Plan targets trust's Michigan acreage
Advertiser Staff and Wire Reports
The state of Michigan and The Nature Conservancy said yesterday they want to help buy 390,000 acres of Michigan wilderness from the Hawai'i-based Kamehameha Schools trust.
The deal would shield from development vast stretches of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, including 42,000 acres in the Big Two-Hearted River watershed made famous by novelist Ernest Hemingway's trout-fishing character Nick Adams.
The initiative calls for the state and federal governments, The Nature Conservancy, a timber company and philanthropic groups to form a partnership and buy the land. Kamehameha Schools has estimated its worth at $150 million.
Kamehameha Schools spokesman Kekoa Paulsen said in Honolulu that he was not aware of completion of any transaction, but said the charitable trust has made clear it would like to sell the property as part of a long-range strategy to reduce its real estate holdings on the Mainland.
Paulsen said he did not know precisely how proceeds from such a sale would be invested. But, according to Paulsen, the trustees have felt for some time that the allocation of investments was overweighted toward Mainland real estate.
The money would be reinvested to provide the maximum return to pay for the operations of the schools in Hawaii, he said. A sale at $150 million would represent a substantial profit for the trust, which paid less than $100 million for the land in 1994, he said.
The plan was announced yesterday by Michigan Gov. John Engler and The Nature Conservancy.
"The sale of this Upper Peninsula property presents a number of challenges and opportunities," Engler said. "The public-private partnership we are announcing today will protect private forestland and keep the land open to the public forever.
"That's good for local communities, good for protecting Michigan's abundant natural resources for the enjoyment of future generations and good for the timber industry."
The land, spread over about 250 miles of Lake Superior watershed, would be owned by the timber company — keeping it on the tax rolls and preserving Upper Peninsula forestry jobs. An easement would keep it accessible for hiking, hunting, fishing and snowmobile activities.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Philip Power, chairman-elect of the Michigan chapter of The Nature Conservancy, told the Detroit Free Press.
"If this deal works, it would be the single largest conservation and economic development deal done in the continental United States."
The coalition, which has yet to identify a timber company partner or secure any financing, has to move quickly. The Kamehameha Schools announced in July it intended to sell its property to one bidder by the end of this year.
Among the trust's holdings are 160 inland lakes, 2 miles of Lake Superior shoreline, and dozens of miles of land bordering the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness state park.
It historically has been timberland, managed by timber companies under the Commercial Forestry Act, which gives tax breaks to companies in exchange for maintaining roads allowing unrestricted public access.
Kamehameha Schools was created in 1884 through the will of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, a descendant of King Kamehameha.
The charitable trust, the largest private landowner in Hawai'i, educates children of Hawaiian ancestry.
Advertiser staff writer Walter Wright contributed to this report.
