The Future of Shoop Park
Nov. 7, 2025
Dear Hoy Audubon Society members and others who may be interested,
Your board of directors is well aware, but you may not be, of a large local threat to the birds that we love and other wildlife. This is happening here and now. I would like to catch you up a bit on this matter.
This concerns Shoop Park and part of the Wind Point Lighthouse property. A development group led by Craig Leipold, husband of Helen Johnson-Leipold, has concocted a plan – not yet finalized or approved – to radically remake Shoop Park golf course. They have engaged the Kaiser Group which specializes in Scottish style, sandy, wind-swept golf course courses. They evidently have an option from the City of Racine to come back with a plan to reinvigorate this golf course, which is, admittedly, rather lethargic in its amount of usage.
As you may well know, Shoop Park and the lighthouse property are an important habitat for migrating birds as well as summer-long birds and other wildlife such as butterflies, bumblebees, bats, and other pollinators. The development proposal is to create a “dunes-style” course with a wide-open landscape that offers little more than sand and wind. They would pretty much clearcut the entire part of the golf course east of Lighthouse Drive in order to give golfers an unobstructed view of the lake, as well as inviting the winds that they desire for this type of golf course.
How much damage they would do to the existing vegetation west of that road is a big question.
Naturally, this would be terrible for birds and wildlife. And with this being an important flyover, resting and refueling place for birds, you can imagine the result.
This proposal requires approvals from two different municipal bodies. The developers want to put in a 70-stall parking lot on the lighthouse property and build a new clubhouse that would either be on the village or the city side of their shared property line.
And, because the City of Racine owns the golf course property itself, naturally the city would have to approve such a drastic redevelopment.
We on the board are monitoring each legislative step along the way and attempting to minimize the future damage to bird habitat on the golf course and shoreline. But we will appreciate your help and presence as this goes on. Whenever this goes before the Racine Common Council, I think a great turnout of Audubon members and other nature lovers — regardless of what municipality people live in — would help underscore how seriously we view this threat to this valuable nature habitat. Stay tuned for more updates.
Mick Burke
Hoy Audubon president
mick.burke@hoyaudubon.org
P.S. I’d forgotten to mention that the Hoy Board of Directors authorized a study of the vegetation at Shoop Park and the edge of the lighthouse property, by a company called Natura, LLC. It’s a great catalog of those assets, and we will be placing the resulting report on the Hoy website. Click here to check it out!