Sorry, Folks — Park’s Closed

This summer, another chapter unfolded in a Charlevoix County soap opera known as Camp Seagull Park.

By Patrick Sullivan | Sept. 21, 2019

This July, after so many years of bitter strife that divided Hayes Township and pitted neighbor against neighbor, construction of Camp Seagull Park on the northern shore of Lake Charlevoix finally appeared to be complete.

At least that’s what township resident Bill Henne thought. It looked like the road down to the lake had been built, the parking lots were paved and painted, and the construction crews had pulled out. They’d taken down the big sign on the road that read “Park Under Construction.” Only problem was, no one had yet removed the “Park Closed” signs.

No matter, Henne thought on July 3. He was a taxpayer, and this park had been paid for with taxpayer dollars. Two sons and some grandchildren were visiting from out of town. His sons had memories of fishing off of the dock down there, back when the property had been a girls’ camp. So on that July day, despite the still-present signs, he and his sons and grandchildren grabbed their fishing gear and headed into the park, excited to check out that new fishing pier that had been built next to the boat launch.

“We knew that the park was closed, but we felt that it should be open,” he said.

They were about to learn that some folks felt equally strongly that the park should remain closed, and bitter feelings about it had not been set aside.

Upon entering the park, Henne said he was confronted by a neighbor and the couple who serve as caretakers for the park property.

“They threatened to call the sheriff. And we said to go ahead,” Henne said of the confrontation. “I just told them that we intended to go down the hill.”

There was a short screaming match, Henne said. The neighbor, a man who had sued the township in an effort to halt development of the park, leapt out of a golf cart, and the two had a heated exchange, Henne said.

Henne said he held his ground until his grandchildren started to cry. He decided to leave.
The police were called. A deputy visited Henne at his home, questioned him, told him he shouldn’t go to the park, and told him he should take it up with the township, Henne said.
He said he was not optimistic about his prospects.
 
A LONG, COMPLICATED HISTORY
So went the inaugural year of Camp Seagull Park. The park has remained closed throughout summer, and anyone who wanted to have a look at the project was turned away.
There may be a glimmer of hope in sight, however. This fall, the township has a tentative timeline to open the park in stages.

Just as the development of the park divided the township — those in favor of the project and those opposed — how to interpret the events of this summer have similarly divided the population.

Critics of the current township board say that the trustees have acted out of spite and made excuses to keep closed a park that they didn’t want in the first place.

Township trustees say they acted in good faith and were forced to delay opening the park because of problems with its design that are the responsibility of the previous board and the park’s engineer.

For nearly a century, the 20-acre plot of land was home to Camp Sea-Gull, a girls’ camp spread over a wooded hill leading down to the lovely Lake Charlevoix shore.

After the camp closed early in this decade, a group of residents set out to raise money through grants and the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund to purchase the land and develop a park that included a boat launch. The group didn’t know it at the time, but they were laying the groundwork for a bitter feud between those who wanted to see public access to the lake expand and those who wanted it to remain limited.

Over the years, as development of the park loomed, the focus of the debate turned to the size of the boat launch, with one side favoring a much scaled-back launch compared to the full-size launch that would be developed at the park.

When, in 2016, township officials who favored the full-sized boat launch narrowly held on to their 3–2 majority on the board of trustees, the opposition struck back and launched a recall campaign against the majority officials. The recall was backed by a well-funded “newspaper” called the Hayes Township Sentinelthat was mailed free of charge to residents across the township.

The recall and next election shook up the township board so much that today it is firmly in the camp of those who were opposed to the larger boat launch. The plans, however, had already been laid, and the design of the park had been inked by the previous board. The shakeup had an ironic result: this new slate of officials got into office just in time to oversee the finishing touches of a park they never wanted.

Nevertheless, it is their job to finally open the park to the public. It was thought the opening would happen on July 1; that did not come to pass.

Henne said he is concerned that the board has been stalling and is looking for a way to further delay opening the boat launch.

“They don’t want to open the boat launch,” he said. “I think that they’re getting pressure from people on the lake who’d like to have another year free of not having the park open. That’s what their people want.”
 
ATTENDING TO SAFETY CONCERNS
Henne said that, despite a wasted summer caused by what he sees as petty intransigence on the part of township officials, he believes the park will be open next summer.

“I think it will probably be open by next summer,” he said. “I don’t see how they have a choice.”

Indeed, there are indications that the board intends to open the park in the coming weeks.
Township Supervisor Ron Vanzee did not return messages seeking comment. Hayes Township Treasurer Julie Collard said the board has been working hard to address safety problems at the park and to get the park open to the public.

She said the problems with the park’s design arose in a routine review of the township’s insurance policies. A risk assessor visited the park, conducted a walk-through, and found problems, she said.

