Kent ISD Is Handing Off a Nature Center With a Ten-Year Fuse, and It Never Disclosed the Construction Ties Behind the Vote

The deed has a ten-year expiration date. The board’s vice president runs a trade school built in the demolition estimator’s old warehouse. And the public was never told about either one in plain terms.

People keep asking me if a development is going in

The question shows up in my inbox and under every post about the Howard Christensen Nature Center: is something being built out there? So I went looking.

I did not find a development planned for the nature center land itself. What I found is the pressure all around it, a deed built to stop protecting the land in ten years, and a set of connections between the people who voted on this deal and the companies on the other side of it that Kent ISD never put in front of the public.

The pressure around Tyrone Township

The nature center sits in Tyrone Township, in the northwest corner of Kent County. It is rural, and it is changing.

Just south, the Village of Sparta petitioned to annex 40 acres of farmland in Sparta Township. Kent County commissioners approved it 17 to 3 in November 2025, expanding the village so the land can be developed for light industrial use and housing. Sparta Township’s own attorney called it a land grab at the committee hearing. Subdivisions have also gone in around Kent City and 17 Mile Road in recent years.

The demand behind that is not a secret. The 2025 Kent County Housing Needs Assessment prepared for Housing Next puts the county’s gap at 33,914 units by 2030, roughly 22,000 of them for-sale homes.

And here is the contrast that should bother anyone paying property taxes in this county. This summer Kent County secured nearly $376,000 in state and federal grants to permanently protect 218 acres of farmland in Tyrone and Solon townships through its purchase of development rights program. That program pays landowners to accept a permanent deed restriction against development.

So the county is paying to put permanent restrictions on farmland in Tyrone Township, while the school district hands off a Tyrone Township nature center with a restriction that expires.

The paperwork has a ten-year fuse

Kent ISD is selling 135 acres to the Land Conservancy of West Michigan for $1,000. The warranty deed, prepared by Kent ISD’s counsel at Thrun Law Firm and attached to the March 16, 2026 board packet, limits the land to educational and recreational use. If the Conservancy breaks that restriction or wants to sell within the restriction period, it has to give the land back or get Kent ISD’s written permission.

Then the deed says the restriction only lasts ten years. When the ten years run out, the restriction terminates automatically and the Conservancy holds the property free and clear. The deed also carries the division rights statement under Section 108 of the Land Division Act, which governs how many times the parcel can be split.

That is not a prediction. That is a spoiler. The deed already tells you how this chapter ends unless someone records a permanent protection before then.

The demolition estimator and the board vice president

Owen-Ames-Kimball is a Grand Rapids construction firm and Kent ISD’s incumbent construction manager. It is running the district’s $4.8 million Educational Service Center renovation; the February 2026 check register shows a single $279,287.19 payment to the firm for that work. In September 2025, Owen-Ames-Kimball produced the conceptual estimate for demolishing the nature center buildings: $171,610, including a $5,803 construction management fee, with no asbestos abatement line.

Jen Schottke is the Kent ISD board’s vice president. She voted yes on the March 16, 2026 sale. Her day job is president of the West Michigan Construction Institute, a commercial construction trade school.

Here is how those two connect, all from public records.

The West Michigan Construction Institute was founded by the Associated Builders and Contractors of Western Michigan chapter as its training arm for the merit shop. In coverage of the 2022 opening, Schottke said ABC bought the building from Owen-Ames-Kimball. In the institute’s 2024 impact report, her own president’s note says “we transformed Owen-Ames-Kimball’s warehouse into the West Michigan Construction Institute.”

Owen-Ames-Kimball has been an ABC Western Michigan member since 1985. On ABC Western Michigan’s current partner page, the West Michigan Construction Institute is listed as a Premier Partner and Owen-Ames-Kimball is listed as a Featured Partner.

So the board’s vice president runs a construction-industry institute that operates in the demolition estimator’s former warehouse and sits inside the same trade association the estimator pays into. Before Schottke led the institute, she was ABC Western Michigan’s vice president of workforce development.

None of that appears in the Kent ISD board records Clutch Justice reviewed. There is no recorded disclosure from Schottke on the nature center votes, no abstention, and no explanation of how the district handled the relationship. Kent ISD also has not made public what agreement authorized Owen-Ames-Kimball’s estimate work, whether the demolition was competitively bid, or who won the contract. The district’s bid threshold is $31,321.

This is a public body spending public money on a contractor in a relationship the public was never told about. Kent ISD needs to answer for that, on the record, at the next meeting.

The Acme Township connection

The connections do not stop at the construction side.

The Land Conservancy’s vice chair is Tim Stoepker, a retired Dickinson Wright land-use and zoning attorney. In the 2000s he represented Meijer in its fight with Acme Township in Grand Traverse County, when township officials opposed a new store. Meijer secretly spent more than $100,000 on lawyers and a public relations firm to fight a 2005 township referendum and back a 2007 effort to recall the township board. Meijer acknowledged in 2008 that it violated state law and settled with the township residents’ group for $1.5 million. The Attorney Grievance Commission later filed a complaint against Stoepker over his deposition testimony; a hearing panel dismissed it in 2014.

The PR firm Stoepker hired for that campaign was the Grand Rapids firm now operating as SeyferthPR. On November 17, 2025, three days after the Conservancy told Kent ISD it would build a nature center communications plan with its own PR consultant, the Kent ISD board approved a $148,508.55 payment to SeyferthPR for millage campaign work. The joint communications plan names the Conservancy’s PR consultant by role, not by name.

What the fence says now

Residents posted photos from the property this week. A Land Conservancy sign on the trail says the property is in the process of transferring from Kent ISD and will not be fully under the Conservancy’s care until spring 2027. It says the trails remain open.

Down the line, a chain-link fence carries a bilingual private property, no trespassing sign, and a printed notice that reads temporarily closed for construction.

Two signs, two messages, on land the public still owns until closing. That is the transparency problem in one frame.

Twelve boards can fix this board

Kent ISD board members are not elected by the public. They are chosen by designees from the 20 constituent school boards, which is exactly why the public has had so little leverage. The same statute that sets that up also provides the way out.

Under MCL 380.614a(2), a Kent ISD board member can be removed by the boards of the constituent districts if a majority of those boards plus one adopt resolutions requesting removal and file them with the ISD board secretary within a 60-day period. A majority of 20 is 11. Plus one is 12.

Most of those boards meet monthly, and every one of them takes public comment. That is where this goes next: residents asking their own local school board, the one they actually elect, to adopt a removal resolution. A vacancy created by removal is filled by the remaining Kent ISD board members until the next biennial election, so the math matters. Featherston, the lone no vote, would be one of the people choosing replacements.

A voter recall also exists under the same statute, but it requires signatures equal to 25 percent of the gubernatorial vote across all 20 districts, a separate petition for each member, and an election no sooner than 2027. The governor can also remove a member under MCL 380.619 on verified written charges. The constituent-board path is the one that moves on a timeline that matters.

What happens next

Demolition can begin Monday, November 2. A complaint to the Michigan Attorney General’s Charitable Trust Section about the transfer is under review.

The Kent ISD board meets November 16 at 4 p.m. at the Educational Service Center, 2930 Knapp Street NE, Grand Rapids. Public comment is open at every regular meeting. Bring three questions: who proposed the ten-year term, why no board member disclosed their ties to the district’s construction manager, and what agreement authorized Owen-Ames-Kimball to price a demolition before the sale was ever voted on.

Then take the fourth question to your own local school board: will you adopt a resolution?

Kent ISD had fourteen months to tell the public all of this. I am not waiting another ten years to find out how it ends.