To:   Chicago Area Council Scouters

Fr:   Glenn Emig, Council President,  &  Chuck Dobbins, Scout Executive

Re:  An encouraging development on Owasippe--

At its meeting on Wednesday your Board of Directors began the discussions on entering into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Nature Conservancy (TNC) which could ultimately lead to one or more conservation organizations purchasing a portion of Owasippe.

What does this mean?  First the MOU is document that is not binding on either party.  It is an agreement to see if the two parties can reach enough consensuses on a long list of items.  This first step will allow us to determine if there is the potential to proceed to the creation of a purchase agreement.  It will also help us determine if there is any validity in the much discussed concept of putting tracts of Owasippe into conservancy for a sum of money large enough to fund both the repair/ replacement of current facilities at Owasippe as well as create an Endowment to fund ongoing maintenance at Owasippe.   

The Council Executive Board “tabled” action on signing the MOU to allow some time to ensure there is a full and rigorous discourse with both our Owasippe Task Force members and our Council membership prior to going any further.  We are committed to full transparency in this process.  At this point in the process almost everything is open to negotiation and we will move, in fairly short order, to consolidate our membership’s key concerns into actionable items for dour discussions with the Nature Conservancy.

The essence of the conversations to date with the TNC is outlined below:

·         The purchase price could be significant.  This money could go far in repairing facilities, creating new facilities and creating an endowment for Owasippe that will help ensure it can always be well maintained.  While the Board of Directors would have to approve such an action, it would be our intent that all proceeds from this transaction would be solely used for improving and maintaining Owasippe.

·         Early discussions would have us place the entire 4800 acres into a conservancy easement.  This accomplishes our stated goal of keeping the entire ecological footprint of Owasippe intact forever.

·         The CAC would retain ownership of Wolverine, most of the developed parts of Blackhawk, Crown, Carlin, and Ad Center (approximately 1030 acres.)

·          The Nature Conservancy is interested in purchasing a conservation easement and right of first refusal on all the parcels we would continue to own.  While we retain the future rights to develop facilities and areas for Youth/Scout Camp use on this property, we will be taking commercial and residential development rights off the table forever.  Part of the Nature Conservancy’s purchase price includes remuneration for this conservation easement.  If the CAC ever decided to not own Owasippe the Nature Conservancy would have the first option to purchase the land.

·         On the parcels we would no longer own (approximately 3729 Acres) we  are highly confident we will be able to retain the perpetual rights for hiking, nature study, cross country skiing, snow shoeing and other “quiet” outdoor activities for our Scouts.  Low impact camping horseback riding and bicycling rights will have to be worked out with the ultimate property owner(s) prior to closing.  TNC is limiting the ultimate owners to governmental agencies and other conservancies whose mission is the preservation of real property for conservation purposes.

·         This solution could create a potential opportunity to end the lawsuit with the township. 

Are there downsides?

·         We do anticipate there will ultimately be some relocation/redevelopment of a few programmatic facilities to new locations.

·         There would be a loss of control over a fairly significant amount of the current Owasippe footprint.  We will need to determine the true programmatic impact of such a course of action.

·         There is the possibility that due to zoning issues these discussions might not get very far.  This will leave us with daunting task of how we figuring out how we fund the current repairs needed as well as funding the ongoing

All of this is very preliminary.  As a Council we need to determine if this is the road we want to explore. We have had a dialog with both the OOEC and our Owasippe Task Force and both groups have encouraged us to continue our discussions with the Nature Conservancy.  As we progress, we will need to make decisions first based on the big picture and then work our way to answering questions about the details.  It is our expectation that you will have questions and we are committed to answering those questions.  We will create an opportunity for an open meeting in the next couple of weeks to give you more detail and answer your questions.  We are available by email at charles.dobbins@scouting.org and gemig@4gig.com

 It is also our expectation that all sides of these conversations among all our membership will happen in a “Scout Like” manner.  We need to show our Scouts that there is reasonable way for an organization to discuss difficult issues and reach a consensus.