Meet Karen

Karen Conner has loved New Buffalo and Harbor Country for a long time. In fact, she was instrumental in developing the name and concept of Harbor Country. She was born, grew up and raised her own family in the area before embarking on a public relations career that included being Special Events Director in Chicago and creating the festival tradition in Chicago that has become famous world-wide.

She knows how to make her dreams come true, and one of those early dreams was the renaissance of New Buffalo and Harbor Country. Thirty years ago she saw the potential of redeveloping New Buffalo to its historical role, and that role is taking shape today.

She and Javier De La Rosa are the principals of Esperanza Developmen Group, Inc., and Walden offers comfortable traditional cottages, quality built, close to the earth and easy to manage and care for, in the last untouched heavily wooded site in New Buffalo.

This has been her consistent vision of tasteful quality since she returned to Harbor Country in 1982 and began promoting the area with Larry Bubb and the Chamber of Commerce.

She began her real estate career by purchasing traditional cottages in Union Pier and the surrounding area and bringing them back to their original idea. Along with partners, she also built cottages that replicated the 1920s look, in the spirit of the Sears Cottages that sprang up along the beach areas, simple, elegant and easy to maintain, leaving plenty of time to live the lives we come to the country to enjoy.

She continued to sell property, but always building new cottages that had a look as if they had been there forever, representing the simplicity that people loved during long summers on the shores of Lake Michigan.

She has had 22 years of experience in real estate and building in the Harbor Country area and her reputation for taste, quality and integrity is unsurpassed.

Meet Your New Home

Every effort has been made to save the beautiful trees and stay close to nature: no lawns, just natural growth, ferns, blueberry bushes, with limestone walkways and gravel road.

Carefully planned lighting is low, and along the walkways. The 22 homesites have shade and lovely, delicate filtered sunlight. You can hang your hat and enjoy the peace and natural setting.

Cottage roofs have large overhangs to protect from sun and rain. Outbuildings share the same look as the house and have outdoor showers, open to the sky. The homes have oversized screen porches and low decks that blend into the terrain.

Timeless limestone is used for walkways and entrances. Traditional board and batten siding gives a timeless feeling. There is plenty of shade, but oversize windows and skylights keep interiors bright. Plantings are natural to the area, with no lawns permitted (which means no grass to cut and more time for what you come to the woods for.)

Just sit back and enjoy your time away from it all.

Walden is maintenance free and the homes are built to save energy, with thicker walls and more insulation to keep it cool in the summer and warm in the winter at less cost.

The homes were designed to be close to the earth, with a gradual grade to the french doors that open on the living space. The name Walden simply implies a quiet, peaceful place where people can live and enjoy the woods and surroundings. Simpler, more manageable homes is a trend, a return to the past leaving plenty of time to live the lives we seek.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

— Henry David Thoreau