Madison Property Management, one of the biggest and most ruthless real-estate agencies in the city, announced Monday that it finally gained ownership of all four major railroad lines in Madison.
After months of negotiating, Gordon Bowman, owner of the Reading Railroad, finally traded his line to MPM for three properties: Vermont Avenue, Oriental Avenue and Connecticut Avenue.
According to real-estate appraisers, these properties are some of the cheapest in the city, and other major players in the Madison real-estate game have questioned the legality of MPM’s recent purchase.
“Old man Bowman wouldn’t have traded that railroad for all the properties in the world,” said Urban Land Interests President Roger Ferris. “I heard MPM threatened his family.”
MPM board members deny any foul play.
“The Reading Line, of course, was the most difficult acquisition,” said board member Rachel McCann. “But we have certain methods of dealing with reluctant property holders. I can assure you that all of them are technically legal, and anyone who says otherwise can speak to our lawyers.”
MPM says it’s thrilled by the economic possibilities of a Madison railroad monopoly.
“Now we’ve really got those peasants by the balls,” McCann said. “Back when we only had the Pennsylvania Line, rent was peanuts. But now we can charge Madisonians $200 a pop, and there’s nothing they can do about it.”
MPM President Thomas Mullen says cementing the railroad monopoly is part of a larger plan to control the entire city.
“We hope to force our enemies into mortgaging each and every one of their properties,” Mullen said. “From there, we want to pressure them into complete bankruptcy. We certainly don’t want them ‘passing go’ any time soon, and we wouldn’t mind seeing them go to jail for a few business days either.”
With the railroad monopoly in place, there’s nothing stopping MPM from “making $500 bills hand over fist,” said Nobel Prize winning economist Dr. Harold Francovis.
“When you own all the railroads and you make college kids pay through the nose for run-down properties without air conditioning, you’re going to turn a massive profit,” Francovis said. “With that formula, you don’t even need hotels.”
