Printer-friendly version On the shores of Lake Michigan, a private golf course and housingdevelopment, seen here in 2009, sit on public land once protectedunder the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act. (RobertMcClure/InvestigateWest) BENTON HARBOR, Mich. In this predominantly black town with thelowest per-capita income anywhere in this hard-hit Rust Belt state,municipal leaders allowed a development group to take over theheart of a city park that fronts onto Lake Michigan -- landoriginally bequeathed to the people of Benton Harbor forever. Opponents claim the land deal violates the Land and WaterConservation Fund Act. In 1977, Benton Harbor accepted money fromthe fund for park development under the condition that it remainforever open to public or, if closed, be replaced with land ofequal fair market value and reasonably equivalent recreational use.
Harbor Shores Community Redevelopment, Inc., a consortium ofWhirlpool Foundation and two other non-profit groups, used the cityland in the center of Jean Klock Park to build three holes of a Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course. The course anchors a $500million development billed on the developer s website as combining the charm of a small town with the year-roundamenities of a world-class destination, ideally located just 90minutes from downtown Chicago. Annual memberships at the golf course start at $3,750. This in atown where the median income is $17,301, according to the CensusBureau s American Community Survey, and where the 2010 U.S.
Censusfound 48 percent of residents live below the poverty line. The Benton Harbor case illustrates how local governments, lookingfor economic development, are turning over federally protectedparks in exchange for the promise of cash, jobs, or both. Theoutcome can be park replacements of unequal value, one of multiple failures InvestigateWest has identified in theadministration of the Land and Water Conservation Fund . Proponents of these exchanges say the infusions of cash that comewith them can result in better facilities in newer parks as well asjobs. But in Benton Harbor, critics argue that the public came out aloser.
In the conversion, approved by the National Park Service in 2008,the people of Benton Harbor gave up use of 22 acres of grasses andtrees at the center of Jean Klock Park on the back side of toweringdunes overlooking Lake Michigan. The quiet swath of parklandsheltered three rare plants. Biologists working for the city hadpreviously written that because of the proximity of the foresteddunes to the nearby wetlands, Their importance as a resourcecannot be overestimated. Residents enjoyed bird watching, hikingand walking their dogs. In return, the people of Benton Harbor got seven scattered parcelsof real estate in an area that was historically filled withfoundry sand and other waste materials and where testing revealedthe presence of more than 20 chemicals, some at levels abovestandards intended to protect people in residential settings,according to a report by the consulting firm Gannett Fleming andcommissioned by Harbor Shores.
The chemicals detected includelead,1,3,5- trimethylbenzene, anthracene, pyrene and polycyclicaromatic hydrocarbons,, according to the report. One piece of landwhere chemicals were detected also served as an illegal trash dump,according to a 2010 city report. An InvestigateWest reportervisited the dump site in 2009. Harbor Shores did take action to minimize chances that residentswould come into contact with industrial chemicals that remain inthe soil beneath several of the replacement parcels.
Two areas ofthe tainted soil were dug up, according to a Harbor Shoresspokesman, and in one area soil was removed and 12 inches of sandput down to prevent direct contact with chemicals. Harbor Shores is required under state law to exercise due care in a manner that protects the public health and safety, theGannett Fleming report states. For three of the replacement park parcels, the exposure barrier to protect people from thechemicals is to be the walking path through the parcel, accordingto the report. That worries Nicole Moon, a Benton Harbor resident, longtimeopponent of the golf course conversion and cancer survivor.
There s no way in hell I d feel comfortable walking there, Moon said. Knowing what I know, I would not be hanging aroundthose trails. Leaving aside the chemicals on the replacement parcels, Moon andother critics say the acreage in the old industrial area justdoesn t make up for the green swath taken away behind the dunes onLake Michigan. Harbor Shores is connecting the seven parcels with walking trailsand sidewalks.
None of the scattered parcels are viable parks, Moon said. There is no park. The deal upset many of Benton Harbor s residents. More than 1,500 people living in and around this town of about12,000 residents signed a petition opposing the deal.
Criticsviewed the deal as a land grab that produced a top-flight golfcourse enjoyed primarily by wealthy Chicagoans and residents of theadjacent, mostly white city of St. Joseph. Arguing it wasn t afair trade, the opponents tried to stop it in federal and statecourts, but lost. The valuation of the land received in trade is a central part ofthe dispute.
