October 22, 2004

Good scouts save day
Brainerd couple donates $415,000 to prevent Boy Scouts from losing wilderness camp

By JODIE TWEED
Staff Writer

An anonymous Brainerd couple has stepped forward with a $415,000 donation that has virtually saved an 850-acre wilderness camp near Crosslake for future generations of Boy Scouts, rather than being sold and developed into multi-million dollar lakehomes.

On Sept. 1, the Dispatch ran a story about efforts to save Camp Cuyuna, a pristine 850-acre wilderness camp for Boy Scouts that boasts miles of undeveloped lakeshore on six lakes only minutes from downtown Crosslake.

The camp, established in 1967, provides a low-cost camping experience for about 700 Boy Scouts from around the state each summer. But the Twin Valley Council Boy Scouts based in Mankato, which owns the camp, announced last February that to reduce its debt, it was looking into selling about 163 acres of land in Camp Cuyuna, appraised at about $1 million. The land parcel included about 13 acres of land on Big Pickerel Lake used for family camping.

Camp supporters were not happy with the announcement. The well-used family camp is the heart of the property with 12 family camp and five primitive camp sites available for anyone with a Boy Scout in the family. It is on prime lakefront real estate and also is used by camp counselors who live there throughout the camping seasons. Developers had been eyeing the property and developed proposals for the Boy Scouts council, including one offer for $1.5 million.

Don Halverson, a Crosslake resident and former Camp Cuyuna staff member who began staying at the camp when he was a Boy Scout, was upset to learn the council was strongly considering selling a portion of the camp property. He told his brother, Mike Halverson, about the situation, not realizing that his own brother would be able to help.

In addition to being a former Boy Scout who has camped at Camp Cuyuna, Mike Halverson is a fisheries acquisitions manager for the DNR in St. Paul. His job is to purchase or acquire aquatic management areas for the state to ensure future generations have Minnesota wetlands for hunting and fishing access on lakes. If camp supporters could raise enough funds, Mike Halverson would work to secure critical habitat matching funds through the Reinvest in Minnesota program that would allow the DNR to purchase about 240 acres of Camp Cuyuna to develop this into an aquatic management area. This includes about two miles of undeveloped shoreline. Camp Cuyuna could still use the property and would be granted an easement for the family camping area. The aquatics management area is mostly undeveloped shoreline and wilderness areas that now will be able to be used by the general public as well. The public land could never be sold by the state and if the Boy Scouts council decided to sell off the remainder of the camp, the DNR would have the right to purchase it first.

The biggest hurdle camp supporters found themselves struggling with was attempting to raise about $615,000 to secure matching state funds by about mid-September, when the council would make a decision. They conducted various fund-raisers and sought donations. While they were pretty successful in their fund-raising efforts -- they raised about $215,000 in a relatively short amount of time -- they were not even close to the amount they needed.

That was, until a Brainerd couple called Don Halverson a couple of days after the Sept. 1 story was published in the Dispatch. They asked Halverson if they could get a tour of the camp, and he happily agreed to be their tour guide. They asked many questions about the camp and about their fund-raising goal.

A couple of days later, the couple called Halverson and told them they wanted to donate about $200,000 to $300,000 to the camp. Halverson was astonished. His brother met with the couple's accountant friend to hammer out the details. The couple decided since the camp needed about $415,000, that's how much they would donate.

"They are an absolute godsend," said Halverson, of the couple. "I have no words to describe how many people they will be helping out. I'm at a total loss for words. To know there are people out there who are willing to step up and help a cause like this, it's unbelievable. They're very, very special people."

His brother Mike said the couple's donation is by far the largest donation that the DNR has received. They've received three separate $100,000 donations but nothing like this, he said.

The land sale should be closed by the end of the year. The $415,000 donation, along with the $215,000 raised by other camp supporters, will go to the DNR and be placed into a gift account and matched by Reinvest in Minnesota critical habitat funds. These matching funds are generated through the sale of the loon license plates. The appraised value of the 240-acre aquatics management area is $1.53 million. An additional $300,000 will be donated by the DNR through the Legislative Commission for Minnesota's Resources, money generated through the Minnesota State Lottery environmental trust fund.

The money will be paid to the Twin Valley Boy Scouts Council in exchange for the aquatics management area, which will help pay off the council's debt, be used to upgrade and improve Camp Cuyuna and possibly create an endowment fund to be used to send Boy Scouts to Camp Cuyuna who otherwise couldn't afford to go.

"There's a whole lot of good coming from this," said Mike Halverson. "I haven't seen any bad whatsoever. It's actually one of the most satisfying projects I've ever worked on in my life."

"This check couldn't have been more timely," said Don Halverson, of the large donation. "I think the prevailing attitude of the camp was that we wouldn't raise that kind of money and we would be selling to a developer. We were probably a month away from them making a decision on whether we would fumble through and try to raise the money or just sell it to a developer. ... We can now worry about kids and camping and keeping the land from being developed. To me, it's huge. Because nobody wants to crawl out of their tent and see a million-dollar home right next to them."

Mike Halverson said the anonymous donors were happy to know their money would make a difference not only to future Scouts, but would protect the environment.

JODIE TWEED can be reached at jodie.tweed@brainerddispatch.com or 218-855-5858

Last Updated: October 24, 2004