October 14th, 2004

Donor rescues Scout camp
Twin Valley can move beyond debt
By Dylan Thomas
Free Press Staff Writer

MANKATO - An anonymous donation of $415,000 has secured a land-sale deal for the Twin Valley Council Boy Scouts that will help them move beyond a debt-ridden past and improve their programs and facilities.

Council Executive Director Paul Wilkinson said the sale of a portion of Crosslake-area Camp Cuyuna to the Department of Natural Resources is set to go through before the end of the year.

Wilkinson didn’t know who the donor was, but said it "was somebody who wanted to keep that land in its natural state."

That’s good news for Scout supporters, some of whom feared the 232-acre parcel might go to developers.

It’s also good news for Wilkinson, who said dealing with the council’s debt has been "almost a full-time job since I got here in January 2002."

Bob Hobart, DNR regional operations supervisor for the division of lands and minerals, said the $415,000 check was one of the largest cash donations the DNR has received. The donor proposed the idea to someone in the Brainerd office several weeks ago, Hobart said.

The check couldn’t have arrived at a better time. The Scouts’ fundraising efforts were running out of steam.

Wilkinson explained the council was required to come up with $600,000 in matching funds for the deal, made through the DNR’s Reinvest in Minnesota program. However, Scouts had only scraped together about $200,000.

The donation, along with the Scouts’ $200,000 and the DNR’s matching funds, will be combined with about $300,000 the DNR had set aside for land acquisition. That puts the final sale price at just over $1.5 million, Wilkinson said.

Wilkinson said about $775,000 of what the council receives will be used to retire the council’s debt.

He said the debt was mainly in the form of a nearly $1 million mortgage on the recently constructed council headquarters on Madison Avenue. Interest payments alone were eating up close to $40,000 out of the council’s operating budget every year.

Wilkinson said another $615,000 will go toward much-needed repairs and improvements at the council’s three camps. He expected part will be used immediately and part will be placed in an endowment for future needs.

Hobart said once the final details of the sale are worked out, the land will be designated an aquatic management area. The parcel contains two small lakes -- Big Pickerel and Little Pickerel -- that together have 1.8 miles of undeveloped shoreline, he said.

Last Updated: October 16, 2004