Protect Jean Klock Park, Federal Lawsuit, Jean Klock Park Conversion

Protect Jean Klock Park

One of Michigan’s oldest public parks, donated by the Klock family as a memorial to their daughter, Jean

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Text Box: “The deed of this park, in the Court House in St. Joseph, will live forever. Perhaps some of you do not own a foot of ground; remember then that this is your park; it belongs to you. Perhaps some of you have no piano or phonograph. The roll of the water, murmuring in calm, roaring in storm, is your music, your piano and music box. … The beach is yours, the dunes are yours, all yours. It is not so much a gift from my wife and myself as a gift from a little child. See to it that the park is the children’s.” ~ J. N. Klock, Park Dedication Ceremony, July 14, 1917 ~

Please use see links below left to navigate our website if you are a Mac user or don’t use IE

You may access documents directly on www.scribd.com. Use search term “Protect JKP” in quotes in the search box. New! Edgewater Development Strategy from 1992. A golf course in JKP has been planned for 20 years. Court filings for federal lawsuit are also on scribd.com. See our last brief in our federal appeal, as well as the Complaint and our merits brief.

Gene klock, harbor shores, Gene clock, jean clock, environmental impact statement

Text Box: Costs of litigation are steep. You may contribute to us in one of two ways. You may make a tax-deductible donation to: Resource Renewal Institute 187 East Blithedale Mill Valley, California 94941 (Note PROTECT JKP on memo line) RRI acts as our fiduciary. Or you may make a non-tax-deductible contribution to us by mail to: Protect JKP PO Box 632 St. Joseph, Michigan 49085 Make check payable to ProtectJKP Thank you for your support! CONTACT US at: DUNES@ProtectJKP.com

JKP, Autumn, photos

Text Box: Jean Klock Park Before and After YouTube Video JEAN KLOCK PARK DEVASTATION Or copy and paste following in your browser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHe64yeqQOU

LAWSUITS CONCERNING JEAN KLOCK PARK

There were TWO, SEPARATE lawsuits filed to remove the golf course from Jean Klock Park.

The first was filed in state court. It concerned the 1917 Klock deed. That lawsuit has ended, because the last court of appeal, the Michigan Supreme Court, denied the plaintiffs’ leave to appeal in February, 2011. That lawsuit has gone as far as it can go.

Another, separate lawsuit was filed in federal court. The federal lawsuit concerns federal laws governing the conversion of Jean Klock Park and the larger Harbor Shores development. That lawsuit is STILL ON APPEAL. The federal district court dismissed the lawsuit, but we had a right to appeal that decision, and we did so. Oral argument—a live, in-person court hearing—on the federal lawsuit was held Tuesday, October 11, 2011, in Cincinnati.

On January 25, 2012, the Court ruled that the federal appeal was moot because the golf course was already built. Appellants have 60 days to appeal the decision.

Above: Crane chewing up the dunes at Jean Klock Park, March, 2009.

This website is maintained by Protect Jean Klock Park, a Michigan non-profit organized to support outreach concerning federal legal issues surrounding the gradual privatization of this 94-year-old public park. Neither this website nor Protect Jean Klock Park (or Protect JKP) is part of the Friends of Jean Klock Park. Each is a separate legal entity. Funds contributed to Protect JKP will be directed to legal costs for ongoing federal litigation concerning JKP and related activity. (State court litigation is concluded.)

Harbor Shores: It’s not a resort on Lake Michigan without Jean Klock Park

Numerous studies and plans were commissioned by Whirlpool Corporation and its affiliates starting at least in the mid-1980s to determine the future use of land where Whirlpool and other corporations owned fallow factory land, all of it contaminated from past industrial use. In every study the disposition of Jean Klock Park was analyzed or discussed. From the 1987 Waterfront Redevelopment Study for Benton Harbor and the Southwest Michigan Planning Commission:

“Sections 8 and 9, Jean Klock Park: Detailed recommendations for these two sections are difficult to formulate at present since the future of these lands depends ... on the nature and extent of developments undertaken by the Whirlpool Corporation in the adjacent St. Joseph Special Development Area."

HOME MAP GALLERY WASTELAND THE DUNES GOLF GENTLE CREATURES JENS JENSEN + JKP Q+A ABOUT

Press Release Concerning Federal Appeal Oral Argument link

Press Release on Sixth Circuit Ruling 1/25/2012

Extract from the Sixth Circuit decision, January 25, 2012:

“The golf course is now constructed and open. The new parkland has been completely, or almost completely, improved. Therefore, the agencies say, the damage (to the extent there is any) has already been done; we are without power to stop it.”

See photos below of the “new parkland” taken 01/26/2012

Welcome! Jean Klock Park is located on Lake Michigan’s eastern shore about 90 miles around the bottom of the lake from Chicago. Deeded to the City of Benton Harbor by the Klock family nearly 95 years ago it represents one of the last undeveloped stretches of lakefront. The Klocks asked that the park be maintained in its natural state, but after their deaths the City removed large parts of the coastal dunes in spite of citizen protest. In 1976 the city accepted a federal grant from the Land and Water Conservation Fund with the knowledge that no part of the park could be developed commercially. At the same time the city of St. Joseph also accepted funds from the same grant program for Tiscornia Park by North Pier. Significant shoreline erosion in the 1970s had erased whole parks along the shore. Jean Klock Park was less affected, though damage did occur. Local leaders sought to preserve these two great parks in perpetuity. Through a well-planned, deliberate sequence of legal actions, a Whirlpool Corporation-backed developer acquired rights to Jean Klock Park in 2006 to build a championship golf course and to access the property. This website is devoted to an examination of Jean Klock Park’s history and its future.

January 26, 2012

In August, 2008, seven people sued the National Park Service and the Army Corps of Engineers because those federal agencies only superficially analyzed environmental impacts of building a golf course in the dunes and substituting contaminated land as new parkland. On January 25, 2012, the Sixth Circuit Court ruled the case was moot because the golf course was already built. Plaintiffs have 60 days to appeal.

The Federal Agencies ,through their Department of Justice attorney, represented to the federal judges on the Sixth Circuit panel that the sites below represent “improved” “parkland” - what’s been exchanged for Lake Michigan coastal dunes

Mitigation Parcel H, located at the confluence of the Paw Paw and St. Joseph Rivers, is the highest-value Mitigation Park. It will form part of a riverwalk which will edge a private marina and condominiums not yet built. Though touted as a venue for fishing access to the City, State and National Park Service by Harbor Shores, an easement in favor of Cornerstone Alliance (part of Harbor Shores consortium) imposed for benefit

(con’t below)

Objects pictured are (counter-clockwise):

BENCH

TRASH CAN

PICNIC
SHELTER

of its guests, employees, assigns, etc. was recorded in November, 2010. The imposition of such an easement goes completely against the terms of the 2008 restated lease agreement between Benton Harbor and Harbor Shores. That lease promised to terminate the easement because the National Park Service concluded that it transferred tenure and control, of the park to Cornerstone Alliance, a violation of the Land and Water Conservation Fund regulations.

Above: Parcel G

Located at a bend in the Paw Paw River in Benton Harbor by an abandoned railroad spur and derelict housing.

OBJECTS DEPICTED ABOVE RIGHT:

(counter clockwise)

TRASH CAN

BENCH

KYACK LAUNCH