Harbor Shores Development

South section of former Superior Steel site next in line for remediation project  

By KEVIN ALLEN H-P Business Writer

BENTON HARBOR - More than $8.6 million has been spent in recent years cleaning up contamination on former industrial land in Benton Harbor, Benton Township and St. Joseph as part of the Harbor Shores golf, residential and resort development, according to documents describing the project.

Crews have removed some 117,000 tons of garbage, building debris and contaminated soil from land throughout the 530-acre area.

And the cleanup isn't done yet.

Harbor Shores next reme­diation project will be at the former Superior Steel site on Graham Avenue, just south of the first hole of the project's Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course.

The land is slated for residential development, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has given Harbor Shores a $194,000 grant to help developers remediate the land to a level that will allow such development, project manager Bob McFeeter said last week at a public meeting about the cleanup.

Wendy Dant Chesser, a Harbor Shores trustee and president of Cornerstone Alliance, said funding from the EPA and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, as well as support from the Berrien County Brownfield Authority, have been key to the ongoing effort to convert former industrial property to land that can be used for golf, public recreation and residential and commercial development.

The EPA has given Harbor Shores about $400,000 in grants and $1 million in loans for environmental remediation, Chesser said.

The DEQ has given the project $1 million in grants and another $1 million in loans, she said.

Still, some say Harbor Shores has not done enough to protect the public from contamination left by decades of manufacturing, long before modern environmental rules existed and developers bought the land to build a golf development.

Contamination claims

Plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against Harbor Shores filed a 49-page brief earlier this month that says the new park parcels Harbor Shores is giving to Benton Harbor are contaminated.

"Once they have been remediated, the only parts of this acreage that will be safe for the public to walk on will be the 3-foot-wide walkways," the plaintiffs' attorney, Terry Lodge, said in a phone interview.

Harbor Shores gave Benton Harbor the seven parcels as part of an exchange for 22 acres it's leasing in the city's Jean Klock Park, where developers are building three holes of the golf course.  The parcels total some 38 acres and will be linked by a 12.8-mile trail system.

The suit filed by seven Benton Harbor - area residents is seeking to reverse the National Park Service and Army Corps of Engineers decisions to allow a portion of Jean Klock Park to be used for golf holes.

They contend that the contamination information was not disclosed to the public.  If it had been made public, Lodge said, the city might not have agreed to lease the 22 inland acres in the 73-acre park on Lake Michigan.

Lodge asked, "If they had known what they were getting in trade for that is 38 acres, much of which is unsafe to walk on, would the public have considered it to be a fair trade?  Would the elected officials have considered it to be a fair trade?" Harbor Shores officials have responded that all the new park parcels meet the environmental standards for recreational land, and all required information was submitted to the permitting agencies before approvals were granted.

Judge Robert Holmes Bell will decide which side is correct. The case is scheduled to be heard Aug. 28 in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, Lodge said.

Another suit filed by two area residents was dismissed last summer in Berrien County Trial Court.  The case is working its way through the state appeals process, Chesser said.

David Whitwam, chairman of Harbor Shores and a former Whirlpool Corp. CEO, said during a media event last week that the legal actions against Harbor Shores are "without merit, a huge distraction and very expensive."

But he isn't surprised that some people disagree with the project or that some people have filed lawsuits against it.

"People have different views about economic development and community development," he said, adding that everyone should be respectful of other's opinions.

Most people tend to focus on the golf course, but Harbor Shores is more than that, Whitwam said.

"This project is an enabler for community transformation," he said.  "I think this project has brought a lot of organizations, people and communities together, and that is what it was designed to do."