To portray the BTR park and it’s proposed expansion as being unsuccessful is misleading and factually inaccurate. It is cut and dry.

I attended the WMU State Senate forum where Mark Totten said he would have voted yes, but disagreed with the process. Him disagreeing with the process is a thinly veiled attempt at attacking Jones and is factually inaccurate. The key is someone like Totten that has no experience or record can and will say whatever they have to, to get a vote.

Did you really write this letter to the gazette without evening know that Totten supports the expansion of the BTR park? Sounds like you got played.

Colony farm orchard conversion: good business, smart politics, or betrayal of a public trust?
http://richardbrewer.org/2009/09/01/colony-farm-orchard-conversion-good-business-smart-politics-or-betrayal-of-a-public-trust/

A response to John Dunn’s Gazette Viewpoint
http://richardbrewer.org/2009/09/28/colony-farm-orchard-new-documentary-film-and-a-response-to-john-dunn-viewpoint/

The colony farm orchard is not trade land
http://richardbrewer.org/2009/10/27/the-colony-farm-orchard-is-not-trade-land/

“The candidates with records are to blame…” Only if their record was voting “yes” on HB 5207.

“Siding with jobs…” Every politician and, in fact, every resident of Michigan is in favor of jobs. Unfortunately, many politicians sign onto any scheme that is promoted as “job creation” no matter how phony the claim is. Expanding WMU’s BTR park onto the Colony Farm Orchard would not be some powerful engine of job creation. It is also doubtful that the original BTR has been as successful as is claimed in the mythology constructed by WMU and the local politicians. See HB-5207, WMU’s job creation bill of 2021.
http://richardbrewer.org/2009/12/23/hb-5207-wmus-job-creation-bill-of-2021/

Mark Totten has not come out in support of HB 5207. As far as I know, his only written statement has been a Kalamazoo Gazette Viewpoint published 6 November 2009. In it (Here is the link: http://www.mlive.com/opinion/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2009/11/viewpoint_public_deserved_inpu.html), he rightly criticized the process followed by WMU and Representative Jones and expressed the hope that Senator George would carefully examine the bill and make sure that he had heard every voice before voting. That did not happen. In the link below is a letter I sent George,
http://richardbrewer.org/2009/09/22/the-ball-is-in-the-senates-court-and-tom-george-has-the-racquet/

And here is what George did in the Senate Appropriations Committee
http://richardbrewer.org/2010/02/02/my-colony-farm-orchard-letter-to-mark-brewer/

Maybe I’ll become a red-green activist.

Always glad to have contact with another Saluki (B.S., 1955), especially a zoological one.

It is just a completely irrational argument. The candidate with records are to blame but the one guy who has no voting record is an “excellent candidate”, that has came out in completely support of the bill. I think their is a better reason then misplaced spite to vote for people.

Thanks for the information. One of the things I’d have liked to know more about was what other land conservation efforts might have influenced Charles Eliot. Not a lot was going on either in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world, and his idea was a big step beyond anything else, but learning what was going on, based on his knowledge would be valuable. So, of course, would be his own view of the development of the Trustees, to supplement his father’s version.

Please do tell me more about the scapbook. Your link didn’t work for me, so please send more information via another comment. If something could be better transmitted through the mail, anything sent to me at Dept. of Biological Sciences, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo MI 49008 would reach me.

Thanks for your comments about Asylum Lake and the Colony Farm Orchard. The bill that would remove the open space/public use restrictions on the Orchard property (HB 5207) has now made its way to the governor’s desk. She will either sign it or veto it in the next few days. A phone call, letter, or email (or all of them) to the governor could help convince her that a veto is the answer. My newest post here (done 24 Dec) addresses the question of how credible WMU’s claims about needing the land to bring jobs to Kalamazoo are. A bigger piece of unrestricted land, such as several that WMU already owns or a good-sized remediated brownfield would be better. The 24 Dec post also contain contact information for the governor.

