Glen Arbor’s Old School gets new life, as vacation rental
From staff reports
Glen Arbor’s iconic Old School house, rebuilt in 1932 and in service as a school until 1967, has been purchased by Carl Ballou, who plans to convert the iconic red brick building into a two-unit vacation rental.
Ballou, a downstate resident who is moving full-time to Glen Arbor, has stripped much of the building’s interior and hopes to complete the renovation by June. He’ll call the rental “Arbor School”.
“This will be a good addition to the community, and add more vibrancy to downtown and support for businesses,” said Ballou. “There’s a need in Glen Arbor for more vacation accommodations.”
Ballou emphasized that “Arbor School” will not be a hotel. He’ll rent out the two units on a weekly basis during the summer, for a minimum of three nights during the spring and fall shoulder seasons, and two nights minimum during the winter. Each unit is big enough to house a couple or a small family. The building’s exterior and entryway will retain their historic “old school” feel, said Ballou. The interior and two units will adopt an “urban loft” style.
Old School history
The Glen Arbor schoolhouse was rebuilt in 1932 after another schoolhouse on the same plot burned down the previous year. The new building shuffled students in and out until the 1967-68 school year, after which nearby village schoolhouses merged into Glen Lake Community Schools. Read more about the school’s history here.
Locals who attended school in Glen Arbor included Ballou’s excavator John Stanz and longtime Glen Arbor Township Hall custodian Leonard Thoreson, now 94, who used to ride his bicycle by the school house. Thoreson identified burn marks in the floor from a custodian who used to smoke cigars in the schoolhouse in the 1940s.
Thoreson remembered that students used to cross the street to the Township Hall in the afternoons to play basketball. Once the hall was so cold that ice had formed on the floor. A maintenance worker from the school drilled a small hole in the floor to drain the water.
Master electrician Bill MacLachlan ran a television and appliance repair business in the schoolhouse in the late 1960s and early ’70s together with Dan Oberschulte (as well as an evening coffee house with entertainment) before MacLachlan converted it into a hardware store in 1973. Old School Hardware closed in 2000.
Jan and Dan Semple bought the building from MacLachlan in 1999 after they sold Glen Eden resort on Big Glen Lake. The Semples leased the schoolhouse first to John Velis and Big Water Media, then to Paul and Marcia Walters and Terry and Linda Gretzema who ran the Glen Arbor Athletic Club from 2003-2013 (later acquired by Mark and Jennifer Cundiff), then to an artist consortium including Paul Czamanske and Carol Spaulding. TRX trainer Stacy Jago taught classes in the building before she moved in May 2020 to the old schoolhouse in Maple City, owned by Broomstack and Leelanau Curling Club.
The Semples’ favorite memories of the building include locals stopping by and sharing their stories of attending school there. The wood floor still has small circular holes where the desk pedestals were drilled.
The Glen Arbor Schoolhouse sat vacant again until the Semples sold it to Ballou late in 2020.
