to ask the people who built the house. But how could I do the story without talking to them? Didn’t they have a right to know – and to comment?
First, I called Edgar Suarez, the owner of Su Casa in South Haven. I told him the house was now a vacation rental and had been listed with a story about its connection to a cartel.
He said he had heard jokes along those lines, but he did not want to be interviewed. Instead, he referred me to his Spanish-speaking father, Edgardo Suarez.
Since I don’t speak Spanish, I had a translator make the call. Suarez agreed to be recorded.
Suarez told the interpreter that in Mexico, he and his wife worked for a large supermarket chain. They immigrated to Michigan in 1976, where they eventually opened their own supermarket and restaurant.
Suarez said the architectural plans for the house came from Mexico and were modified to meet local building codes.
Telling Suarez what the listing said about the house, and what that implies about him, was difficult for the translator and me. I didn’t need to be fluent Spanish to understand his response to the question.
“No, no. Not any cartel,” he said in Spanish.
According to county records, Suarez lost the house to foreclosure in 2009. He told the translator that he hasn’t kept track of the house or its subsequent owners.
Back in Kalamazoo, I told our Why’s That question asker, Rob, what I’d learned. Not just from Fennville residents, but also from law enforcement and a public records request I filed to find out if there had ever been any suspicious activity at the house.
My conclusion?
There is no evidence that any of the vacation rental’s claims about local legends, Mexican cartels or an "illegitimate" business are true.
We asked the current homeowners for comment. “We’re not interested in a story written about our property," they said in an online message.
Airbnb never responded to my my request for comment. Neither did VRBO, which also had a listing, though as of this week it seems to be down.
“Knowing what you know, does it change your feelings about it?” I asked our question-asker Rob Crookston.
“Well, yeah,” he said.
“Make up a story like that to make the property more interesting, it just feels kind of mean, at the expense of somebody else.”
