After years of work, the Cherry Beach Project in Chikaming Township has ended in success. The Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund Board this month announced its next round of recreation grants to communities around the state, and included is a grant of $2.475 million for Chikaming Township to buy about three acres of land next to the current Cherry Beach along Lake Michigan. Chikaming Township Supervisor David Bunte told WSJM News about the property.
“It’s actually just a pristine, natural wooded area just to the south of our current Cherry Beach Park that will remain in its current condition,” Bunte said. “We don’t have any immediate plans, or even long term plans, to transform it. We’re trying to protect it.”
Bunte says the Cherry Beach Project collected more than $1.6 million in pledges from supporters to help make the land acquisition possible.
“For the size of our community, for us to accomplish a goal like this and have so many participants and people on committees and to work so hard for so long, I can’t be prouder of what they accomplished.”
The addition of this more than $2.4 million state grant means the sale of the property to the township can proceed. Bunte says it will take about a year. The existing Cherry Beach Park was donated to Chikaming Township by the Warren family in 1922. Bunte says it’s not often lakefront property right next to public land becomes available.
