Beginning this weekend the Kalamazoo Nature Center will feature an art exhibition that includes images from the Colony Farm Orchard.  The show, entitled “Sacred Trees,” includes prints by Ladislav R. Hanka and paintings and photography by Sniedze Rungis and Zaiga Minka Thorson.   The opening is Sunday 7 February 1-3 P.M.

Lad Hanka, a Kalamazoo artist with strong natural history interests, has been one of the leading proponents of the view that the Colony Farm Orchard should be maintained as open space.  A 19 July 2009 email, sent by him to several  local conservationists began, “A significant portion of the Asylum Lake Preserve is in imminent danger of destruction. The threat is real as I shall outline below…”

KNC is at 7000 N. Westnedge on the right side of the road.  The show will be in the Glen Vista Gallery.  Cross the bridge, veer right at the entry desk, and go south through through the natural history exhibits to the windows looking out into Cooper’s Glen.

The show will be up until March 26, 2010.

Here are a few lines from Lad Hanka’s introduction to the exhibit, “Drawing Sacred Trees at the Colony Farm Orchard.”

In this exhibition, it is the Colony Farm Orchard from whose embrace I have been spiriting out my images.  That property is actually public land and protected by legislative deed restrictions, but that no longer means much.  This place too has been fenced off and gated in order to usurp and eventually sell it off in parcels to private industrial developers.  It sounds as far fetched as a bad spaghetti western, but it is unfortunately the truth.

I’ve been entering the orchard across the scar of Drake Rd., only recently still shaded by centennial bur oaks.  With pencils in hand, I climb the fence, always fearing that I am just a step ahead of the bulldozers and the last to see it intact.  I record the forms of the remaining bur oaks and the hollow, aging apple trees, each cleaving the heavens with its signature branchings – and know that I am transcribing a primal calligraphy – the notation of a poesy far older than the forebrain with which I describe it.

The Orchard is a rare place within the city – a place to be alone without having to drive. The apple trees I‘ve been observing here for these thirty years have grown only more remarkable as they’ve become individuated in their old age.  Killing them and ravaging the earth that supported them is hardly an appropriate response.   Drawing them is.

A few days ago I received a letter from Mark Brewer (no relation), Chair of the Michigan Democratic Party.  A good many thousand others received the same letter, I expect.  It began, Dear Richard, said 2010 is a crucial year, and asked for some money.  Here is the answer I sent.

2 February 2010
Dear Mark,

I received your letter soliciting a donation for the Michigan Democratic Party.  I’m unable to support the Michigan Democrats because of their performance in allowing passage of House Bill 5207.  It was introduced in the House in July 2009 by Representative Robert Jones (D-Kalamazoo) at the behest of Western Michigan University.  The bill, which stripped open space/public use restrictions from a parcel of land (the Colony Farm Orchard) conveyed to WMU in 1977 was anti-conservation, anti-environment, and anti-sustainabiity.  It should never have been written.

Although it appears that every attempt was made to slip the bill into and through the legislature without public knowledge, some local conservationists got wind of it and managed to show up at the House Commerce Committee hearing (chaired by Representative Jones). At the hearing and throughout the whole process, WMU attempted to sell the bill on the basis of jobs creation. Its claim was that this land, this specific land, was needed to expand their “Business Research Technology” park.  The claim was largely bogus since the park isn’t full and remediated brownfields that would make better sites are plentiful in Kalamazoo–to mention just two reasons why killing the open space/public use covenant was unrelated to any job creation. More about the subject is available in this post, and others before and after.

The bill sailed through the Commerce Committee and the full House, where it received only 2 nays, both Republicans.

By this time, local conservationists and neighborhood groups had gathered themselves. The Senate as well as Governor Granholm were besieged with messages asking that WMU’s effort to remove the restriction be voted down.  The Republican leadership of the Senate held the bill up for about three months but in the end brought it up late at night just before the Christmas recess.  It passed with only one nay vote, again by a Republican, Alan Cropsey, who made the point that he was voting against it because of its anti-conservation nature.  All the Democratic Senators voted for the bill, except a few who took to the hills when the time to vote came. This does not make them poor politicians; after all, this was a job creation bill, wasn’t it?

