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Pavilion Partners
LLC’s construction of a banquet facility at the Indiana Dunes State Park
beach would be an illegal conversion of property whose proper uses are
regulated under the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund Act (LWCF) of
1968.
That’s the finding
of the National Park Service (NPS), as announced today by Public Employees
for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
In June, NPS found
that the LWCF--under which conversions of public lands for uses other than
public outdoor recreation must be approved by NPS --does apply to the LLC’s
lease agreement with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources because
Indiana Dunes State Park has been the recipient of LWCF funding. That meant,
at the time, that the DNR was subject to the National Environmental Policy
Act and would have to prepare an environmental impact statement after a
review of the project in its totality was conducted.
Now, however--in a
Dec. 4 letter to PEER, NPS Midwest Regional Director Cameron Sholly reported
that NPS would be unable to approve “several of the prospective uses” to
which Pavilion Partners wants to put the land and that those uses would be
“non-compliant” and therefore “constitute conversion.”
“Although weddings,
wedding receptions, and banquets can be conducted outdoors, they are not
generally categorized as contributing to the outdoor recreation experience,”
PEER quoted from Sholly’s letter. And similarly “the construction of new
banquet facilities not accessible to the public could not be approved.”
NPS does not
actually have the legal authority to halt non-compliant conversion of LWCF-regulated
lands, PEER said today, but should the LLC’s project continue there would
have to be “the substitution of other recreation properties of at least
equal fair market value and of reasonably equivalent usefulness and
location,” PEER said.
The problem for DNR,
PEER continued: “Given the lakeshore setting, it is not clear that the state
could create equivalent value for a conversion or from what funding source.”
“This project
appears to be an illegal conversion of an investment in public outdoor
recreation into a commercial profit center,” PEER senior counsel Paula
Dinerstein said.
“Compounding the
confusion is the state agency’s lack of forthrightness about what exactly it
is approving to be built and where.”
“The promise that
this project will cost the state and its taxpayers nothing now seems
illusory,” Dinerstein added. “These are irreplaceable recreational crown
jewels that should be polished, not pawned.”