New York Times: It’s Tee Time in Benton Harbor

The New York Times visited Benton Harbor to find out what was happening at Harbor Shores, the resort development on Lake Michigan built around a Jack Nicklaus designed golf course.

Marcus Robinson, president of the Consortium for Community Development, who helped lead the effort to build the resort talked about the strategy of social engineering that’s central to the plan to save Benton Harbor.

Excerpt:

His (Robinson’s) assignment was to work with community leaders, businesspeople and other local residents to come up with ways to address some of the ever-worsening problems — poverty, violence, white flight, racial strife — that had been plaguing the city for years and were making it increasingly difficult for Whirlpool to attract executive talent to the area. The discussions helped birth Harbor Shores, a notion that had been kicking around a long while.

Given Benton Harbor’s unfavorable history and demographics, no private developer would likely be willing to take on such an ambitious project there. But there was another way: Robinson’s group, along with other nonprofits supported by Whirlpool, could secure enough federal and state grant money to help remediate the land, build the golf course and at least get Harbor Shores off the ground.

For more, please read the rest of the story.

Source: New York Times