In this case, the financial value of the woodsy parkwas equal to industrial wasteland because of an earlier legalsettlement that prohibited development in the park. Those in favor of the Harbor Shores conversion say it was a fairdeal and particularly necessary given Benton Harbor s poverty. The Harbor Shores development was part of a multi-facetedstrategy to help attract new jobs, new investments and new taxbase for the area, said Jeff Noel, who serves as public affairsvice president for Whirlpool Corp. as well as president ofWhirlpool Foundation.
He is also on the board of trustees forHarbor Shores. The National Park Service at first objected to this trade, sayingin an October 2007 letter that the scattered parcels were insufficient in magnitude, capacity and viability to make upfor the big chunk of green space plucked from the middle of JeanKlock Park. But with Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm pushinghard for the development to go through, two U.S. senators in favor,and local Republican congressman Fred Upton urging the agency tochange its mind, the Park Service relented. Bob Anderson, who heads the Park Service s office that overseespark conversions in the Midwest, said the agency changed its mindbecause Harbor Shores and the city made improvements to theproposal.
The 2007 letter says the city refers to the replacement landbeing linked together, but, we see no connectivity to otherpark units. Anderson said a second proposal contained more specific detailsabout linking the scattered parcels with a trail system, andthat s why the agency changed its mind. One of the seven parcels of land set aside as an eventualreplacement for the acreage at Jean Klock Park, seen here in 2009.(Robert McClure/InvestigateWest) A gift to the city Jean Klock Park was donated to the city in 1917 bypublisher-industrialist John Nellis Klock and his wife Carrie inmemory of their late daughter Jean, who died in infancy. At thededication ceremony, John Klock said, It is not so much a giftfrom my wife and myself, it s a gift from a little child. See toit that the park is the children's.
The deed to the city specifies it must forever be used by the said City of Benton Harbor forbathing beach, park purposes, or other public purposes; and at alltimes shall be open for the use and benefit of the public. In principle, that alone should have ensured the park remainedavailable to the public. But in 1977, the city also received a three-year, $50,000 matchinggrant from the Land and Water Conservation Fund to build abathhouse in the park. Accepting public money from the Land andWater Conservation Fund requires that the entire park remain openand available to the public in perpetuity unless a land swap ofreasonably equivalent usefulness and equal fair market valuereceives prior approval from the National Park Service.
John Klock couldn t have foreseen the hard times to come forBenton Harbor. In the 1960s, the one-two punch of urban renewal andconstruction of an interstate highway that bypassed the town helpedsend the its economy on a decades-long slide. The town s falteringfinances help explain why city officials twice before sold offparts of the park, no matter John Klock s words at the long-agodedication ceremony. In 1998, the city sold the northernmost acre-and-a-half of thepark, with a magnificent view of Lake Michigan, for a smallwaterfront subdivision, records show. The deal, which netted thecity $375,000, appears to be a classic case of a park converted toprivate use that got past the Park Service.
When parks activistslooking at land records discovered the earlier sale, they sent adetailed eight-page letter, accompanied by 36 documents, asking thefederal agency to hold the city to account. That happened in March2008. Anderson, of the Park Service, said his agency notified theMichigan Department of Natural Resources (now the MichiganDepartment of Natural Resources and Environment), which wassupposed to investigate. I can t tell you what they re doing because they haven t toldme what they re doing, Anderson said recently. The second conversion of Jean Klock Park to private use happened in2003 when the city agreed to sell 3.4 acres adjacent to the firstsubdivision.
Park opponents challenged this in court. To settle thecase, the cash-strapped city agreed to be legally bound toprotecting the rest of the park from further development. Ironically, though, this 2004 win by parks activists backfired whenland appraisers looked at the golf course deal. Because of thatvictory, the parkland was reclassified as undevelopable andtherefore appraised as equivalent to the scattered parcels ofreplacement parkland.
Golf as an economic driver The park deal does have backers who say it s been a boon for thecommunity. The land exchange netted the financially pinched city a promisefrom Harbor Shores to pay the city $30,000 a year in rent. Thedeveloper also took over the long-neglected maintenance of whatremains of Jean Klock Park, where the firm estimates it will spend$125,000 a year. The city had been spending just $20,000 a yearthere.