But it does make them politicians that I do not care to support monetarily or otherwise. The same goes for Governor Granholm, who signed the bill in early January 2010.  Governor Granholm made no comment on the bill, as far as could be determined. What could she say?

The outpouring of grass-roots opposition to the bill was remarkable and could not have been missed by anyone of either party in the legislature or by the governor.  No politician of either party who did not vote against the bill deserves the support of anyone who sees land conservation, keeping promises, or paying careful attention to legislation as priorities.

Sincerely

Richard Brewer

Consumers Energy substation at Colony Farm Orchard. Photo by Richard Brewer

Just a quick update for historical purposes:  Mid-afternoon on Tuesday 5 January 2010, Governor Jennifer Granholm signed HB 5207.  She made no reported comment and she has made no known responses to the hundreds of letters, phone calls, emails, and Faxes opposing the bill she received over the past several months.  Governor Granholm has not said Boo.

The Kalamazoo Gazette reported promptly the governor’s failure to veto the bill.  Reporter Paula M. Davis’s first sentence was, “Western Michigan University now has no official barrier to expanding its business park to a nearby 55-acre green space known as Colony Farm Orchard.”

It’s an appropriately neutral statement.  The official barrier, in the form of a restrictive covenant placed on the land at the time it was given to WMU in 1977, has been removed.  The land now belongs to WMU to do with as it may.  One possibility, of course, is to retain it as open green space, not because the university has to, but because it’s the right thing to do.

One immediate response to the governor’s action was an increase in the number of alumni and former supporters calling for a boycott on donations and other types of support to WMU, the WMU Foundation, and other WMU-related causes.  One letter to President Dunn (which I received a copy of) said, “I feel that WMU’s recent actions in this matter reveal a profound lack of respect for the wishes of donors in general. Supporters of WMU are beginning to feel mistrustful about the intentions of the university in regard to the Kalamazoo community.”

One area of mistrust is the real long-term intentions of WMU as to the Asylum Lake Preserve.  Although WMU was party to a Declaration of Conservation Restrictions that is supposed to protect this land in a fashion similar to a conservation easement, the disregard for the covenant protecting the Colony Farm Orchard shown by WMU and the state has brought suspicions and fears of earlier years back to life.

My guess is that we have not yet seen the last go-round.

The Kalamazoo Gazette for Wednesday 30 December 2009 had a front-page article with the headline “Bill to allow WMU business park expansion is on governor’s desk.” In it we learned that “WMU leaders hope to expand the Business Technology and Research Park to the 55-acre Colony Farm Orchard property….”

But do they?  WMU has claimed that it wants and needs the Colony Farm Orchard for such expansion and has repeatedly implied that this is what it will do with the land.  Furthermore, its lobbyists and other spokesmen have sold House Bill 5207 to the legislature and the governor by claiming that it is a jobs bill.  Passing it, they say, will allow WMU to create jobs and fuel economic growth with an expanded BTR park.

The whole process has been a commentary on how WMU and Michigan–and perhaps other universities and states–have lost their way.  WMU could use the land for education, for research, for service–the three touchstones of a university’s role in our society–without any need for shenanigans in the legislature.  Instead it ignores these public uses and stakes its claim on job creation and feeding the local private economy.

The “This-park-grows-jobs” hot air has, in fact, been a successful ploy.  Some legislators may have believed the claims, and some that didn’t may have concluded there was no political risk to going with the flow.  Both houses of the legislature passed HB 5207 by large margins.  The bill is awaiting the governor’s attention.  We may soon learn Governor Granholm’s reaction, or we may not; it’s possible she may let it become law without signing it.

