If a piece of property can be considered lucky, then the Amsterdam Dunes in the Town of Holland might be the luckiest 322 acres on the planet.

The pristine stretch of shoreline, wetlands and forest has had several brushes with developers over the years, but has been permanently saved from the bulldozer by Sheboygan County.

In return, the dunes are poised to give back.

Pristine and unspoiled

The dunes aren't actually sand dunes, but seven contiguous parcels of shoreline property, cropland, managed forest and wetlands.

They are home to countless species of flora and fauna, including little-known threatened and endangered plants such as the Dunes thistle.

Dotted with homes that have been there for generations and bordered on the north by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources' Migratory Bird Research Center, on the east by Lake Michigan and on the south and west by the Town of Holland, it is the last remaining undeveloped beach between Sheboygan and Chicago.

It's also one of the last major expanses of undeveloped and unprotected wilderness on the western shore of Lake Michigan.

The area has attracted interest from developers in the past, but now that the county owns it, it will remain an unspoiled preserve.

"It absolutely could have been condos in the past," said Sheboygan County Administrator Adam Payne. "It could have been fully developed in the future. That's what's just so special about this project."

Timing is everything

When David Huenink was a kid, he spent his summers at his grandparents' house with the Amsterdam Dunes in the back yard. The house now belongs to him.

"I've walked that property forever," Huenink said. "It's a fantastic idea, a terrific idea on how to acquire the property and be able to do this, and be cost-neutral to the public."

Sheboygan County is in the process of buying Amsterdam Dunes property from private owners for $4.2 million.

The purchase is scheduled to close on Aug. 1, and county officials are working on securing grant funding that will reimburse the county for the cost of the property.

That includes the DNR State Stewardship Fund and the Fish and Wildlife Service National Coastal Wetlands Conservation program.

The county has long been interested in buying the property, but as recently as 2009, the asking price as $10 million, according to information from the county.

Huenink was involved in a Friends of the Amsterdam Dunes at the time and tried to help the county take control of the property.

"There were always grants and stewardship funds, a lot of money out there to maintain and restore the property, but there weren't any grants to cover buying the property," he said. "The stars aligned on this one and everything came together."

In the bank

The unique part of the purchase is what Sheboygan County plans to do with part of it.

In addition to about 76 acres of wetlands, the property contains land that either used to be wetland or could become new wetlands.

The county hopes that portion, which amounts to about 53 acres, will become a wetland mitigation bank and bring in revenue to the county, perhaps as much as $2.5 million over time.

State law requires government entities or businesses that harm wetlands in construction or expansion projects to restore or create wetlands elsewhere.

If they can't do it, they can purchase credits in an existing wetland mitigation bank.

When Sheboygan County has its own bank, other counties can buy credits here and local municipalities and businesses can have an easier time getting the credits they need to expand, Payne said.

"It will facilitate development, create certainty for businesses," Payne said. "For the public sector ... rather than us spending $50,000 per credit in Ashland County, we have our own wetland mitigation bank to draw from and we can better control our costs."

Near misses

The Amsterdam Dunes could have been sold to developers at any time in their history, and a few times very nearly were.

The closest they came was in the 1970s, when the owner at the time wanted to put in condos with lake views, Huenink said.

To do it, the Village of Cedar Grove would have had to annex the land and connect it to public water and sewer lines.

Huenink's father, Orville Huenink, wasn't a member of the Holland Town Board but he knew the deal sounded too good to be true so he did his own investigation, his son recalled.

What the elder Huenink found was that the installation of sewer lines was going to cost around $4 million because of the elevation of the village, and that cost would have been borne by the village, not the developer.

"The attorney looked it up in the book and said, 'Yeah, he's right,'" Huenink said.

Roger TeStroete, chairman of the Sheboygan County Board of Supervisors and a resident of the Town of Holland, remembers that near miss.

"I think our whole area is very thankful that it never did get developed," he said. "There were a couple of possibilities that it might have, but it never did."

With the purchase of the dunes, the county will form an advisory committee to help guide how the area is used, including how to best allow for public access without impacting the natural resources, TeStroete said.

"(There will be) a lot of local people involved so that we make sure that the people that live here know how unique it is and how to take advantage of it but not being very intrusive and not doing a lot of changes to the natural state of the area," he said.

As a neighbor, Huenink said his top priority was seeing the area preserved and protected. The money the county stands to make selling wetland mitigation credits is a bonus.

"The whole thing — it not only funds the county to be able to preserve this property, it also enables them to save money down the road when we would have had to buy credits from somewhere else," he said. "It was perfect. A terrific idea."

Reach Janet Weyandt at 920-453-5121

Read or Share this story: