Saugatuck Dunes Face Imminent Threat

TCLF first listed Saugatuck Dunes as a threatened site in its 2011 Landslide: The Landscape I Love. But efforts to protect the lightly settled coastal area at the mouth of Michigan’s Kalamazoo River have been under way for nearly six decades. A significant threat emerged in 2006, when oil tycoon Aubrey McClendon purchased an expansive tract of the dunes fronting Lake Michigan and began to plan a large-scale development. The plan attracted the attention of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which included the dunes among “America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places” in 2010. After McClendon’s untimely death in 2016, the property’s new owner, Jeff Padnos, working with a Holland-based development company, Cottage Home, proposed a private marina and gated community that now threaten to mar the landscape and destroy the unique ecology of the surrounding area.  read more