“We didn’t turn to anybody. This was just a normal average yearly risk assessment for the township insurance,” she said.

At the board’s Sept. 9 meeting, officials plotted out a tentative timeline to open the park in stages that would see the park opened this year and be ready for an official grand opening next spring.

“Our main issue right now is, we want to make sure the park is safe for visitors,” she said.
Collard denied that the board has stalled the park’s opening just because members of the board were staunch opponents of the park design or that they wanted to sabotage the project.

“I can assure you, from my perspective, that’s 100 percent untrue,” she said. “We would never, ever behave out of spite just because we didn’t initially support the park.”
She said the township board hopes to get the park open and available for residents to enjoy as soon as they can.

She said that some of what the current board is contending with at Seagull stems from mistakes made by the previous board.

“I would say, I think the decisions of the prior board were not informed decisions,” Collard said.

Indeed, at the Sept. 9 board meeting, Vanzee was critical of the project engineer, Performance Engineers of Charlevoix, led by James Malewitz, according to a recording of the meeting posted on the Sentinel website.

The new board hired engineers Beckett&Raeder of Traverse City to review Malewitz’s work; they found a list of deficiencies and potential safety hazards. The list included items like a gap in the railing at the fishing pier, the need for railings or a tapered stairway along a grass path leading from the top of the park to the boat launch, and the need for signs to warn drivers about a pedestrian crossing.

In an email to the township, Malewitz disputed the findings and said he could fix shortcomings in the park’s design for roughly $20,000. Beckett&Raeder estimated the cost of corrections to be over $200,000.

During the public comment portion of the Sept. 9 meeting, Vanzee was asked about Malewitz’s offer and dismissed it.

“It’s the previous board’s problem because they approved the plans,” Vanzee said. “We didn’t ask for that information, and he handed it out to us, but I don’t know that anyone even looked at it because it was immaterial at that point in time.”

Collard said that the board stuck with Beckett&Raeder’s suggestions because they didn’t feel that the measures offered by Malewitz went far enough.

“It’s not even so much about the less expensive option; we feel that his recommendations weren’t thorough enough,” she said.

She added that board members went line by line through the Beckett&Raeder suggestions at the Sept. 9 meeting and determined which measures were needed to open the park and which could wait.

“We were able cut out a lot to save money,” she said.

Malewitz said he was advised by an attorney not to comment.
 
“OPEN AS SOON AS POSSIBLE”
Meanwhile, the months of waiting while officials have mulled over the minutiae of safety concerns at the park have left some park supporters with the impression that the board intentionally kept the public out of the park.

“They don’t want people to see how beautiful it is because they’ve been trying to convince everybody that Performance Engineers did a terrible job,” Henne said. “They decided they couldn’t stop the park from happening, but they could stop it from being opening for another season.”

Township resident, former township trustee, and park supporter Jim Rudolph said he believes that the board has tried to delay opening the park.

He said he suspects that the new board is wary of how much people are going to like a project that the previous board was so dedicated to making happen.

“I think people are going to walk in there and say, ‘Oh, thank God for the former board, that they went and got this,’” he said.

Rudolph said the current township board’s commitment to fixing perceived dangerous features of the park before opening it to the public is suspect and extreme.

Take the concern over a shale wall that was exposed when the roadway was excavated. Some loose rock chipped off of the wall over the winter, but an expert deemed the wall to be structurally sound and safe and recommended putting up a fence to keep people from climbing it. (The expert also noted that the rock wall is of immense geologic significance, as it will be the only place where the public will be able to view a kind of rock formation known as Norwood shale.)

Not opening a park because some rock chipped off of a shale wall is out of hand, Rudolph said. He compared it to the devastating shoreline erosion that occurred at a park on Little Traverse Bay this summer. The solution there, rather than to close the park, was to keep people away from the failing cliffside with caution tape.

“The wall in Petoskey, where they had that landslide, it was an even higher wall. Well, they put the tape up,” Rudolph said. “If Petoskey would have totally tried to close down the waterfront park because of that, there would have been hell to pay.”

Jon Mayes, program manager for the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund, one of the agencies that funded Camp Seagull Park, said they are working with Hayes Township to get the park open.

He said he doesn’t believe that the board has been acting in bad faith, talking about getting the park open while in fact working to stall and avoid it.

“I don’t have that concern,” he said. “We had a phone conference with them this summer, and they were very clear. … I know that they will do the right thing by the citizens there and get that park open as soon as possible.”

Mayes said he agrees that it is important to make sure a park is safe before it opens to the public.

“They had some concerns about some safety aspects of the new park,” he said. “We’re working with them to make sure they get the concerns addressed. … It’s obviously our office’s wish and desire that that be open as soon as possible.”

* Pictured above: the newly developed seawall at Camp Seagull Park. Photo courtesy of Performance Engineers Inc.