Manchester is getting a new nature preserve!
The fen in what is soon to become Iron Creek Preserve, September 2023. Photo courtesy of Sybil Kolon.
by Sara Swanson
The Manchester area will shortly be gaining a new nature preserve! The Iron Creek Preserve will be 79 acres of forest, wetland, and Iron Creek frontage located in the Irish Hills in Manchester Township. Legacy Land Conservancy (Legacy) will be taking possession of the property at the end of next month from Sybil Kolon and her husband, Maan Baki, and if everything goes to plan, it should be open to the public by 2025.
Kolon and Baki got in touch with the Legacy 10 years ago. In the beginning, the plan was that they would donate the land on their deaths. But three or four years ago, the idea that this could happen during Kolon’s lifetime came up and began to grow. Transferring it now meant Kolon could be actively involved in the creation of the preserve and serve, along with Baki, as eco-stewards for the preserve. Diana Kern, Legacy’s executive director, stated “that [the preserve] will be open for the whole community to enjoy during her lifetime is special.”
Kolon stated that since retiring, it has really become a focus of hers to help connect people to the land. She explained that people have to have access to the land and understand it if they are going to want to take care of it. She decided, “Why wait?”; this way the land would be publicly accessible sooner. Kolon added that it will also be nice not to be responsible for the taxes now that they are on a fixed income.
Legacy was a natural choice as a conservancy partner as Kolon herself was a founder and driving force behind the Raisin Valley Land Trust, which served Lenawee County. Unlike Legacy, they were an all-volunteer group and held easements but no preserves. As the volunteers aged out, they decided to dissolve and transfer their easements to Legacy. So Legacy and Kolon already had a good working relationship.
Susan LaCroix, Legacy’s land protection director, stated that Legacy has to be selective when acquiring land through donation. Just because the land is donated doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of expenses involved, and they have to accept land donations with an eye toward sustainability. She explained that it is not about getting as much land as possible and hoping they can figure out how to fund it in the future. They have one big pool of money that serves as an endowment, but it is not large enough to fund the preserves they currently have.
LaCroix stated that they’ve had to pass on accepting land they would have loved to have worked with simply because they didn’t have the money. This means two things: first, that there will be a lot of fundraising that needs to happen to get Iron Creek Preserve ready to open to the public, and second, that for Legacy to have taken on this project, this project must have been pretty special.
LaCroix explained that in addition to the long-standing relationship with the landowners, the land has a public access point, and the neighbors all seem supportive or at least not opposed. Kyler Moran, preserve stewardship manager, explained that Kolon and Baki have already done a good amount of the work to steward the land that Legacy will continue. They have created and maintained trails through the property, worked on invasive species removal, and carried out controlled burns. On top of that, Moran adds, it has beautiful topography and contains a fen, which are somewhat rare in Michigan. The Iron Creek frontage is also important in the effort to protect water quality and battle the algae bloom in Lake Erie.
In order to keep it sustainable, Iron Creek Preserve is going to create a stewardship reserve, which will serve as an endowment to fund stewardship of the land into the future. And Legacy is preparing to gear up into the fundraising phase as soon as the deed transfer happens. They estimate that the total cost of the project will be $1,000,000. In fact, quite a bit of funding was needed already just to get to this point.
Legacy received a $20,000 grant through the North American Wetlands Conservation Act through Ducks Unlimited as part of a much larger grant benefiting the Erie Basin Region. This grant helped with behind-the-scenes work that needed to be completed to prepare for the deed transfer. A $150,000 grant from National Fish and Wildlife Foundation was the key that allowed them to move forward. Like the Ducks Unlimited grant, this grant paid for due diligence, attorney fees, and environmental assessments. It will help pay for the parking lot, signage, and updating the bridge over Iron Creek with a hand rail. It also paid for the deconstruction of the farmhouse on the property.
The property containing a farmhouse was a stumbling block for the transfer initially, but what started as a problem turned into a rewarding and still-expanding project of its own.
The earliest date anyone can find for the farmhouse is 1859, although Kolon states that there may have been a structure there earlier. Kolon’s grandparents bought it in 1948 and farmed mostly corn, as well as raised chickens (and for a short period of time pigs in the fen!). She grew up in Detroit and her family would drive out on Sundays. Most of the 28 grandchildren would have to do chores, but Kolon remembers being one of the youngest having its perks, and that she was usually allowed to wander with her dog. When her grandfather passed away and her grandmother moved back to Detroit, a cousin took up farming for a few years, but by 1969 the house was sitting empty. In 1976 Kolon and Baki needed a place to live so her father, mother, and stepfather pooled their resources, purchased the deed to the land and house, and worked to make the house habitable. Kolon and Baki lived in the farmhouse for a few years before eventually building their own home nearby on the property. The house was lived in by family members for many more years, but ended up eventually sitting vacant and deteriorating.
