Group continues to fight proposed golf course by Kohler Co.

Kohler’s proposal would mark another expansion of its growing golf portfolio. The company has two courses along the Sheboygan River at Blackwolf Run in Kohler and two more along Lake Michigan at Whistling Straits, north of Sheboygan in the hamlet of Haven. The courses draw major tournaments and golfers from around the world. The golf operations are buoyed by the company’s Destination Kohler, which operates The American Club Resort Hotel and the Inn on Woodlake, both in Kohler.

The Kohler name is also associated with art, cooking and a spa — and the community itself, which was formerly known as Riverside, before John Michael Kohler and Charles Silberzahn purchased an iron and steel foundry in 1873. Ten years later the company began making bathtubs after applying enamel to cast-iron horse troughs.

In the early 1900s, Kohler’s drinking fountains, made with a bubbling valve, helped coin the term “bubbler,” but the company built its name on bathroom fixtures, which allowed it, under the guidance of Herb Kohler Jr., who died in 2022, to expand into hospitality and golf.

In 1966, the company also donated 280 acres to the state to create John Michael Kohler State Park south of Sheboygan. It’s adjacent to Terry Andrea State Park, which was established in 1927 after the widow of a Milwaukee electrical supply company donated 122 acres of land to the state.

The only entrance to the two parks, which are managed as a single unit, is at the eastern terminus of Highway V. And this is where Kohler wants to create the entrance for the golf course, which would include a roundabout and 22,000-square-foot maintenance building. To do so, they requested, and were granted in 2018 by then Gov. Scott Walker’s administration, a swap of land that would trade about 4.5 acres of state land and a 2-acre easement for 9.5 acres of Kohler-owned property, west of the state parks.

Destination Kohler’s general manager, Michael Belot, said the golf project between the Black River and the lake, on land owned by the Kohler Company for over 75 years, would remove invasive species, increase the diversity of native vegetation, enhance wildlife habitat, make the forest more sustainable, create 100 jobs and grow the tax base.

“Kohler has a long track record of respecting the environment, and this public course will reflect that commitment and sensitivity,” Belot wrote in the Sheboygan Press when the course was proposed. “Our public course will respect the sand dune structures, use sound forest management practices to remove invasive species, thin out trees where needed to create new growth and wildlife habitat, and operate within stringent federal and state rules before, during and after construction.”

In 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the city of Sheboygan’s annexation of the property from the town of Wilson and then, two years later, ruled that the friends group had no legal standing to file a lawsuit to stop the project. But an administrative law judge ruled in 2021 that the state Department of Natural Resources improperly granted a wetlands permit to Kohler, which could halt the project. That ruling is now before the state Court of Appeals.

Signs objecting to the Kohler project dot the yards of homes near the proposed golf course site, which is largely wooded and would require the removal of many trees to make way for the Pete Dye-designed course. Wetlands surround the river, and state-owned horse trails are located just west of the proposed site.

Kathleen Rammer, 72, worked for a time in the brass plant at Kohler and at its horse stables before taking a job with UPS. Now retired, she grew up just west of the state parks and is passionate about the area’s ecosystem and the character of the parks. The Kohler property has served as a nature preserve, but altering the land and introducing chemicals will bring negative changes to the environment, she argues.

“This has been a buffer from development,” Rammer said of the Kohler property. “It is a special shoreline that should be kept natural.”

Besides environmental concerns, there are also cultural issues. In 2018 and 2019, archaeologists unearthed remains of Native Americans who lived up to 2,500 years ago. The fragments of bone and teeth were discovered by a team from UW-Milwaukee that recovered tens of thousands of ceramics, tools and other artifacts during a study required under federal historic preservation law, Wisconsin Watch reported in 2021.

Julie Felbab’s eyes swell with tears when she thinks about the potential changes that could come to the area.

After a wet hike along the beach, she stood on a bridge that crosses the Black River at the entrance to the parks. The Sheboygan Falls woman, who visits the park frequently, worries about traffic and noise and said Kohler has an option to build an entrance to the golf course on the northern end of its property. The state land that Kohler wants was also part of eminent domain proceedings when the park was expanded in the 1960s and was home to a number of cottages. Now that land could be going to a private company.

“It takes thousands of years to make a wetland. They don’t understand the life and the richness of what is involved here,” said Felbab, 66. “They’re taking our park from us. It’s a wrong that needs to be righted.”