September 1, 1999
T.C. Rotary Club selects Nadolski for service award
The Traverse City Rotary Club has conferred its most recent Paul Harris "Service Above Self Award" to local realtor Mark Nadolski. Rotary selected Nadolski for his advocacy of local environment causes.
The Paul Harris award is named for the founder of Rotary, a Chicago lawyer who, with three other businessmen, started the organization in 1905.
Nadolski, who is associated with Coldwell-Banker Schmidt Realtors, has been instrumental in the organization and implementation of the annual Boardman River Cleanup. He has also, as a leader in the Traverse City Association of Realtors Environmental Committee, promoted the distribution of an environmental handbook for homeowners locally. This "Property Owners' Environmental Handbook" has also been used in Lapeer and Oakland Counties and in Kalamazoo. The handbook deals with such topics as soil erosion, environmental remediation, wetlands, and rivers, and may be reviewed on the worldwide web at http://www.taar.com. The committee has also promoted environmental education in local schools and environmental responsibility in real estate development through an educational workshop, and supported recycling and toxic waste collection.
Nadolski has promoted membership in the Leelanau Conservancy by helping to create and support a program in which gift memberships in the Leelanau Land Conservancy are offered to real estate purchasers. As of April of 1998, 144 new members had been added to the conservancy as a result. He has helped to create conservation easements locally. One such easement in Kalkaska County resulted in the second largest tract ever protected by an easement to the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy. At 472 acres, it contains the headwaters of Waterhole Creek, a tributary of the Manistee River, and is a haven for species such as wild turkey, hawks, deer, and foxes. Nadolski also helped to preserve another 160 acre tract in the same area with a conservation easement, and helped to preserve 80 acres on the Old Mission Peninsula with another easement, as well as with remediation of contamination on the property.
He has helped to found Protect the Peninsula in 1979 and the Old Mission Conservancy in 1988. He worked to help the State of Michigan acquire 500 acres of parkland on the tip of the Old Mission Peninsula.
The Rotary Club of Traverse City has contributed $1000 to the Rotary Foundation in Mark Nadolski's name for the furtherance of educational and humanitarian projects.