University of Iowa seeking public feedback on Macbride nature area use, lease

IOWA CITY — Months into an evaluation of its use and lease of the 485-acre Macbride Nature Recreation Area that for generations has hosted researchers, naturalists and students, the University of Iowa reports a committee leading the review is on track to submit its final report to UI President Barbara Wilson by May 1.

Having committed last June to “engage the community” in the review of its use of the nature area — under a lease from the Army Corps of Engineers — the university on Feb. 13 said campus community members could submit input by March 14 by email to MNRA-feedback@uiowa.edu.

The update came after community members in late January and early February contacted the administration to ask how the public was being engaged in the Macbride review “to ensure fiscal sustainability and consistency with the university’s mission.”

“The committee’s report is due in three months, and I am concerned that I have not heard anything about a public forum or a solicitation of written comments from the public,” Connie Mutel wrote Jan. 28 to President Wilson.

Mutel, a retired senior science writer for the UI-based IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering laboratory, told Wilson in her letter that community members had reached out to her — given her experience in environmental writing — asking how they could express support for continued use of the Macbride Nature Recreation Area.

“I haven’t known how to respond to these inquiries, but I am concerned about the apparent lack of transparency regarding the committee’s considerations,” she wrote. “An appearance of secretive proceedings cannot serve the UI well. Iowans rightly view the UI as a public institution, paid for by taxpayers, focusing on teaching, research, and public service. They want to be heard about important matters.”

‘Disappointing but understandable’

The UI announced its 10-member committee review of the Macbride lease months after deciding not to go through with a plan to transfer the over $1 million in costs for using and maintaining the area from the UI College of Education to the campus’ general fund.

In sharing that budget news with his staff last March, College of Education Dean Daniel Clay said, "This is disappointing but understandable given the institutional priorities and limited resources.” At the time, Clay said his college would explore the possibility of running its popular UI Wild programs — including School of the Wild and the Iowa Raptor Project — at other locations.

Several weeks later, a UI staffer asked Clay about a rumor the university was notifying the Corps it was not going to continue its lease when it expires in 2029. “I do not know if a final decision on that has been made by the university or not,” Clay said.

The current extension of the lease for hundreds of acres bordered by Coralville Lake and Lake Macbride — dating to the 1960s — includes a clause letting the university exit the deal with three years’ notice.

An Army Corps spokesman told The Gazette last summer that UI administrators had not shared intentions to exit the lease but they did inform the Corps the campus was “conducting a standard institutional review of MNRA use, long-term needs, and financial viability as a university site.“

Some of the bigger expenses associated with maintenance of the area came after the 2020 derecho or after the Iowa Raptor Center caught fire a year ago, officials have said.

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The 10-member committee reviewing the lease has been organized into three focus areas: finance and history; academics; and external groups.

The committee — which includes no MNRA staff members — has been collecting data usage and future maintenance and operational costs. Its members have conducted a site visit and are compiling statements from a “variety of campus stakeholders.”

‘Where is the ingenuity?’

In submitting her feedback about the nature area to the committee, Mutel emphasized the “special character of MNRA’s landscape” and its unique offerings to “UI staff, students, and Iowans past, present, and future.”

“Each year thousands of youngsters (potential future UI students) are primed for ‘transformative educational experiences’ in UI WILD programs, guided by hundreds of UI students working as instructors or completing elementary education practicums,” Mutel wrote. “Transformative experiences are enhanced by MNRA’s ancient plant communities surrounded by expansive waters and vistas that create a sense of wildness while being fewer than 10 miles from multiple urban amenities.”

Citing the creation of a new UI School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability — debuting this fall — Mutel asked, “I wonder if a high-quality natural area like MNRA, so close to the university, might become a prime element of the (the new school) and the diverse subject matter and career paths it envisions?”

Bradley Freidhof, interim director of the Johnson County Conservation Board, also recently wrote to Wilson about the recreation area, urging “new and innovative thinking, different perspectives than those that have gotten us to this point.”

“Where is the ingenuity and innovation? What has been done to consider collaborative learning opportunities?” Freidhof wrote. “What about initiating a partnership with the Kirkwood Community College trade programs to repair and restore structures? Utilization of the engineering department to explore alternative surfacing of the roadways? The Urban and Regional Planning program completing a traffic study to determine the need for a hard surface roadway?”

Addressing the financial cost of keeping the Macbride lease, Freidhof pointed to the human and environmental toll of losing it.

“We need to encourage students, faculty, and community members to drive, bike, or hike out to MNRA in order to embrace the mental and physical health care opportunities it provides us every day,” he wrote.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com