The National Park
Service has thrown a monkey wrench into Pavilion Partners LLC’s revised
plans for the conversion of the Pavilion at Indiana Dunes State Park into a
restaurant.
In a May 15 letter,
NPS asked the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) either to “direct
Pavilion Partners to revert to their original plans, submit updated plans
for a new determination, or consider converting the Pavilion.”
As of a week ago,
DNR had not responded to that letter.
So NPS Assistance
Director Jeffrey Reinbold informed the Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility (PEER) in a July 12 letter.
In September 2016,
NPS found that Pavilion Partners’ proposed plans for putting a restaurant in
the Pavilion would not constitute a conversion of public recreational
land under the terms of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) Act,
which prohibits converting public recreational land which has benefited from
federal LWCF grant funding into limited access uses. “Currently, we believe
that the following planned allowable uses (or facilities) will serve the
site’s outdoor recreating public: lifeguard station, general store, ice
cream shop, and different dining options (beachside, sit-down dining room,
and roof-top lounge,” NPS said at the time.
One year later,
however, on Aug. 3, 2017, Pavilion Partners submitted updated plans for the
Pavilion to the DNR, but evidently not to NPS. Alerted by PEER earlier this
year that the plans had been revised, NPS undertook a review of the new
ones. “You were correct that we had not seen that new plans had been posted
that were different from the version (dating to June 2016) that we
previously reviewed,” Reinbold told PEER on July 12. “We have now compared
the previous plans with the updated ones dated Aug. 3, 2017, to ascertain
the nature and extent of the changes and assess whether the changes would
impact our initial determination. This review took some time, including
several calls with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (INDNR), to
fully understand the revised plans.”
NPS’ conclusion:
“Ultimately, we found the plans have changed enough to require a new review
because the Pavilion project no longer appears to be secondary and
supportive of outdoor recreation,” Reinbold told PEER.
In particular,
Reinbold characterized the following changes as “problematic”: “the loss of
public access throughout the building; the appearance of a tilt towards more
formalized dining options; and the lack of dedicated public recreation space
on the rooftop.”
“The new Pavilion
plan revolves around enclosed bars, pubs, and ‘fine dining’ restaurants,
lacking any connection to ‘outdoor recreation,’” PEER General Counsel Paula
Dinerstein said in a statement released on Wednesday. Dinerstein added that
the DNR seems to have allowed Pavilion Partners to revise its plans without
notifying NPS of that fact. “It appears that Indiana DNR got caught trying
to pull a fast one,” she said.
“The current plans
turn the Pavilion into a tavern on the lake,” Dunes Action Member Norm
Hellmers said. “We’ve said all along that fine dining, fancy bars, and
rooftop pubs don’t support average beachgoers or campers.”
Should NPS
ultimately find that the LLC’s revised plans constitute an actual conversion
of public recreational land, the DNR would need to identify and purchase
some other property--“determined by NPS to be of at least equal fair market
value and of reasonably equivalent usefulness and location”--as a swap.
NPS did
find, on the other hand, that the construction of a banquet center adjacent
to the Pavilion would constitute such a conversion requiring the
acquisition of a substitute property. “Although the (banquet) facility could
bring additional visitors to the park, it seems these visitors’ primary
purpose for visiting Indiana Dunes would be to attend a function held in the
facility, making outdoor recreation secondary to the facility event,” NPS
said in September 2016. “Meanwhile, visitors who come to the park primarily
to recreate will not have access to the facility.”
Qualifications
NPS did note, in
response to questions posed earlier this year by PEER, that the LWCF grant
program does support a variety of uses which are either not open to the
public at all or are limited to specific users. “For example,” Reinbold
said, “assistance can be used to support the development of park maintenance
and office facilities to help manage the outdoor recreation resource. These
types of facilities would generally be closed to the public. In addition,
grant funding can be used to build recreation opportunities limited to
specific recreation uses such as dedicated biking or horseback-riding
trails, to avoid possible accidents among multiple user groups.”
On the question of
alcohol service at the Pavilion, moreover, Reinbold said this: “We agreed
that the revised plans would result in the Pavilion being much less open to
the public than originally proposed, and that is the main basis for our
current concern. That said, excluding children from certain areas for safety
is not in conflict with LWCF policy, nor do we have a policy that food
service options in parks must be alcohol-free. That level of oversight into
use and management of state or local parks and other recreation sites is
beyond the purview of this program.”