High in the treetops above Glen Lake?
Determined opposition mounts against proposed canopy “air walk”, which seeks to thrill and educate
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
Mark Evans is nothing if not determined. The eco-tourism guide and explorer has led expeditions deep into the wild to view grizzly bears in British Columbia and whales in Antarctica, and has developed canopy walks in the Australian outback. Evans, who was raised in South Africa and lives in Canada, now has his eyes set on Leelanau County’s forests and the arboreal view of the Glen Lakes.
On a Sunday in late January, the 46-year-old who stands 5-foot-7 spent hours trudging through snowdrifts that consumed nearly half his body with every step in order to show me the route of the proposed canopy “air walk” that he wants to build along a series of forested ridges south of Big Glen Lake. The canopy walk, which would break ground this summer and be complete by 2015, would include a 2,000 foot-long steel walkway that remains level as the ground falls away and would be supported by 12 towers ranging between 60 and 120 feet in height. At least one tower would face northwest and offer a spectacular view of the eastern half of Big Glen Lake, but Evans says the structure wouldn’t be obviously visible from the lake. The development would also include a 120-car parking lot, restaurant and gift shop.
The canopy walk would be located in Kasson Township, on land west of Fritz Road, a scenic, two-lane path that curves and rises away from the Burdickville neighborhood on Big Glen Lake as it heads southeast toward M-72. Last September, Evans approached John and Wendy Martin about their 83 acres of land, which includes a “dead” cherry orchard and undulating ridges of maple, beach and ash trees. John owns the Martin Company, a successful real estate business in Glen Arbor, but the land officially belongs to Wendy, a retired schoolteacher, who was initially skeptical of Evans’ proposal.
By November, Evans had made his case to the Martins that the canopy walk — while a profitable business venture that would bring thousands of tourists to this currently undeveloped area — would also offer an educational experience for vacationers, schoolchildren and even scientists to study the forest. He spoke of collaborating with universities, and of restoring the cherry orchard using trees cloned by Archangel Ancient Trees based in nearby Copemish. The development would also preserve trees that would be felled if the Martins one day sold the land instead to a housing developer. The Martins warmed to his approach, and are currently considering selling to Evans.
One of Mark Evans’ canopy walks in Australia.
Evans previously built two canopy walks on state-owned land in remote regions of Australia: one in the Valley of the Giants in Western Australia in 1996, and another in Tasmania, in 2001. He has also helped a private landowner develop a canopy walk near Sydney, which was later sold to the Living and Leisure Australia (LLA) group. Evans says that LLA later contracted him to explore appropriate sites for canopy walks in the United States. He began looking on land adjacent to National Parks (because the view would be natural and spectacular) and settled on Lake George near the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. But in 2008 LLA dropped the project. The British-owned global conglomerate Merlin Entertainments acquired LLA in 2010.
Instead, Evans set off on his own, establishing environmental tourism ventures in British Columbia and Australia. Then last March he met Belle Tire CEO Bob Barnes on a whaling expedition in Antarctica. Barnes, who lives in Bloomfield Hills but owns a home on nearby Long Lake, became interested in the canopy walks, and invited Evans to visit northern Michigan in August and encouraged him to pursue an air walk here — potentially the first canopy walk in North America.
Evans explored suitable areas throughout the region: from Timberlee Hills to Torch Lake. Three times he also hiked the property at Sugar Loaf, the long shuttered ski resort in the middle of Leelanau County, but concluded that those locations either didn’t have the necessary tree cover or were too far from the tourism hub of Traverse City to be profitable. Then Barnes and Evans flew over the Glen Lakes in the Belle Tire executive’s helicopter, and Evans spotted four ridgelines south of Big Glen Lake. The most ideal of the ridges proved to be on the Martins’ land. Evans hiked the property in September and contacted John Martin.
“I thought that this sort of attraction would be great for northern Michigan,” said Barnes, who will help Evans secure financing, either through a bank, private investors or government support. “Mark’s the perfect guy for this because he has passion. This kind of entertainment with an educational component will teach people about forestation.”
Unified opposition
Neighbors on Fritz Road and around Burdickville and the Glen Lake vehemently disagree. They see Evans’ proposed canopy walk on land currently zoned residential as a massive development that would alter the area’s rural character, damage the pristine land, potentially impact natural vistas from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and become a gateway for future development. Kasson Township zoning administrator Mike Lanham says he has received over 100 letters and emails about the proposed canopy walk — every single one opposed to the development. Once Evans submits a formal application this spring, the township will consider whether to change its zoning and grant him a special use permit.
“My family is very concerned of the possibility that a commercial venture could be built right in the middle of this serene, residentially zoned neighborhood,” says Brad Dyksterhouse, who lives adjacent to the Martin property. “If this does get approved, it should terrify everyone in northern Michigan that this could happen in a residentially zoned area in Leelanau County.”
Dyksterhouse adds that the attention the Glen Arbor area has received since the Good Morning America TV show crowned the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore as the “Most beautiful place in America” is a likely catalyst for Evans’ proposed development.
“We kind of knew that this was going to happen when we became featured in national publications and popular television shows,” he said. “People would come in and capitalize on what we have.”
