Glen Arbor’s lack of affordable housing affects business — big-time!

By Linda Alice Dewey
Sun contributor

Many of Glen Arbor’s employers can’t find employees, and if things don’t change, some foresee the area’s economy drying up. Last year, three major Glen Arbor businesses — Cherry Republic (CR), Anderson’s IGA, and Leelanau Vacation Rentals (LVR) — were short an estimated total of 100 summer employees.

“We’re doing everything we can, but it isn’t enough,” says Cherry Republic owner and president, Bob Sutherland. “We just haven’t been able to find enough workers.” During the busy season — summer and Christmas — the community really turns out to help, especially its kids and retirees. “Every kid that’s 14 and breathing, we get to work in the summer,” he says.

“We really struggle so much, it’s amazing,” agrees LVR owner Ranae Ihme, whose business manages private rentals for their owners. It’s most difficult to find housekeepers, she says. “We offer $12 per hour and a $300 end of season bonus.” Even so, she says, “I could still use more.”

[E]verybody struggles for employees out here,” says Brad Anderson of Anderson’s Market. “You’re in a constant state of hiring.”

Anderson says that even with the high demand for business, the lack of a good pool of workers makes his business unstable. “When you don’t have a lot to choose from, you have a tendency to hire fringe workers, who know that they don’t have to be responsible in many ways. They feel like, ‘Well, if I don’t’ show up today, I can show up tomorrow.’ There’s [sic] no consequences, a sense of entitlement: ‘Well, I can quit here and go down the road and get a job there tomorrow, because they need people.’”

It’s a syndrome that Sutherland called “musical workers.”

“So then it’s a situation where it becomes less functional,” finishes Anderson, who would offer more services if he had more workers.

“It’s tough because it’s seasonal,” Ihme explains, “which any more is six months of the year, May to November 1. It’s not just July and August any more.” The seasonal nature of the business is something area businesses always have to deal with. But then Ihme describes the second key reason for the shortage. “The problem is that a lot of people don’t live around here and it’s easier for them to travel to Traverse City or somewhere closer to where they live.”

Ranae’s husband, Bob Ihme, owner and president of Glen Arbor Outdoor, isn’t plagued by an employee shortage during the summer, because his business is year-round. But his employees do travel a distance each day; the farthest is from Interlochen. “We also hire a lot of subcontractors,” he explains, “and some come from as far as Kingsley, up to 40 miles.”

Sutherland laments anyone’s drive, even within the county. “We’ve gotten used to it,” Sutherland confesses, “where everybody drives 15 miles to work.” Ideally, Sutherland would really like his employees to live within walking distance to work. “I just know how much easier it is when somebody lives five blocks from work, and the kid gets home and gets off the bus and walks over and checks in with mom at work.” He’d like to see his employees able to go “home to lunch, that kind of stuff.” But in reality, of his fulltime, year-round employees in Glen Arbor, only five live in the township. Two of those rent.

Anderson’s butcher drives from Lake Leelanau. “That’s where he can afford to live,” he explains, “and it’s just not ideal.”

“People are traveling from long ways,” comments Bob Ihme. “That pushes the wage level up higher. It’s easier for tradesmen to work in Traverse City than in Glen Arbor.”

We’re not talking finding homes for only lower-wage workers, either. Anderson would like to employ people anywhere from the $30-50,000 salary level. “We can’t find these people here,” Anderson states, because “they can’t live here. There’s no affordable housing, and,” he adds, “there’s no real sense of urgency from a governmental level to find a solution.”

Sutherland is in the same boat, even at the $60-80,000 range. He sees two specific needs in housing —short-term seasonal housing and long-term housing. The latter, he says, includes two parts: “year-round rentals in Empire and Glen Arbor, and affordable places that people can buy within, let’s even just say, the Glen Lake School District.”

