The dunes rise higher than 100 feet above the wide beach at Jean Klock Park, the only public lakefront park in Benton Harbor, Michigan. In some places they’re almost pure white, glaring and brilliant in the sun, and in others they’re exploding with native trees, grasses, and wildflowers. From the crests you can see miles of beach to the south, more rolling dunes and bluffs to the north, downtown Benton Harbor to the east, and of course the countless shades of blue in Lake Michigan to the west. From certain spots, on certain extraordinarily clear nights, it’s possible to see the tiny sparkling lights of downtown Chicago, some 60 miles across the water.
Hundreds or perhaps thousands of new jobs would be generated, according to the nonprofit organizations behind the plan, and Benton Harbor’s tax base could double. The city of Benton Harbor was all for it, as were the local congressman, federal housing and environmental officials, the governor and several state agencies, and officials in neighboring Saint Joseph, Benton Harbor’s white, middle-class “twin” (where I grew up and where much of my family still lives) across the Saint Joseph River. Millions of dollars in federal and state grants were already on the way, and millions more were coming from appliance giant Whirlpool, the primary economic engine in the area. Most residents responded with some mix of awe and enthusiasm, and over the next couple years even many of Benton Harbor’s most hardened cynics—people frustrated by years of empty promises and community deterioration—came around.
“We don’t want this to be just another golf course—we need it to be spectacular,” Chesser said. “This is not a golf course project. It’s a community transformation project that uses golf as a driver.”
A couple years ago Drake helped start Friends of Jean Klock Park and launched an accompanying Web site compiling historical records and documentation about the Harbor Shores plan. In recent weeks she’d been advertising her own tours in one of the local newspapers: “Would you like to take a tour of the Harbor Shores project to have a balance [sic] perspective?”
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Her allies offered their amens. “They say nobody uses the park, but the trash needs to be picked up. I don’t get that,” said Clellen Bury, a retired factory worker and a cofounder of Friends of Jean Klock Park.
Waterfront access and Chicago money have always steered Benton Harbor’s fortunes. The town was built around a naturally protected harbor just upstream from the mouth of the Saint Joseph River, and by the late 19th century it was thriving, particularly as a shipping center for fruit grown on Michigan farms and destined for Chicago and elsewhere. In 1911 in Saint Joseph, brothers Frederick and Lou Upton, along with their uncle Emery, invented an electric washing machine that sent clothes through a wringer to squeeze out the excess water. With $5,000 in seed money from a Chicago businessman, they founded the Upton Machine Company and within a few years were making wringer washers for Chicago retail giant Sears, Roebuck and Company. By the 1940s Upton had created the first automatic spin washer, which Sears sold as part of its Kenmore appliance line.
Whirlpool’s corporate headquarters remain in Benton Township, just outside city limits, and the company still employs about 275 people at a Benton Harbor manufacturing facility. But in the mid-80s the company shuttered its large Saint Joseph assembly plant—just one of many blows the twin cities, with a combined population under 25,000, sustained during a year-and-a-half period during which 5,500 jobs were lost. Over the next decade the trend continued. Some departing companies left behind hundreds of acres of polluted brownfields and wetlands, including a 17-acre Superfund site contaminated by radioactive paint while it was occupied by parts supplier Aircraft Components.