HB 5207, of course, has nothing to do with jobs or with a BTR park.  What it does is strip a legislatively imposed restriction from the Colony Farm Orchard, land bought with tax-payer dollars.  The 1977 conveyance from the state provides that “Western Michigan University may utilize the property solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes, except that the legislature, by statute, may authorize Western Michigan University to utilize the property for some other public purpose.” HB 5207 written for WMU and introduced in the House by Representative Bob Jones (D-Kalamazoo) requires the state to buy the Colony Farm Orchard from WMU for $1, remove the restriction, and sell it back to WMU for $1.

As introduced, the bill included a new restriction that required WMU to use the land to expand the BTR park and provided that in the event of activity inconsistent with this restriction the state could take the land back.  But when the bill came out of Representative Jones’s committee, that language was gone.  The only restriction remaining in the bill sitting on the governor’s desk is that any arrowheads or other aboriginal antiquities that are found belong to the state.  In other words, if the bill becomes law, WMU can do anything it wants with the land.  It does not have to be used for a BTR park; it does not have to be put to public use.  It can be used for anything.

Based on WMU’s rhetoric, a restriction that the land be used to expand the BTR park  was quite logical.  Its quick disappearance is one line of evidence suggesting that WMU does not plan to use Orchard this way now, if it ever did.

WMU’s language about its plan for the Orchard has always been fuzzy. The Colony Farm Orchard and the glorious achievements of the BTR park have regularly been mentioned in the same breath, but in retrospect the absence of a firm connection is striking.  At no time have we heard WMU say, “When the restrictions are removed, we will expand the BTR park onto the Colony Farm Orchard”.  Here are a few quotes from WMU administrators:

Bob Miller, 24 February 2009, “The BTR has been a wonderful success, and we are looking at a possible expansion. No decisions have been made. The Orchard property… is an option. But at this point, it’s premature to even assign a timetable to it.”

Bob Miller, 26 February 2009, “There are no plans to develop that area [Colony Farm Orchard], but it is one of the options we are looking at…. I can tell you, should a decision be made to expand the Business, Technology and Research Park, we would come to you, to the entire community with our plans and share them. [But] we have none.”

John Dunn, 23 September 2009, “Our park is vibrant and full, and more than 1,300 jobs have been directly or indirectly created by its presence….We urge our lawmakers to vote for removal of the restrictions. Then, when the time is right in the coming months or years, we can move appropriately to expand our job-generating BTR Park.”

Why might WMU not want to expand the BTR park onto the Orchard land?  There are a number of possible reasons.  As many of us have pointed out, it has always been a poor choice.

• For one thing, it’s too small. It might be big enough for three new tenants, but three lots are still vacant in the old BTR park and the temporary soccer fields could hold at least two more.

• About a third of the Orchard site, the section where the fruit trees themselves are located, very likely has soil contaminated with lead and arsenic from the fruit-growing practices of the period from the 1880s through the early 1940s.  Development that involved excavating, grading, or other soil disturbance would probably require expensive remediation–hauling off several inches of top and subsoil to a toxic waste dump and bringing in clean replacement soil.

• Michigan State University has a lease on the land allowing it to conduct experimental research on pest insects.  WMU is proposing to buy MSU out over a period of three years for up to $985,000.  Why WMU negotiated such an unfavorable deal is one of many puzzles in this process.  As far as I can tell no one in the WMU administration asked any of the professional entomologists or ecologists on the faculty to look into the experimental pest insects research.  For example, is there still an experimental component to whatever MSU is doing there?

The Colony Farm Orchard is deficient for BTR park expansion in many ways.  Several alternative sites are larger, definitely uncontaminated, not the subject of a prior lease, and a better fit otherwise.

WMU’s talk about the vibrant, wonderful performance of the BTR park whenever the subject of the Colony Farm Orchard came up now looks–and smells–like a red herring.  What, I wonder, does WMU really have in mind for this 53 acres, its old apple trees and grape arbors, its bur oaks, red foxes, wild turkeys, and bluebirds.

There are probably still a couple of days to get your recommendation for the Colony Farm Orchard to the governor. Phone calls would probably be best, email next.

