American land owner faces opposition in Hopkins Village over property fencing

An American national is facing opposition in Hopkins Village as the company has taken a stance to fence and protect their property. According to the land owner, Mitch Miller, they have no plans to develop in the near future, but villagers are reportedly squatting and clearing the land.

Mitch Miller, Land Owner: “Yes it’s private land. It’s totally vacant land. We have no intent on developing at this time but we do need to protect our property rights and we can’t allow trespassing or other people to build on it I think that’s what’s causing the issues now and something I really do want to clarify the area known as Little  Hawaii beach that has nothing to do with us we’re not trying to restrict anybody from accessing that place or building on it, that’s somebody else’s if anyone and we’ve got nothing to do with that.” 

Reporter: OK there are some people on the land in question right now doing some developing work there and some residents from Hopkins seem to have issues with that talk to us about that. 

Mitch Miller, Land Owner: “Yeah over the past five six months there’s been people encroaching on our land, cutting down trees and it looks like they’re starting to build structures there as well so we are moving forward to build a fence to protect our land and ensure that there is a physical, tangible cues that there is private land there.” 

Miller says he is at a point where he is open to any viable solution that would bring an end to the contention in the village.

Mitch Miller, Land Owner: “We do everything above board and I’ve been having open discussions even with the former chairman about this land and their contentions with it trying to seek a resolution and educate myself on what the issues are there because I’m open to it. Through the last five years I just haven’t been able to really been provided with any type of proof or understanding of what that solution could be other than handing back the land to them which doesn’t make any sense for us or any property owner because we legally obtained the land in 2014 and have all the documents to support that.” 

Reporter: Who did you buy the land from? 

Mitch Miller, Land Owner: “It was from a Canadian development company in 2013 / 2014 that was originally developing the area but they went bankrupt, they went insolvent, they weren’t able to continue so we purchased the land from them.” 

Reporter: so how many acres are we talking about? 

Mitch Miller, Land Owner: “It’s about 15 to 18 acres.” 

We sought comment from the Minister of Lands but we were unsuccessful. We will keep following this story