Tomorrow evening, May 20th, a fundraising party is taking place in Ludington.  The Doppel Dock party will take place at a pavilion on the Lake Michigan Car Ferry grounds just off the corner of Rath and Dowland Streets and proceed to the carferry.  The party is named as a play-on-words of a German beer, Doppelbock, and describes the doppel (double) settings for the event. 

Tickets are $49 and include dinner, 6 drink tokens (worth one 5oz pour each) and a souvenir tasting glass.  According to the organizers, the event is the kick-off for the Legacy Park 'reimagining project' (currently James Street Plaza) .

The Downtown Ludington Board plans to enhance this gathering space by creating a walk through Ludington's history including a fire pit area to reflect our Native American heritage, a timber-frame pavilion as a nod to our logging heritage and artifacts from our maritime heritage. Names of donors will be recognized in a sculpture that will reside in the park. Visual design concepts will be revealed at the Doppel Dock party.

The weather is calling for fifty degree weather and rain showers that night, so let me do you a favor by saving you $49 and potential cold symptoms by not only giving you full visual design concepts, but also an accounting of what they plan on investing to change the James Street Plaza into Legacy Park, with some insight of how it was all thought out.

The idea of Legacy Park was revealed to the public with Jen Tooman (pictured left) and Heather Tykoski (right) introducing it in early April, some of the details had been leaked to the MCP on St. Patrick's Day.  Shortly thereafter, I did some research on the designer of the project and unveiled my findings in Creative Corruption by Design, where ethical violations by public officials were noted.

At the time when the COLDNews introduced the topic, Tooman said the fundraising goal was set for $1 million to complete the ambitious project, and that the Doppel Dock event would kick off fundraising efforts.  Shortly thereafter, I launched a FOIA request to find out why the modest changes amounted to so much money, and how these odd legacy concepts came to being in the first place. 

It just so happens that the Legacy Park concept has been bandied about for at least three years, the first substantial public record comes from LIAA representative Dustin "Dusty" Christensen saying the cost estimate for the project was being figured out in an e-mail to Heather Tykoski, complete with an invoice for $1105 for his services up to that point.  This was paid at the 12-1-2014 council meeting.  On December 4, 2014, Christensen sent back a breakdown of the projected costs for Legacy Park:

Christensen explained that costs could be smaller than the $781,330 if bids came in favorably or cheaper options were used.  Tykoski reviewed his estimate and was happy, thinking it may have been around 'doppel' of what he found:

Five minutes later, Tykoski sent the estimate and conceptual drawing to Kathy MacLean, who not only serves on the DDA with Tykoski as the DDA treasurer (the meeting noted was the 12-8-2014 DDA meeting), and not only serves as President of the local chamber of commerce, but also owns the adjacent and coincident property, which has benefitted with hundreds of thousands of dollars from state rental rehab and façade grants received through fraudulent means. 

According to those minutes, no real discussions took place at that meeting, nor did any groundbreaking take place in 2015.  What happened was the plan was held in mothballs for over the next two years after this, coming back basically unchanged in March 2017 from what was developed by LIAA's Dusty Christensen in 2014.  This is shown below and can be seen in this .pdf file also.

It's rather odd that a high estimate of $781,000 turns into a $1,000,000 price tag when it comes down to raising money for a project that seems to have little impetus, and even less rationale by a city government that is looking for wild ways to avoid a one year projected shortfall in funds by considering adding/raising new municipal fees and beach parking.  Especially when you consider that just raising the difference between the two figures would solve the shortfall problem.

So spend $98 to take your favorite date out to this party, avoid the rain and cold by getting under the tent and under decks, check out the larger pictures of Legacy Park they are sure to have, but don't fault me for laughing at your waste of a Saturday evening and your hard-earned money.

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That is the number of paying customers the Doppel Dock Event will need to raise the funds to pay for the Plaza to Park scheme.

As long as the food and refreshments and other attending services are provided at no cost.

It may take them a few years to raise the funds, depending on who has oversight of the money.

They should be totally transparent with their bookkeeping but as you have noted before they have a less than stellar reputation regarding financial matters.

The fox guarding the hen house for a few years doesn't sound like a workable plan to me.

So in lieu of that we also will not be attending.

Only a maximum of 500 tickets will be sold, shinblind, and each ticket sold has a surcharge of $3.44, but...

You can also make a donation on top of that, so with a few hundred people donating a couple thousand each, this fundraiser could do something special.  Or market the tickets for prospective contractors for the project, and see which company is able to bring the most employees to the gala. 

500 tickets? ? ?

Are we back in High School? Is this like the prom?

It looks like this clique wants to limit those in attendance as if charging $52.44 wasn't disincentive enough. Oh well like my mother always said never get between a fool and their tax write offs.

Somehow I don't think there will be enough demand to make it profitable to scalp the tickets on Maritime Drive the day of the event. But I wish them good luck and I hope they do well with it. 

I wonder how much money has been wasted on that small bit of land since it was abandoned as a street. Are they going to refund the money people paid for all of those bricks that were bought and  used to pave around the clock. In every town there are those people who can't sit still and enjoy what they have. There must always be projects in the works to "change" things and most of the time that change ends being a waste of money and is paid by the taxpayers. Then there are the same kind of people who want to create "historic districts" where nothing changes and where property owners are locked into strict restrictions on how they can use their property. These groups of people are the Jekyl and Hydes of society. The do gooders who tell eveyone else it's for your own good.

You do have to admit that the salesman who come up with replacing the concrete with red brick in every town in the united states did a helluva good job.

WMOM posted the latest 3-D depiction of Legacy Park on Facebook.  It's just as impressive as the 2D version to me.

Looks like the bathrooms have a leak.... running out to Ludington ave... lol  So after a million dollars the bathrooms leak?

The leak is meant to reflect the past massive sewer leaks that sent millions of gallons of raw sewage into the PM Bayou back in 2008 and 2012.  This is Legacy Park after all, and city hall would be remiss in leaving their true legacy in the dust heap. 

Perhaps that's why they tacked on an extra $200,000+ to the price tag, in order to pipe this leak all the way to the PM Bayou.

The extra $200,000 is the wage and benefits that will be doled out for someone to trim the grass and bushes and blow the leaves and snow out of illLegacy Park.

It will be an annual expense at the current rate the City compensates its workers.

If it costs the city half of a million to upkeep the beach each year, $200,000 annually for maintaining this is a bargain, LOL.

Roughly 3,850 Doppelites would cover the $200K tab.

What did you say again 500 tickets?

If the Doppel Dock is an annual event they will have $200K raised in 7.7 years.

Somehow I have the sneaky suspicion that when they say they are going to raise the money themselves the local taxpayers better clutch their wallets.

So... as I thought from the 2D version too, less grass and less open space then what there now.  This is deceptive as I do not believe the clock tower is that tall and once the ship propeller and shrubs are placed near entrance, that will also close in the park further.

If I read correctly, it seams they are razing and replacing the existing bathrooms.  I don't think they are very old, so why..?  And the $145,000 for the pavilion, seems excessive high along with the $180,000 bathrooms.  

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