Holland Energy Park™ grounds feature paved walking trails that will be integrated into the Macatawa Greenway system. This construction project gave our community the opportunity to restore a largely environmentally neglected corner of the city, preserving the surrounding wetlands and increasing community access.
Preparing the Future Home of Holland Energy Park
For decades, a 26-acre district near Windmill Island wetlands sat largely forgotten by our community. The region was one of the first settled farmlands of Holland and at one point served as a pathway for an interurban rail system to Lake Michigan. But that was nearly a century ago, and since then had collected a mix of aging, environmentally neglected industrial and residential parcels.
In 2013, HBPW and community leaders concluded a power planning process and identified a 26-acre district as the best fit for the plant, given its proximity to downtown for snowmelt support and natural gas access.
What started as a site-preparation project soon became much more – an environmental and urban renewal initiative to restore and protect the natural space, battle invasive species and remove and recycle harmful materials scattered across the site.
Award-Winning
Holland Energy Park recently received the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure’s (ISI) Envision® Platinum award recognizing the sustainability of public infrastructure. Holland Energy Park is the first-in-the-country base load power generating plant to receive an Envision rating.
Envision is a verification process specifically designed to rate the sustainability of infrastructure. The process measures five categories: Quality of Life, Leadership, Natural World, Resource Allocation, and Climate and Risk. The categories measure the positive social, economic and environmental impacts in a community throughout the planning, design and construction of infrastructure projects.
Construction of the Park
