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: State court litigation to affirm the donor’s wishes is ongoing, as well. Visit Save Jean Klock Park for more photos of park destruction and information on now-apparent deception of Plaintiffs in a 2004 settlement agreement which they negotiated to prevent further invasive development in JKP.

Welcome! This website is devoted to informing the public about the conversion of Jean Klock Park acreage to private use. Jean Klock Park is located on Lake Michigan’s eastern shore in Benton Harbor, a rustbelt city abandoned by manufacturing and related industries. One significant manufacturing company remains, however. Whirlpool Corporation has its corporate headquarters in an adjoining township, although its last Michigan manufacturing plant closed in 1986. The company continues to move its manufacturing operations to locations outside the United States, but the state of Michigan continues to pour money into a development known as Harbor Shores, a golf course “resort” initiated by Whirlpool, whose success is key, according to Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, “to the future talent recruitment efforts of Whirlpool Corporation.” Reconfiguring the lakefront was the most significant factor in the golf course design. Jean Klock Park represented the last undeveloped lakefront acreage close enough to attract the all-important Chicago second home market, so nothing was to stand in the way of Whirlpool, through its Harbor Shores development, acquiring the rights to build three holes of a privately owned and operated championship golf course in the park’s tall dunes.

Multiple government grants to improve park facilities were obtained by the city starting in the 1970s, including one from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). Consequently, because of the many restrictions placed on parks improved with LWCF funds, exchange land had to be secured to trade for the land taken for the golf course. The city, fronting for the Harbor Shores developer with no independent analysis whatsoever, came up with seven scattered parcels, all on former industrial land along the Paw Paw River, all unimproved and all contaminated from past industrial waste and illegal dumping.

Because of inadequate and inappropriate federal government oversight of the Jean Klock Park conversion and the related contaminated exchange land, litigation is ongoing, and a recent federal district court opinion will be appealed.

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 Internet Explorer to tour our website while it is undergoing redesign.

… if not in applications for government permits and money ...

“Harbor Shores Community Development, Inc. proposes to construct a mixed-use development in the City of Benton Harbor …”

Joint Permit Application, Harbor Shores, to US Army Corps of Engineers and Michigan DEQ, July 6, 2005

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING ...

Document links posted on Q+A page include legal briefs in the federal litigation. The Complaint, the Brief on the merits, and the Due Care Plan for JKP mitigation parcels are included. If you are using Firefox or Safari browsers you may access documents directly. These are posted on www.scribd.com. Use search term “Jean Klock Park” in quotes in the colored Search box at the top of the page. New! Edgewater Development Strategy from 1992. A golf course in JKP has been planned for 20 years. See here for synopsis.

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

Exquisite evening light and end of the day reds and golds from the beach at Jean Klock Park, May, 2010.

Text Box: Right: Parcel G, part of the trade for land taken from the heart of JKP See Wasteland for details Check back for more news about the land traded for JKP.