Can the cozy feel of Empire expand across M-22?

By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor

Bob Sutherland first considered the vacant meadow across from the National Park Visitor’s Center in Empire as the possible site for a warehouse. Except for hosting the Dunegrass & Blues Festival for the past 6 years, the property has been empty and for sale for a long time. “But it wasn’t an appropriate land use, especially when other buildings were available,” said Sutherland. He went on to lease the Salisbury pole building on Fisher St. to be the new Cherry Republic warehouse, but Sutherland’s interest in the “Dunegrass” meadow continued. After seeking other investors, Bob Sutherland joined into a partnership with Empire locals Robert Foulkes (the guy who saved a couple of great old houses from demolition by literally moving them from Park property into Empire), Ben Weese, and a few unnamed others. Now the trio, officially named the Quercus Alba Partnership L.L.C., wants to expand Empire’s physical layout into that “Dunegrass” meadow. They closed on the property on June 7, and according to Sutherland, the next step is to come up with some creative drawings and a development concept to take to the Village of Empire this fall. “In 1894 Empire set streets and alleys and where 50-foot lots could be,” says Sutherland. “Now it’s time to expand the village concept with that same plan of streets and alleys and intimacy. We hope people will choose to live close to the town center so they can walk to the post office, the grocery store, and local restaurants. This kind of model is necessary for village businesses and the village atmosphere to survive.”
Obviously the Village of Empire will have to be involved in determining the viability and the execution of such a plan, as questions of the ownership and maintenance of roads and septic systems could have an impact on the village budget and the Department of Public Works. “We still don’t know the number of lots we will propose,” says Sutherland, “but we hope to have a set of tentative plans and drawings with streets and blocks available for public perusal during the Leelanau Conservancy’s Empire Day in August.” The Leelanau Conservancy is in the process of buying property along both M-22 and M-72 north and east of town as part of its Gateway to Empire Project. “We want to keep the green belts around our property along M-22 (on the south) and M-72 (on the north), and we hope to work with the Conservancy to do that,” says Bob Sutherland.
Robert Foulkes envisions moving more homes from National Park property and creating another neighborhood in Empire that retains both the physical and social patterns that exist already. “There are about a dozen good houses that need to be removed from the Park over the next few years and will become available,” Foulkes says. “Unfortunately zoning changes over the years have made an exact pattern like the rest of Empire illegal for a village to replicate. New streets and lots have to be bigger than they are now in Empire. So the only way to do it is to keep it private as a P.U.D. (Planned Unit Development). Then it’s possible to deed the streets to the Village if the Village is willing to maintain them. One of the ingredients of P.U.D. zoning is that the details can be negotiated, in this case with the Village of Empire.”
Robert Foulkes is a passionate advocate for this village model. “This county has four things that express its identity,” says Foulkes, “farms, forests, lake shores, and villages. But just as with the rest of the country, we are ruining the first three by sprawling outside of villages with residences, and then we lose village life as well. The Village of Empire saw this when they zoned this property to be 90% residential and only 10% commercial. Empire doesn’t need another pole barn nor an industrial park, it needs residences and houses to grow and yet to retain its small-town feel.” Foulkes believes that expanding the village into the empty areas within it will preserve the integrity of village life. “It’s more socially friendly to be able to walk through a village to see your neighbors, to shop, to eat, to recycle. We have a nostalgia for village life as if we’ve already given up on the possibility of it! Bruce Springsteen sings about the virtue of the small town, Disney even created a model village because that’s the way people want to live, they want that physical and social pattern to anchor their lives. But to stop the sprawl and the isolation we’ve got to focus on the small!”
Neither Sutherland nor Foulkes envisions a monotonous row of small lots and identical houses in military rows. “Proposals for village design don’t exclude small lots or large lots,” says Foulkes. “The idea is just to use a “walkable village” model. Certainly feedback from the people of Empire and from the village council will influence and improve our initial plans. We’re excited to start talking and working together on this.”
Sutherland concurs. “Twenty-five years ago all of the year-around necessities were in Empire, like the doctor, the bank, the hardware store. Now some of those offerings have moved to Glen Arbor. But Empire still has the museum, the library, the ball fields, the real neighborhoods that Glen Arbor doesn’t have. Of course this won’t happen over night, it’ll be a long, slow building process with everyone’s input. But there’s a magic and an intimacy in Empire that can be shared through sensible land use that enhances the village. As we start to work with county and village zoning authorities, the vision we have is a vision of nurturing the small-town values that Empire already has.”