Contact information for Governor Jennifer Granholm:

Phone: (517) 373-3400
Phone: (517) 335-7858 – Constituent Services
Fax: (517) 335-6863

PO Box 30013
Lansing, MI 48909

Here is a link to an email citizen opinion forum.

Here is a link to the governor’s standard email.

Bur Oak tree with US-131 in the background, early winter, Colony Farm Orchard. Photo by Richard Brewer.

The Michigan Senate passed HB 5207 Friday night 18 December, not long before adjournment.  The bill goes to Governor Jennifer Granholm, who will sign it or veto it.

Curiously, WMU’s lobbyists did not inform the Kalamazoo Gazette that the bill had passed the Senate. When the bill passed the House in September, Greg Rosine was on the phone to the Gazette within minutes.  Not until Sunday afternoon did the Gazette find out what had happened this time.

There were 30 Yeas and 1 Nay.  The yeas were (Democratic Senators in boldface)  Allen – Anderson – Gilbert – McManus – Sanborn – Birkholz – Gleason – Nofs – Scott – Bishop – Hardiman –Olshove – Stamas – Brown – Jacobs – Pappageorge – Switalski – Cassis – Jansen – Patterson – Thomas – Cherry – Kahn – Prusi – Van Woerkom – Clarke – Kuipers – Richardville – Whitmer – George

Cherry is Deb Cherry, Lt. Governor John Cherry’s sister.

Seven senators were excused and did not vote: Barcia – Basham – Clark-Coleman – Hunter – Jelinek – Brater – Garcia

The single nay was Alan Cropsey, a conservative Republican born in Paw Paw not far west of Kalamazoo, though now living in Dewitt and representing voters in that region.  His protest over the vote is quoted below:

“Years ago when the land was first transferred to Western Michigan University, it was understood that the land would be used as a green space for that area. I think that Michigan State University actually had it in such a horticultural state that they were doing different studies and research for agriculture and fruit farming on that property. It was understood that it would remain a green space.

“I find it ironic that after a couple of decades that now the use is being changed dramatically. Green space is going away. I just want this body to know that at least there is one true ardent environmentalist left in this august body who is going to stand up and speak out for the plants and animals that are so desperately needed in our urban centers.”

WMU has advertised the bill as a way of creating jobs, and probably many of the senators voting yes took WMU at its word.  The Senator from the Kalamazoo district (20th), Tom George, had made up his mind months ago, and the hundreds of messages he received from citizens didn’t change it.  When interviewed by the Gazette on Sunday, he said,  “I have to look at the big picture….Kalamazoo has another mechanism for attracting new jobs and growth.”

Other Senators, and Representatives before them, said much the same thing.  Probably no politicians, or any of the rest of us, are against jobs.  Many able and willing people are out of work in these hard times.  That’s why it’s particularly disheartening that WMU’s claim that removing the open space/public use restriction will lead to job creation at the Colony Farm Orchard rests on such shaky grounds.

It’s hard to evaluate WMU’s statements about jobs created in the current BTR park because the university provides little supporting data. “No supporting data” comes closer.  It is hard to tell, for example, how many of the current jobs among companies at the BTR were “created” by the park and how many were at employers that simply moved to the park from elsewhere in the region, or are new jobs but ones that would have ended up at some other site in the region except that the tax situation was better at a SmartZone site.

In his Gazette Viewpoint of 23 September 2009 President John M. Dunn stated that “more than 1300 jobs have been directly or indirectly created.”  Numbers of  jobs claimed by WMU fluctuate, but the usual quotes I’ve seen are 645-650 direct and 700 indirect.

In other words, the majority of the 1300+ jobs are indirect. There are various definitions of indirect jobs; roughly, they are new jobs outside the BTR park financed by money spent by park firms and their employees. As the Mackinac Center, a free-market think-tank in Midland, Michigan, has stated, “Estimating indirect job counts is a subjective exercise, and econometricians and accountants with the best of intentions can produce widely varying figures, depending on their assumptions and estimation techniques.”

