Park stimulus means jobs

Glen Arbor Sun

Tom Ulrich, Deputy Superintendent of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (the local branch of the National Park Service), says that the $2.2 million the Lakeshore will receive under the Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — or “stimulus package” — will result in immediate local jobs, and the money will be used by September 2010. The National Park received a total $750 million to use nationwide.

“We’ve already begun hiring people and moving ahead with contracts. These are jobs that companies who (win project) bids can provide workers — work that otherwise would not have been available. Presumably they will hire even more workers.”

The historic village of Glen Haven will receive the lion’s share of the funds — as much as $2 million, Ulrich estimates. The Park has begun rehabilitating the Warner House on the east side of the road, and contractors will be hired to pave a new parking lot for Glen Haven’s popular beach destination — just east of where beachgoers currently park.

“If a company already employs 20 people, maybe it will employ 32 for our work,” Ulrich cites as an example. “Almost certainly (the stimulus money will mean) more people working, and more people working longer hours. It’s not a small amount of money that we’ll expend.”

The project at Glen Haven, which served as a frontier wooding station and steamboat stop between 1857 and 1931, will improve the visitor access as Park contractors build the parking lot, sidewalks, picnic facilities, boardwalks to the beach, viewing platforms, and restore over 1,500 feet of historic boardwalk. The project will also rehabilitate historic structures for visitor use and park operations. The Cannery building housing the Great Lakes boat museum will be repaired and offer improved access. The fish tug Aloha will be relocated and made accessible as the existing site is restored. The Lakeshore will also provide new interpretive exhibits.

“All of our work in Glen Haven up until now has been geared toward representing the village more as it would have appeared during D.H. Day’s time in early 1930s,” says Ulrich. “We feel that Glen Haven is one of the most significant places within the Park, so we’re comfortable if visitation in Glen Haven does increase.”

The remainder of the stimulus money not devoted to Glen Haven will go toward repairing hiking trails at the Platte Plains, Good Harbor Bay, Shauger Hill and North Manitou Island, and removing invasive baby’s breath plants from critical habitat areas of the endangered piping plover and threatened Pitcher’s thistle. In addition, the Park hopes to begin the process of bringing photovoltaic electric power to South Manitou Island and eliminate the need for diesel generators on the island, thus reducing its environmental footprint.

“We had these projects that met the criteria (for stimulus money) and were ready to go,” says Ulrich. “All of the environmental compliance impact assessments had been done. These projects weren’t just fluff, but things with pressing needs.”

The Park will also begin the groundwork this summer for bike trails near M-109 that were approved as part of the new General Management Plan. And as this issue of the Sun went to press, the Park was working with volunteers from Cherry Republic to build and restore a wooden staircase at the popular Lake Michigan beach access on Lane Road in the Port Oneida Rural Historic District. The Glen Arbor cherry product and clothing retailer also contributed $5,000 to the project.