Thanks for your thoughts. I agree it’s disheartening that WMU wants to remove the open space/public use restriction so that they can sell the Colony Farm Orchard for development. They hope to do the same thing with the TB hospital grounds, though that has gotten less publicity. But it is included in the same legislation (HB 5207) as the Orchard. The land has also has a public use (but not open space) restriction on it that says that if WMU sells it for private use, the proceeds go to the general fund of the state (for education and things like that). HB 5207 says WMU will pay the state one dollar and the state will give up its interest; WMU will be able to keep all the money from a sale to a private developer. Except for needing to demolish the asbestos-containing building, the site is perhaps the most desirable large piece of real estate left in the city. WMU will make a bundale off it.

The fact that nothing but trees, shrubs, grasses, and walking paths were present on one property was cited as reason for it being converted from parkland to another use.

Though I feel as if there were two different and separate arguments at play in your piece:

I. Academic institutions and conservation lands, and
II. A societal viewpoint that sees no value in land unless it is built.

Thanks for letting me see your video. It looks to be well done and brings up serious issues.

Watch the video by clicking here.

Thanks for your comment. Rep. Jones has been a long-time local Democrat and is getting the benefit of the doubt from many. I don’t know whether he was aware of the history of any of the land dealt with in the three bills he introduced (now rolled into one bill in the House), and I do not know if he understood the effect the Colony Farm Orchard bill would have in reducing the conservation value of the Asylum Lake Preserve. No question that it was a mistake on the part of Rep. Jones, the WMU administration, and others involved in not notifying Oshtemo Township of their designs on Oshtemo open space. The question is, will these mistakes have consequences?

Thanks for your thoughts.

There were 14,000+ visits to this website in the month of July, but I think you’re right that few were people promoting use of the Colony Farm Orchard for expansion of the WMU Business Park.

However, please feel free to use or encourage the use of the website for such pro and con (or simply educational) discussion. Additional comments would be welcome at this post of Mark Hoffman’s essay, and I expect that I’ll have a new post or two on the topic in the next few days, where the discussion could also occur.

It’s an important issue but not a new one. In many ways, the whole thing is a remarkably close re-run of the attempt by WMU in the 1990s to locate the Business Park on the Asylum Lake property–and later on to locate an extension of the Business Park there, and later still to turn it into a golf course. Additional information on the subject, current and historic, is in some earlier posts (and links within them), for 15 July and 23 July (at the end).

Verities are eternal, but politics change. The attacks of the 1990s were beaten back, with a fairly satisfactory outcome from a conservation standpoint. But there is no assurance that conservation will win out over commerce in 2009.

I wish we had a forum where more folks who had the say-so on this could have a conversation with others who have concerns about it. As it is, I doubt many of them are reading this blog, excellent as it is. :>

At that time, numerous sites were tossed around (some still viable), including various brownfields, the Fort Custer Industrial Park, Schippers Crossing, even the property known then as WMU’s “Arboretum” which was also being examined for a large-scale P.U.D., and others. The Asylum Lake Preservation Association held its position that it would prefer the development (based on the H.S.G.A. and William Johnson consultants’ scenarios) to occur on the unrestricted farmland south of Parkview Avenue. This is, in fact, what we ended up with several years later.

Now, to answer your first question, WMU is stating that the present location of the BTR Park is filling — a sign of its success. Officials are looking for room to expand for new businesses interested in locating there. First, according to Western, the remaining parcels will eventually be sold off and developed. Then the soccer field along Parkview Avenue. But after that — where? They look to the Colony Farm Orchard as the most likely location, being adjacent to the present BTR Park. This may answer part of your second question, too. The University has enabled development within the boundaries of the BTR Park (south of Parkview Avenue), and it is reaching capacity.

Third, certainly there are alternatives to building on the Orchard, and probably on land NOT set aside for “public park, recreation, or open space purposes,” as would be the case with the adjacent Asylum Lake Preserve. During a recent Oshtemo Township Trustee meeting, there was mention of a large tract nearby the BTR Park, located at 11th Street and Parkview Avenue. Apparently planners once discussed future land uses for this tract that would be comparable to the BTR Park. Certainly there are other sites readily available for sale and begging for development, as was noted from 1990-93. (In fact, just a few short weeks ago, the Kalamazoo Gazette featured a great and lengthy story on the Davis Creek Business Park — land in the City of Kalamazoo reclaimed and ready for building.) Alternatives should always be discussed when addressing complex issues such as this one, and your question is the perfect way to begin to the process.