This month, the firestorm of local opposition spread to include a social media campaign targeted at stopping the canopy walk. The Friends and Neighbors of Kasson Township Facebook group launched a “Stop the Airwalk” page on Feb. 10 to rally local citizens and inform local media. In early January, following the Leelanau Enterprise’s coverage of Evans’ initial presentation to Kasson Township, the influential Glen Lake Association disseminated a scathing email to its members, expressing concern that “this developer is using words like naturalist, eco-tourism and conservationist to disguise what is essentially a commercial enterprise which would be a threat to our delicate Glen Lake watershed.” The email added, “Too often these ‘proposals’ happen in the dead of winter.”
Evans never expected such opposition. He believes that public misperceptions and erroneous media reports may have fueled the onslaught of criticism. An Enterprise story in early December suggested that the canopy walk would include night lighting, but Evans called that inaccurate. (He says the attraction would be open from morning until dusk, May through October.)
Evans also thinks the public has a misperception that the canopy walk and towers would dwarf the nearby forest and be visible from vistas in the National Lakeshore. (The Glen Lake Association newsletter pointed out that the tallest trees in the watershed are 70 feet tall, whereas the towers would be between 60 and 120 feet high.) That assumes the canopy walk would be built on flat land, which Evans categorically denies. “We never build walks on flat land,” he says. “You want the air walk on undulating topography.”
I wore cross-country skis for our tour of the property in late January, and the ridges along Evans’ proposed route proved so steep that I had to remove them to be able to safely navigate the land. In the old logging paths, deep in the valleys between ridges is where Evans wants to put the towers. The tallest trees atop the ridges were high above us. From where we stood on the forest floor, it was impossible to know whether an air walk would top the canopy.
“It’s important to me that the walk is not visible from Glen Lake,” says Evans. But he did concede that, for the walk to be a commercial success, he’d need at least one vantage point that offered a view of the water. He envisions Tower 6 as being that attraction. Tower 6, the section of the air walk closest to Big Glen Lake, may not be completely invisible. “I can’t guarantee you that you wouldn’t see it with binoculars if you knew what you were looking for. But the cellular phone tower in Glen Arbor is so much more intrusive than this would be.”
Increased traffic
Visible from the lake or not, Evans conceded that, if his canopy walk is built, traffic in Kasson Township would increase exponentially. Evans told Kasson Township in December that he would need a minimum of 500 cars a day to make the development economically viable. The parking lot in what is currently the Martins’ dead cherry orchard could hold 120 cars at once.
“There’s no doubt that this would increase traffic on Fritz Road during the six months the air walk is open,” he said. Construction of the walk could cost anywhere from $5 to $7.5 million. To recoup that, and to make a profit, Evans would charge admission of $15 per adult and $9 per child between May and October.
Such traffic is anathema to Taro Yamasaki, who built a home on Fritz Road in Burdickville because of the quiet. “It seems to me this would destroy our neighborhood,” says Yamasaki. “The houses are set back from Fritz Road. They’re not big, ostentatious houses. People come here for quiet and privacy.”
When I asked Mark Evans how his canopy walk would change the character of the neighborhood, he pointed out that change is inevitable, and that people shouldn’t expect John and Wendy Martin to sit on that undeveloped land forever. Neighbors are currently welcome to trespass and pick berries or mushrooms, but Wendy told me they shouldn’t expect to have that right forever.
“John and Wendy are going to develop that land some day, and if they do that, they’re going to cut down trees and subdivide it,” predicts Evans, who posits his forest canopy as an antidote to deforestation. “Anyone who thinks that hillside will remain as it is, they’re living in a dreamland. … On the other hand, we’re trying to restore the forest for the future.”
Neighbor Brad Dyksterhouse concedes that the Martins’ land may not always be undisturbed wilderness, but says he prefers 8-10 families moving in and clearing what trees they need to build homes over the surge in daily traffic that a canopy walk would bring.
Evans laments how the public appears to have turned against him, though he has yet to submit a formal application and has yet to stand and face the public. “The last thing I want is to build this up as us vs. them,” he says. “I’ve got no animosity toward anyone.” Evans told me he has tried reaching out to members of the Glen Lake Association and other concerned neighbors and offered to give them a tour of the property, but on more than one occasion he has encountered cold shoulders.
The canopy would supplement the majestic views and interaction with nature that the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore offers, he says.
But Ann Davey, who lives on Little Glen Lake, says there’s no need to duplicate what’s already available through the National Park and its trails. “We already have those vistas without building steel walkways or towers,” she says.
Like Dyksterhouse, Davey worries that the canopy walk will open the floodgates to more large-scale developments. She borrowed an expression that her father used in the 1960s when he testified in opposition to the introduction of the National Lakeshore: “The Arab knows that if he allows the camel to get its head inside the tent, it won’t be long before the whole camel comes inside, too. If Kasson Township allows this to happen on a quiet, rural road, it will open the door to much, much more.”
The public’s reception to his idea isn’t the only frigid factor. This winter’s extreme cold has prevented Traverse City-based engineering firm Gourdie Fraser from conducting a site survey for Evans. He originally wanted to present Kasson Township with the formal plan on Feb. 17, but that date will come and go. Now Evans is hoping to have the survey complete by late March and the application filed in April. A special community meeting — sure to be a heated one — would follow that. If Kasson approves the project, over the near unanimous objections of local citizens, Evans hopes to begin building in June or July and open North America’s first canopy air walk in June 2015.
Here’s a brief video of Mark Evans leading a tour of his proposed canopy walk site.
