[BCNnet] Indiana Dunes State Park hotel plans

[e ginsburg]

I apologize if this is a duplicate. I just heard the story on WBEZ.

Eric

http://www.chestertontribune.com/Environment/forum_set_on_indiana_dunes_state.htm

Forum set on Indiana Dunes State Park private hotel plan

By VICKI URBANIK

To Save the Dunes Council Executive Director Tom Anderson, the proposed inn at the Indiana Dunes State Park might best be called a hotel/conference center.

That’s because the state is offering a private developer the opportunity to build and operate an 87,180 square foot inn near the shore of Lake Michigan with the following amenities:

•An indoor swimming pool, whirlpool, exercise room and activity space

•100 guest rooms, 250-person meeting room, and three to five smaller breakout rooms

•A 150-seat dining room

•A minimum parking lot for 200 vehicles for inn guests, along with a new 400-car parking lot elsewhere in the park to offset the loss of parking for general park visitors

•A lifting of the current ban on alcohol in the park

•A year-round, full-service restaurant and banquet service

•State-of-the-art telecommunication capabilities in the guest rooms and conference facilities

•Merchandise sales

•Other recreational services for lodge guests, either indoors or outdoors (a golf course is excluded as a possibility)

•An option to redevelop the historic state park pavilion

Unlike other current state park inns, the one at the Dunes State Park and two others now planned at Versailles and Potato Creek would be built, owned and managed by a private company. As indicated in the prospectus, the private company would keep the revenue generated but would pay the state for use of the land.

The prospectus notes that the lease could last for 45 years with two 30-year renewals. However, the manner and amount of the lease is to be negotiated between the DNR and the selected operator.

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources is now making a prospectus available to potential hotel developers and will accept proposals through May 31. An onsite meeting for all potential developers/operators is set at 10 a.m. April 12 at the Dunes State Park pavilion.

In the meantime, the Save the Dunes Council will host a public forum on the proposal on Monday, March 20 at 7 p.m. at the Chesterton High School auditorium.

Although the environmental group has taken a position against the inn, its forum is open to all interested parties -- pro and con -- in order to ask questions and get answers. Save the Dunes has invited representatives from the Izaak Walton League and the Sierra Club, along with top DNR officials and state and local officials.

Anderson said he hopes the forum will allow the public to learn more about the proposal, address the environmental impacts of the development and financial concerns and the “typical things you would do before you announced it would happen.”

As outlined in the prospectus, which was provided to the Chesterton Tribune by Save the Dunes, the DNR wants the new inn and immediate parking to be built on the west parking lot, which, as noted, has direct beach access and easy access from the park entrance.

Unless abated by local government officials, the hotel operator would be required to pay property taxes on the development.

Supporters of the inn have said that the facility would give visitors to the Indiana Dunes another way of enjoying the park that currently isn’t offered. They point to the fact that other state parks have inns, that the Dunes State Park used to have an inn itself, and that the inn would be built on disturbed ground.

Anderson has a counter-argument for each point.

The prospectus shows that the inn developer would be required to build a parking lot for at least 200 vehicles for hotel guests, but that it would also be required to build a new 400-car parking lot to offset the loss of parking by the inn. The prospectus notes that with the recent “daylighting” of Dunes Creek and the proposed relocation of the park’s entrance gatehouse, the total net loss of parking spaces could be well over 1,000 spaces.

Anderson said the new 400-car parking lot appears to be planned in what is now the large picnic area, which he said is not disturbed ground.

“It’s a forest canopy,” he said.

Also, Anderson said the entire shoreline is the habitat for the federally endangered piping plover, with the west end of the park identified as the best habitat. The recently completed Resource Management Plan -- which came after about eight to 10 years of planning meetings -- identifies the need to preserve the piping plover habitat but makes no mention of the new inn, he said.

“It doesn’t seem they’re taking their own advice,” he said.

He also doesn’t buy the argument that just because the state park used to have an inn that it should have one today. The old lodge consisted of dorm-like style rooms, not the elaborate facility now planned, he said. “This is nothing like the lodging that was there,” he said.

The prospectus, titled “A Business Opportunity for the Development and Operation of a Lodge at the Indiana Dunes State Park,” makes several references to the DNR’s intentions that the inn and dining facilities should be of a high caliber.

“It is intended that the food be not only adequate, but be wholesome, attractively served, and is of a style that appropriately reflects the market. It is imperative that the guests, including local patrons, expectation’s are meet, (sic) and that they will want to return,” the prospectus states.

The prospectus also notes that the state park’s current treatment plant will not be of sufficient size to accommodate the inn, so the operator would need to hook onto the town of Porter’s sewage system at an anticipated cost of $150,000.

As for alcohol, the prospectus notes that the DNR is pursuing a change in the regulation that now bans alcohol in the state park in order to allow alcohol at the inn and “maybe other selected portions of the park.”

The prospectus states that inn guests will pay the gate fee, but that if they are overnight guests, their room key would get them back in and out of the park until checkout. People coming just to eat at the dining room must also pay the gate fee.

The prospectus also states that greater consideration will be given to proposals submitted by Indiana operators or operators that have a partnership with Indiana firms.

To Anderson, the proposal is a “commercialization” of the Indiana Dunes, since it carves out an area now publicly owned and in effect sells it to a private interest for a profitable enterprise. “Where’s the demonstrated need ... when there’s lodging close by?” he asked.

Posted 3/9/2006
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