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December 4, 1999Park Service flip-flops its position on DunesMany of Sleeping Bear's 300 buildings will be involved in upgrade, including a bed and breakfast, a blacksmith's shop and an old-fashioned groceryBy REBECCA W. KALAJIANRecord-Eagle staff writer EMPIRE - Two years ago the National Park Service appeared ready to bulldoze several deteriorating Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore farmhouses and outbuildings. On Friday, park rangers unveiled an ambitious plan to preserve and restore many of the nearly 300 buildings in the park, including plans for a bed and breakfast, a working blacksmith's shop and an old-fashioned grocery. After a 60-day public comment period, the plan is slated for action, park rangers said. Rangers admit the change in philosophy was "a 180-degree turn" from the Park Service's prior stance, but said they had no options until private groups offered to get involved. The park will lease many of the buildings to be operated either commercially or as space for non-profit groups and will even consider leasing the Sleeping Bear Inn in Glen Haven as a working bed and breakfast. "Our policy had been to let the buildings deteriorate, but that was due to lack of funds and a sense of bewilderment about where the money would come from," said Bill Herd, park ranger. "A couple of years ago we were a bit more pessimistic, but now we're more open to possibilities with public involvement." Public involvement in the park's case meant raising money and rolling up shirtsleeves. Shortly after the public outcry two years ago, a citizen's group called Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear formed to help the park scrape, paint and get cash for building preservation. "We are the group who can look for contributions and search for grant money," said Paula Leinbach, one of the group's board members. "Those are the things the park can't do itself." With the group's help, the park wrote exact plans for preserving 98 of its buildings. After the public comment period is over in February, the park will begin actively seeking out "partners" to lease more of its 150 designated historic buildings. The partners would be responsible for rehabilitating any building leased to them as well as maintaining the building. Herd said that although no private residential leases would be considered, both corporations and non-profit agencies would be welcomed in the park as long as their intent was "appropriate." The new plans don't resolve the ongoing conflict over so-called inholders, people who still live in the park on leases granted by the Park Service when the park was formed more than 25 years ago. Thirteen inholders who were slated to move in 1997 and 1998 have refused to leave, and say they can stay as long as the park has a backlog of non-historic buildings it intends to demolish. Rangers dispute the families' claims and say there is no backlog of buildings to be demolished. "The backlog they're referring to is a few buildings whose historic value we were determining," said Herd. "If these people weren't still in their homes, we would have removed them." The eviction matter remains in litigation in federal court, Herd said. |
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