In addition, Harbor Shores made improvements to the waterfront partof the park its most popular feature which remains public. If the golf course makes money for Harbor Shores, the city will get20 percent of the profits. The other 80 percent of any golf courseprofits will go to support education, recreation, literacy trainingand other activities in Benton Harbor, according to the lease thatgrants Harbor Shores the right to keep using the parkland for agolf course for up to 105 years. Already, Whirlpool and HarborShores are promoting a First Tee program that allows areayouths to golf for free.
And local residents who can t afford thesteep annual fees can pay a daily greens fee of $40. Whirlpool also donated valuable riverfront land to the project, andviews the entire effort as a way to revitalize Benton Harbor, saidWhirlpool s Noel. He portrayed the development and golf course aspart of a noble effort to help rescue Benton Harbor after the lossof about 5,000 manufacturing jobs, some at Whirlpool. We ve got enough evidence that the impoverishment of BentonHarbor has restricted the city s ability to maintain Jean KlockPark in any kind of satisfactory way, Noel said. The bathhousewas in disarray.
The maintenance was not very good at all. The result of the development is worth whatever utility BentonHarbor residents found in the former parkland, said Noel. This tome is a great opportunity for the community. To me, it s the rightstrategy. Deep ties Whirlpool and the community of Benton Harbor have had deep ties fordecades.
In fact, the appliance giant has envisioned a big waterfrontdevelopment moving into some of its former industrial land at leastsince 1986, when a company official touted the idea as a way tomake up for the company s decision to lay off more than 1,000workers, according to an Associated Press story. The ties are both financial and political. The state attorney general who filed an amicus brief to the Michigan Supreme Court in support of Harbor Shores bid tobuild the golf course in January 2011 has received $35,000 incampaign donations from the City of Benton Harbor's law firm since2010, according to the National Institute for Money in State Politics . The firm is his fifth-biggest donor.
And Rep. Upton -- the congressman who intervened on behalf of theconversion -- is grandson of a Whirlpool founder. Whirlpool hasranked among his top five campaign contributors since 1989,OpenSecrets.org also shows. In addition, the attorney who initially represented the city on thedeal, Geoff Fields, soon was working for the developers, a factthat the National Park Service questioned, a government documentshows.
In a Nov. 11, 2007, teleconference, the Park Service s BobAnderson asked if Fields was working for the city of BentonHarbor when he wrote the lease or if he was working for HarborShores as he is now, according to Park Service notes about theconversation. The concern was over the fact that he couldrepresent both sides in the lease, and whether he had the city sbest interest in mind if he was then working for Harbor Shores. Thequestion was not answered.
Mayor Wilce Cook who later saw virtually all of his power andthat of the city council usurped by a state-installed emergencyfinancial manager, thanked Anderson at the time for being socandid on the subject, the Park Service notes say. In a 2009 interview, Cook had high hopes for the golf-coursedevelopment: It s a good thing because the spin-off from thegolf course should be astronomical, Cook said. We are hardpressed here. We need jobs, we need more money to run the city. Harbor Shores will be able to provide some jobs for ourcommunity, he said.
Hopefully it will spawn new entrepreneurialjobs for some of our residents. You know we need people to cutlawns or do the laundry or be caddies any number of things. Cook said a trip to see casinos in Mississippi helped convince himthat Harbor Shores would be a plus for his town. But heacknowledged that the jobs would be largely seasonal, because fewpeople want to play golf as icy winds sweep off Lake Michigan inthe winter. Cook said he was unsure whether the deal meets the requirements ofthe Land and Water Conservation Fund, and that an attorney wouldhave to answer that question.
But, the mayor said, even if he and the council had tried to stopthe deal, he s unsure if they would have been successful. This is something the governor wants, Cook said. We know thatthe largest small-appliance manufacturer in the world wants it.That s Whirlpool. We also know two United States senators want it.And we know that our congressman from this area wants it. I think: How are you going to beat that? You can t probablydefeat that but at least we can work with them and ensure thatour citizens get their fair share of anything that comes down thepike, which has not always happened for the city of BentonHarbor.
Last month, Harbor Shores was in the national spotlight as golferstromped across what used to be public forest land. They were intown for the Senior PGA Championship -- or, to be exactly correctabout the name, the Senior PGA Championship presented byKitchenAid. KitchenAid is a brand name of Whirlpool. Jason Alcorn contributed to this report, which was edited by CarolSmith.
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