Lease Lapse Fixed for George K. Pinney County Park

George K. Pinney County Park is in the foreground in this file photo by Brett Kosmider.

“We actually don’t own it,” said Dan Austad, a county board supervisor and chair of the Door County Parks and Facilities Committee, referring to a little-known fact about George K. Pinney County Park in Sevastopol, located just south of Little Harbor. Though it bears the name of a county park, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) owns the land.

The lease between the DNR and the County of Door began March 1, 1994, for an initial term of 20 years and has been extended as a holdover lease annually by mutual assent since that lease expired Feb. 28, 2014. The Door County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a new 20-year lease for a fee of $1 – the new lease will expire Feb. 28, 2034 – during its Dec. 14 meeting. 

“This was sort of an ‘oops’ by the state and county, letting the lease expire and continuing year to year,” said Grant Thomas, corporation counsel, prior to the vote. “This is correcting that and bridging the gap when it expired and entering another long-term lease.”

Though the DNR owns the property, the lease grants that the land is officially part of the Door County park system and that the county is responsible in every way for development, repair, replacement, removal, construction and maintenance of the public park and launch facility, just as it would be for any county-owned park.