A "shovel ready" recreational trail project has stalled after Great Wolf Lodge officials changed their mind and will not to allow the trail to cross Lodge property.

Garfield Township had secured a $270,000 grant from the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund to build phase II of the Buffalo Ridge Trail. Phase I starts at the Grand Traverse Commons and heads south to West Middle School.

Phase II is designed to connect the school south to the new YMCA, Kids Creek Park and neighborhoods in that area. Future phases will continue down Silver Lake Road, perhaps eventually reaching the Silver Lake Recreation Area. Following a public process last summer, officials identified the best route for the trail with only a direct quarter-mile connection between the school and the YMCA -- a route takes it across a portion of Lodge property.

“We have our easements in hand from two of the three properties it runs across,” explains Brian VanDenBrand, deputy planner of Garfield Township. “Though the planned alignment was supported by the local Great Wolf Lodge back when we first applied for the grant, our efforts to secure an easement along Great Wolf Lodge’s western property line have been unsuccessful."

Great Wolf Resorts President Kim Schaefer did not respond to requests for comment, but in a Sept. 17 letter to township officials said granting an easement for trail construction is not simple.

“That process demands significant time and expense, all of which Great Wolf is being asked to solely bear,” Schaefer wrote. “Beyond the requested commitment of us, the proposed trail location is troublesome. As you know, the proposed trail runs through an area of pasture land that until recently was occupied by buffalo. Running a trail next to buffalo pasture is an obvious safety risk. While the buffalo are not currently on the land, that area remains pasture and may once again be used by livestock creating renewed safety concerns.”

Schaefer also noted that the Traverse Hills Condominium Association fears increased pedestrian traffic and has watershed concerns and that Great Wolf takes those concerns seriously.

In a letter dated Oct. 14, Township Planning Director Rob Larrea responded to those concerns, noting that “Great Wolf Lodge is not being asked to contribute significant time or financial resources to the project. Necessary easements, legal descriptions and other considerations have been or will be addressed and will be funded by the grant.”

According to Larrea, a thorough design process has determined that this trail route will provide “the best safe convenient access” between the middle school, YMCA and Kids Creek Park, not to mention the neighborhoods that the southerly reaches of the trail will access. “The location of the trail as proposed is certainly in the best public interest,” wrote Larrea.

According to VanDenBrand, a letter-writing campaign to Great Wolf Lodge’s corporate offices in Madison, Wisc. is underway in a last-ditch effort to convince them to grant the easement. “Our letter writing campaign can only last so long,” he says. “After which we’ll be forced to consider Plan B.”

Plan B, he says, "will need to go around and along Franke Road and U.S. 31. This isn’t optimal, but the DNR will allow us to go ahead because the overall north-south connectivity of the trail is maintained. However the school has already told us that that route will not be beneficial to them.”