By KEVIN NEVERS
The Indiana
Department of Natural Resource’s lease
agreement with Pavilion Partners LLC--under which the latter will build a
30,000-square foot banquet facility on state park land--is clearly in
violation of the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act (LWCF) of 1965.
And for that
reason, must be rendered null and void.
That’s the position
of the Porter County Chapter of the Izaak Walton League of America, which in
a May 29 letter to the National Park Service’s regional director in Omaha,
Neb., specifically urges NPS to intervene in the project.
At issue, Chapter
President Jim Sweeney told the Chesterton Tribune just before
deadline today, are LWCF regulations governing the use of property which has
benefited from LWCF grants. That property includes Indiana Dunes State Park,
the whole of which, he said, is encumbered by LWCF.
The problem: LWCF’s
State Assistance Program Manual includes extensive language on the
“conversion” of property either acquired or developed with LWCF assistance
to uses other than “public outdoor recreation.”
A “local sponsor”
like the DNR may seek to convert such property by leasing it to a
private entity under a concession agreement, but only with the understanding
that the private entity would use it to “provide a public outdoor recreation
opportunity,” according to the State Assistance Program Manual.
In fact, Sweeney
states in the letter, the property in question--a
“prime site” immediately east of the
Pavilion and south of the beach--would be converted to a
“private indoor non-recreational use,” that is, to a banquet
facility.
But in other ways
too, Sweeney states, the DNR has violated LWCF by entering into the lease
agreement with Pavilion Partners. That agreement, for instance, does not
explicitly indicate--as LWCF requires it to do--that the
“leased/concessioned area is to be operated by the lessee/concessioner
for public outdoor recreation purposes in compliance with provisions of”
LWCF.
“Such compliance
was never intended by the IDNR or the lessee private developer, which
repeatedly acknowledged in its accepted Proposal . . . that it could not
proceed with the rehabilitation of the Indiana Dunes State Park Pavilion
unless it could also construct the completely private banquet and conference
center ‘addition’ to the Pavilion in order to enhance the profitability of
the lease,” Sweeney states.
LWCF also requires
local sponsors to secure NPS permission before undertaking a conversion and,
actually, to “consult early” with the state LWCF manager “when a conversion
is under consideration.”
Sweeney’s take on
that: “In view of the developer’s insistence that there would be no
rehabilitation of the Pavilion without the ‘addition’ and the IDNR’s
insistence to the public that the project is a combined one that necessarily
includes the ‘addition’ and is now a ‘done deal,’ there can be no doubt that
there is ‘ongoing conversion activity that has not been approved’ by the
National Park Service.”
Sweeney,
“accordingly,” asks NPS Regional Director Cameron Sholly to “immediately
instruct the State Liaison Officer to instruct the IDNR to ‘discontinue the
unauthorized conversion activities.’”
LWCF was enacted in
1965 to provide money to state and local governments for the purchase of
land, water, and wetlands “for the benefit of all Americans,” according to
the U.S. Forest Service’s website. Funds for those purchases come chiefly
from the fees paid by companies for offshore gas and oil drilling.
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