A Success Story: The New Business of Ecotourism
Sarett Nature Center (www.sarett.com), located in southwestern Michigan’s Berrien County, has miles of trails that run along the Paw Paw River bluffs, with platforms in the floodplain to look at the wetland wildlife and habitats. Their nature center is a success story of the new business of ecotourism.
With their primary goal “to provide quality environmental education” for the community, they attract over 25,000 students each year. There are environmental education classes offered for the local school system as well as college level courses, given by Western Michigan University.
Chuck Nelson, head of the Sarett Center, came to the CPA fundraising event in November. He was very enthusiastic for us to save the wetland of Celery Pond and turn it and its surroundings into a successful nature center like Sarett. This would not be an amusement waterpark but a natural park, with lookout stations and canoeing.
The idea of keeping the public lands off Dunkley Avenue with the new business of a ecotourist nature center/education destination spot (ie. restaurant and stores included) is something that has never been considered by our City Council. The public lands off Dunkley Avenue are zoned as ‘B-3 Waterfront Business.’ When the Master Plan was created, it never considered ecotourism as a new business for the community; it only thought of marina/condo development.
How could an environmental destination spot, not unlike Sarett Nature Center be achieved? Does the Master Plan need to be revised to accomodate such an idea?
Tonight, the City Council will be asked to authorize a RFP for development proposals for the Dunkley Street Redevelopment plan, taking us one step closer to whether the people will choose to decide, individually and collectively, to make a claim to hold their lands, or to let them be sold to private investors.
Only a public referendum petition can take this first step to change the course of City action. With a successful referendum petition, there could be a public vote. There could also be a chance to develop a different kind of plan that would preserve public lands while giving us the opportunity to develop a waterfront business of ecotourism. What do the people really want?
