Saugatuck $2m short in dunes money

LANSING, Mich. (WOOD) - The Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund approved $10.5 million to help buy the southern portion of the old Dennison property along Lake Michigan, not quite as much as the city of Saugatuck wanted.

Previously, the city and conservation groups agreed to buy 171 acres from Aubrey McClendon for $20 million. They wanted the MNRTF to provide $12.6 million. The MNRTF is not a taxpayer-funded organization.

Now that they are $2 million short, the city and the conservation groups will consider their options.

The land sits on each side of the mouth of the Kalamazoo River. McClendon, a billionaire who is an owner of the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder, bought the 402 acres in 2006 and plans to develop the property on the north side of the river.

He's fighting zoning rules that limit what he can put on that land.

The city of Saugatuck wanted the state funds, plus another $8 million in private donations, to buy the land on the south side.

The original plan counted on $12.6 million from the state, $6 million from private donors, including the Frey, Meijer and Woollam foundations and the Brooks family, and a campaign to raise $4.5 million.

"At this point," said the Land Conservancy of West Michigan's Peter Homeyer, "there are large donors that have made gifts, there are donors that have a capacity to make a big gift that we haven't heard from yet, it's also possible that there's an amount that the community will raise. But I do think that we've all stretched ourselves to try to get to the point we're at right now. It really is unclear at this time how we're going to find those remaining pieces, but it doesn't mean we aren't going to look."

One more place to look -- getting owner Aubrey McClendon to lower the purchase price, although he'd already come down several million dollars.

"The possiblity of speaking to the seller and all other parties are, of course, on the table," Homeyer said, "but I don't have anything to tell you today at this time about where we are in that process."

Homeyer knows time is short. "Quite often (you) only have a limited window to try to make them all come together. I think we're still inside that window on this project, but you have to sort of be ready to move with however, whatever's happening, wherever that takes you."