So why aren’t workers at these levels moving in? The price of land, says Sutherland. According to former Glen Arbor Zoning Administrator Bob Hawley, the amount of available private land is limited because the town is hemmed in by the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Developers who might be interested in getting government programs involved to bring down the price of land can’t do so because Glen Arbor has no sewage system. A committee that studied the possibility of installing sewers several years ago finally gave up, says Bob Ihme, who sits on the Planning Commission, because there was no place to put a waste treatment facility.

This lack of affordable housing and the lack of infrastructure ultimately adds to business costs. “We don’t have a sewer system in this town, so we have to pay more to have our sewage removed than other cities. Our tax base is high. Our destination — any vendors have to pay more to get out here. So, you know, all those costs are part of doing business in a tourist town.” And they ultimately get passed on to the customer.

Anderson and Sutherland believe creative solutions can be found, but also feel it will take everyone working together to make it happen. Anderson holds up Suttons Bay and Northport as “two prime examples” of “an interconnectedness between the county, the township, and the business community” in making such decisions. “Do we want to have a balanced community?” he asks. “[R]ight now, it’s leaning toward unbalanced. In my opinion.”

Anderson also decries the lack of government interest in spearheading this issue. “Unless you have a proactive environment that makes it possible to allow people to live here that make an average wage or less, you’re going to continue to have businesses decline and become more and more seasonal every year…”Anderson’s complaint is that Glen Arbor’s Master Plan work is moving “at a regular, slower pace, and it really needs to be a top priority.”

“Last summer there were some public meetings about the Master Plan,” says Bob Ihme, who sits on the Planning Commission. Anderson admits that “the township’s being proactive, getting someone to look into it further to see what the community wants. That’s a step in the right direction — sending out questionnaires, interviewing business owners and residents. But, you go to these meetings and they’re well attended, mostly by seasonal residents and retirees — that’s what our population is, predominantly. They all say the same things: ‘Well, we used to have a veterinarian; we used to have an optician; we don’t have a doctor; now the pharmacy’s gone.’” [Also, we might add, a full service gas station and garage, two grocery stores, a dentist.] “A lot of them say, ‘Well, we would like to have these services here.’ Well, we would all like to have these services.”

Right now, the Planning Commission is in the process of plodding through a review of the Master Plan, which was written in 2015 and updated in 2013. “We’re up to Chapter 7 right now,” he says, of nine chapters.

Sutherland feels that it’s going to take the entire community to get things to change. “What is a community?” he queries. “We just don’t have enough people living here. We don’t have enough firemen and teachers…” He mourns the great year round outdoor recreation that isn’t being used during much of the year. “It’s a terrific place to raise a child and raise a family,” he says.

Are Anderson and Sutherland looking for growth? “Well, I think the community just needs to decide. What do they want?” Anderson answers. “Do they want to have no services, no community, and just live off the tourists in the summer? If that’s what they want, then that’s the way it will be. We have to decide as a community what they [sic] want to have.”

When asked what he foresees economically in Glen Arbor in the next three to five years if local governments continue at the current pace, Anderson replies, “I see [that] some of the fringe businesses that are struggling or [are] more seasonal will continue to dry up, so there will be less variety. Our community will become less desirable for tourists that visit the area, because they’ll see similar type towns — like Suttons Bay, like Northport — that are reinvesting in their community, that are reinvesting in affordable housing, that will be able to provide more services to the tourist in a similar location. So the tourist will say, ‘You know, I need to have access to my medications. I feel safer in a community with medical professionals. When I plan my vacation, I’m going to go to these areas, and then maybe drive by or visit the other areas that have less amenities.’ As these properties become more and more valuable on the lake — maybe they’re a second, third or fourth home for these people that come for a few weeks in the summer and don’t rent their place out — there will be less and less opportunities for business in this community.”

But it isn’t all doom and gloom. Sutherland’s Cherry Republic isn’t waiting for things to happen. In the next issue of the Sun, he shares ideas his company is already implementing, along with possibilities all three employers see for improving the situation. There are answers — other communities similar to Glen Arbor have faced the same problems and figured out solutions. Find out more in the next issue of the Sun.