Benton Harbor is driving toward the future with the help of Jack Nicklaus and golf, reports USA Today.
A coalition of public and private entities is intent on cleaning up manufacturing brownfields, stimulating tourism and creating jobs. The key component of the work and the centerpiece of a $450 million redevelopment effort over the next 20 years is Harbor Shores, a 530-acre beach and golf resort community that features a Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course, as
previously reported by Second Wave.
On August 10, Nicklaus will be joined by former rivals Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson and Johnny Miller for a charity Skins Game at The Golf Club at Harbor Shores.
Excerpt:
"The event is a great opportunity to highlight how golf is being used as a vehicle for social and economic revitalization," Nicklaus says. "The area needed to be cleaned up, and as a result, create a stimulus for the area, for the community, for the town, for tourism and for jobs. It did a lot of really good things."
Nicklaus, 70, a renowned golf course builder with nearly 350 courses worldwide, faced a tough task when called on in 2005 to transform acres of diverse land along the St. Joseph River and Paw Paw River, dunes that rise up to 100 feet above Lake Michigan's beaches, and acres of long forgotten factories, toxic waste dumps and a Superfund site.
"We had to have a golf course designer who was sophisticated enough to deal with lots of empty buildings, roads, power lines, a railroad track, two rivers, a lake and a public park," says Mark Hesemann, managing director of the Harbor Shores Resort.
Nicklaus, he says, had to change the course routing nearly 20 times.
For more on the project, read the
entire story.Source: USA Today
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