In the BTR Park, summer 2009. Photo by Richard Brewer.

But all this is nearly irrelevant because, although WMU uses the job creation claim as justification for removing the Colony Farm Orchard’s protective covenant, WMU has repeatedly said that nothing is going to happen at the Orchard site soon.  Most statements have said that the reason for removing the restriction is so that WMU will be ready to spring into action when the BTR is actually full. Currently there are three unsold lots (as has been the case for quite a while), two or more vacancies in already constructed buildings, and a 20-acre soccer facility that is supposed to be converted to BTR park use.

The figure I’ve heard most often from WMU vice presidents is that it would be three years before development would begin, which corresponds to the time said to be needed by Michigan State University to switch their pest insect research elsewhere. Hence, the earliest jobs created at the new BTR Annex on the Orchard property would come on line somewhere around 2013.  Kalamazoo will still need jobs in 2013, unquestionably.  But the compelling need is now.

As everyone knows there are plenty of other suitable sites for a BTR park expansion–if a demand for more BTR space actually exists. WMU owns nearby sites that have no restrictions and no existing MSU lease for pest research.  For that matter, most of them probably have no lead and arsenic contamination as the Colony Farm Orchard very likely has. And, of course, there are city of Kalamazoo brownfield sites that once were contaminated but have been remediated and would be ready to roll when, as, and if there were occupants ready to move in.

Many other features make the Colony Farm Orchard an inappropriate place for expansion of the BTR park. We’ve mentioned the possible soil contamination. The fact that the Colony Farm Orchard deserves permanent protection in its own right and as a functional part of the Asylum Lake Preserve are two more.  The list goes on, but let me mention just the small size of the Orchard property.

Subtracting the land occupied  by the Consumers Energy substation, perhaps 53 acres are available.  The current BTR park is 265 acres.  On this acreage 650 jobs have been accumulated.  This occurred from approximately 2001 to 2009, roughly eight years.  We can get a ballpark estimate of how many jobs might be expected from the development of the Colony Farm Orchard from the proportionality X jobs/650 jobs = 53 acres/265 acres.  I make it 130 jobs, starting from 2013 (that is, in three years) and running to about 2021 (8 years).

It’s worth remembering that most of the time from 2001-2009 was one of the greatest financial booms (or bubbles) in American history, so it could be that 130 jobs for the Colony Farm Orchard parcel in 8 years is too optimistic.

One hundred-thirty jobs is one hundred-thirty jobs, well worth having, nothing to sneeze at.  But consider all the work needed to put this land in condition to develop–bringing in all the utilities, cutting down the trees and otherwise clearing the land, testing for and probably having to remediate lead and arsenic contamination (the remediation consisting of removing several inches of soil within the orchard itself, taking it to a toxic waste dump, and bringing in clean soil), engineering a storm water system, meeting other environmental considerations as strict as–or very likely stricter than–at the original BTR park.  And so forth.

Perhaps picking a larger site with a larger future carrying capacity would be a better idea.  Perhaps a site where some of these problems did not exist or had already been solved would be better.

What will Governor Granholm do? WMU’s This-bill-creates-jobs rhetoric fooled at least some of the Senators.  It’s possible that some weren’t fooled but thought that going along with the dubious claims wouldn’t hurt them; after all, they were voting for job creation.

What will Governor Granholm do? She has a chance to strike blows for keeping promises, for upholding covenants that protect open space and public use, a chance to save land that very much deserves saving.  She has a chance to say to all of us that government and universities should not operate by hiding information and dispensing misinformation. She can strike a blow against cynical manipulation of the public and, for that matter, of the legislature. And in so doing,  she will be striking a blow for conservation, for the environment, and for sustainability.

Contact information for Governor Jennifer Granholm:

Phone: (517) 373-3400
Phone: (517) 335-7858 – Constituent Services
Fax: (517) 335-6863

PO Box 30013
Lansing, MI 48909

Here is a link to an email citizen opinion forum.

Here is a link to the governor’s standard email.