Because of both her personal history with the house and her desire to keep from adding more waste to the landfill, Kolon worked tirelessly to come up with an alternative to demolition. Her first pitch was to Legacy to keep it as a museum and/or event center but maintaining a building in a preserve was outside of the scope of their mission and experience, and outside of what the Conservancy could afford. She pitched the Manchester Area Historical Society (MAHS) as well as every organization she thought could possibly be interested in restoring it and turning it into a museum but didn’t find any takers. A MAHS member did put her in touch with an Eastern Michigan University contact who put her in touch with a grad student, Marian Feinberg, who introduced her to deconstruction as an option.
Deconstruction is the process of taking the house apart by hand and salvaging everything that can possibly be reused. Although not unheard of, it isn’t a common practice in our area. Kolon did all of the work to make it happen and coordinated between Legacy and Architectural Salvage Warehouse of Detroit. In addition, Kolon worked with MAHS to organize a series of workshops covering the history of the house, the families who lived there, and the landscape, and how they intersected. Read about what was discovered during the deconstruction here.
In doing this, Kolon bridged land preservation and historical preservation and created something larger than this one project. The team that put together the workshops is currently putting together a template that can be used in the future to implement deconstruction in similar projects, producing short videos, a handout, and a presentation on the process they can take to other groups.
Although in the end it cost a little more than straight-up demolition and was a learning process, Legacy feels that it is a process that aligns with its values, keeping the materials out of a landfill, and instead recycling, upcycling, and reusing as much as possible. They are working with Feinberg from EMU and plan to use a report she is preparing to create a handout on deconstruction to share with other land preservation organizations.
Now that the house deconstruction is completed, the deed transfer can occur. Then Moran will have the job of getting the preserve ready for guests by making it safe and welcoming. He states he will be building on the management Kolon and Baki started, removing invasive species from around the fen, making trails accessible, making sure signage is clear. He adds that they plan to organize public workdays before the opening of the preserve and will be looking for volunteers to come in and help get the preserve ready for opening.
Iron Creek Preserve has some unique wildlife to protect. It features cuckoo birds and grey-cheeked thrush and is on the migration path of warblers, as well as many more common birds as well. It is home to a white lady slipper found only in fens, as well as turtleheads and spotted joe-pye weed. Kolon’s favorite flower is fringed gentian, another fen flower. She states that it is not rare but is one of her favorites. The preserve is also ideal habitat for the threatened eastern massasauga rattlesnake, which needs both wetland habitat and drier upland habitat in which to hunt and forage.
There is one specific plant that is very special to Kolon in the preserve. She and Baki met attending Michigan Technical University in the upper peninsula, and when she had to leave to move downstate in 1973, she brought three small white spruces with her and planted them on the property. Shortly after she planted some Norway spruce. After all of these years, one of her spruces is remaining!
To donate to the Iron Creek Preserve Fund click HERE. You can also navigate to this page by going to https://legacylandconservancy.org/, clicking on “Support Us” at the top of the page, then clicking on “Active Projects”, then clicking on the link for the Iron Creek Preserve Project! If you would like to donate in another way or you have questions you can contact development director, Krista Jacob at 734.780.6948 or kjacob@legacylandconservancy.org.
Thank you, Sybil Kolon, Maan Baki, and everyone at Legacy Land Conservancy for the years of work that have gone into making this soon-to-be nature preserve a reality!
Legacy also manages Sharon Hills Nature Preserve in Sharon Township, and six other preserves in Plymouth, Stockbridge, Pinckney, and Ann Arbor. They have just celebrated 50 years of land preservation. For more information visit https://legacylandconservancy.org/.
Fringed gentians, September 2023. Photo courtesy of Sybil Kolon.
One of Kolon’s favorite places, a bit of a plateau on the ridge, October 2022. Photo courtesy of Sybil Kolon.
One of Kolon’s favorite places, a bit of a plateau on the ridge, October 2022. Photo courtesy of Sybil Kolon.
Iron Creek from the Noggles Road bridge looking east, which will be part of the preserve, early summer 2022. Photo courtesy of Sybil Kolon.
Photo of future Iron Creek Preserve, Sunday, March 3, 2024. Photo courtesy of Sybil Kolon.
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