The answer to your final question is “no.”

I guess I need some more background to judge:
1) Why is WMU expanding the BTR park? Is the available space used up?
2) Could BTR facilities be expanded within the existing footprint of the campus, or is more land required?
3) If more land is required, is there any good alternative to expanding into the orchard?

Do you know anywhere where these issues are discussed (online) from WMU’s perspective?

I was making a couple of points in saying that if the land owner refuses to protect what ought to be protected, the land trust should walk away. First, being ready to walk away is always the strongest negotiating position. It doesn’t necessarily mean going away mad or closing the door. It does mean not wasting more time. Almost no land trust is likely to have enough land protection staff and volunteers and money to conserve as many pieces of land as they ought to be protecting this month or this year. In the absence of unlimited resources, time spent on a deal that’s headed toward a second-rate result is going to be time unavailable to spend on a better deal.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of saying to one’s self that since we’ve already spent months on this deal, we can’t give up now. But those are sunk costs; the aphorism of throwing good money after bad applies.

@Harry White:
Thanks for your thoughts. It’s my impression that a lot of land trusts have begun to take a more perfunctory approach (insofar as conservation values) to their easement deals than in earlier times. It’s good to hear that Neantinoge Heritage is employing a comprehensive conservation approach.

@Steven Brewer:
Thanks for checking out your dad’s revamped website. I suspect that the whole family agrees on the many benefits of locally grown food.

Maynard Kaufman has always contended that not as much farmland has been lost as is claimed. Maynard has a long history of sound thought on food production: he and others incorporated one of the earliest farmland trusts in 1976–four years earlier than the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. His reasoning on the loss of farmland issue is that much of the land contained in suburban ranchettes of 5 or 10 acres could readily be turned back to food production if the need arose. When I look at the small size of the many of the organic garden plots that are supplying lots of produce to
farmer’s markets these days, I’m inclined to think he’s right. I know of one person raising organic poultry on less than 10 acres using a paddock approach. Of course, he can’t raise as many chickens as he could sell and hopes to buy more land.

One of the problems with ordinary agriculture these days is that it’s often not local or even food. The Illinois corn may be going to high fructose corn syrup or grain for the feedlot or even for ethanol to burn in our cars. The peppers or other produce in the Salinas valley is food, but the fate of much of it is to end up thousands of miles away. It would be possible to write easements that strongly encourage cultivation of organic food for local consumption. But few land trusts are bold enough to do this. They have two pretty good reasons: They don’t want to tie the hands of the owners, and the restrictions might turn out to hard to write and time consuming to enforce.

He also makes large assumptions as to who the messenger is accusing “Steve” of being a forester and limited in thinking abilities. I guess one would expect that of a Eurocentric “white” elitist that takes the position of being more “enlightened” on natural matters than others. After all, he fails to even make any attempt to discover who this “Steve” person is to qualify his “white” assumption.

Oh, and by the way “Harry”, just so you know, I manage the Truckee River water program for the Paiute Tribe here in Nevada that runs from Lake Tahoe to Pyramid Lake. We manage it for habitat for endangered fish species, habitat restoration for riparian species, irrigated native farmlands and working watershed landscapes that dwarfs your anglo land trust’s holdings by several hundreds of square miles.

I also happen to be part Caddo Native American.

Sincerely,
“Steve”

As to the dark comment of “Steve”, above, who likes to play the “what is natural” game, ignore him. His baseline condition is “immediately post-glacial” … now there’s a deep thinker. We encounter this type of character all of the time – all too often it’s a forester who challenges what is natural by defending his overharvests with the myth that the Native Americans manipulated ecosystems … of course, he ignores the relative population density and the lack of technology, etc. etc.

Great column, Richard. Thanks.