Grist mill on Crystal River will host museum, community space, potential restaurant
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
The historic, 1870s era Kelderhouse-Brammer grist mill on the Crystal River is a step closer to being reborn—potentially next summer—as a museum, a café, and a community gathering space. Turner Booth, the ambitious entrepreneur who acquired the mill from The Homestead Resort two years ago, secured a site plan approval from the Glen Arbor Planning Commission on November 5.
Booth also owns the parcel just south of the mill, which contains additional historic structures including a home, garage, stable, and an icehouse which once housed ice blocks cut from Fisher and Glen Lakes and sold during the summer.
The Planning Commission also recommended his request to rezone that parcel from residential to recreational. The rezoning bid now goes to the Leelanau County Zoning Board and then to the Glen Arbor Township Board—a process that could take 4-5 months. Booth has not committed to what he’ll do with the neighboring parcel. An inn or small restaurant somewhere on the property is a possibility that he discussed on Nov. 5.
Booth is working with Cunningham-Limp, a development, design and construction firm based with offices in both Traverse City and Novi, which worked on the Grand Traverse Commons redevelopment.
“A restaurant would be more like (the size of a) Trattoria Funistrada or La Becasse—a date spot for your anniversary—not a Boonedocks” and no outdoor beer garden and live music, Booth addressed the public at the Planning Commission meeting, in an effort to win over a few skeptics who expressed concern about the size and impact of future developments on the river. “This would not be the sort of thing that would result in excess noise or create significant problems for neighbors.”
Booth, who played football at the University of Michigan (and also majored in philosophy), worked for Cantor Fitzgerald in New York City before escaping Manhattan for Glen Arbor, where his parents owned a place at The Homestead. His initial plan to take two weeks off turned into two months, then two years.
“I don’t think I’m ever going back now,” Booth told the Glen Arbor Sun. “I’ve always been attracted to the mill. As a kid, my parents would say ‘What’s going on there? Why isn’t anyone doing anything with it?’”
While decompressing in Glen Arbor, Booth said he ran into Bob Kuras, president of the Homestead, and asked about the mill and its future. “You want to buy it?” Kuras offered. Booth hadn’t considered that, but once the idea ruminated in his head, he couldn’t shake it. “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity,” he said.
Booth said the objective of the project is to preserve the mill for another 50-100 years and find a way to give the community access to it—as a museum, as a community gathering space, or through other uses. Booth said he has talked with Kim Kelderhouse, executive director of the Leelanau Historical Society (and a descendent of the mill’s owners) and Dave Taghon of the Empire Area Museum to learn more about the mill’s history, and how local farmers once came here to grind their wheat with the original grist millstones and roller mills.
“It has so much cool character and craftsmanship going for it,” said Booth, who felt drawn by the architecture and historic elements. “It’s one of the very few mills (in the country) that have more or less complete sets of original milling equipment—stone mills from the original operation (in the 1870s) and the roller mills they installed in 1906, which took the husk off the grain before it got pulverized, resulting in white flour, which was in vogue at turn of century.”
“For me, it’s an iconic building. At one point in time it was the center of Glen Arbor. When this was an agricultural area and the town was being established, this is where people congregated. Farmers would wait in line to have their grain ground. It was where you actually saw your neighbors.”
Booth envisions a museum that showcases the milling equipment, the craftsmanship and Thomas Kelderhouse’s impressive interior woodworking.
“With minimal additions to what’s there now, you already have something that’s impressive and that people want to see.”
Booth might add plaques that show how the mill used to work. He also imagines an effort to get the mill equipment to move again.
“If you could see the old millstones turning, or the roller mills spinning, that would be pretty cool.”
The mill holds a thousand colorful stories within its walls, and Booth has heard many of them since he bought the property in 2018.
“The building was operated by three Brammer brothers, who had three separate porches so they could smoke cigars after dinner without talking to one another,” he chuckled.
Another colorful chapter of the mill was when Fred Ball owned it and ran a recording studio there in the 1970s for local musicians.
“I don’t know if it took off the way he wanted it to,” said Booth. “I found an old dust jacket for a record in what was a recording booth … One woman showed me a t-shirt she has that reads ‘Glen Arbor Roller Mills recording studio’.”
The museum, which would open next summer, would include a small shop and café—likely in the one-story annex built in the 1970s just north of the three-story mill building. The project would include a community space, perhaps in the mill’s second or third stories, where local organizations and businesses could host events. Booth emphasized that the community space would not become a wedding venue—though he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a wedding happening there at some point.
(Turner Booth’s own wedding, to his French bride Anne-Sophie, was this past March 13 in New York City—the day the Big Apple shut down for COVID.)
“The goal here is not about making money,” said Booth, who alluded to his involvement with other profitable business ventures in Traverse that involve workforce and low-income housing. “I like every project I do to have some element of social good associated with it. “If this project makes enough money to sustain itself, that’s great. But this isn’t going to be a retirement play here.”
As for the potential of a restaurant either in the mill or museum space, itself, or elsewhere on the property, Booth said he is intrigued by other historic structures he has heard about elsewhere that host small, upscale dining experiences in a mixed-use setting. Lost Kitchen, a restaurant located in a hydro-powered grist mill in Freedom, Maine, comes to mind.
A restaurant at the mill would focus on high-quality, organic fresh local ingredients, said Booth. “If people want to come get coffee and the café is a homerun—and if it supports the mill, then maybe it stays. But if there’s a perceived need for a high-end, real farm-to-table restaurant in Glen Arbor and there’s opportunity to evolve the café into a kitchen, then maybe that happens.”
“The museum is the main event,” he said. “But I could also picture having a table for two with candle light. Perhaps museum by day, restaurant by evening.”
His hope is that whatever business ventures evolve here make enough revenue to continue to preserve the grist mill, itself.
“The reason I alluded to eventual future uses is because this is a dynamic property,” said Booth. “I want to open it to the community in perpetuity. But it could evolve into having different uses.”
While Booth received unanimous support from the Planning Commission for his site plan and his bid to rezone the neighboring parcel, several members of the public voiced concern that, if turned into a commercial venue, the mill could host raucous weddings, banquets and graduation parties.
Ron Becker, who lives on the other side of the Crystal River, 150 feet from the mill, worried that the scope of Booth’s project ran afoul of Glen Arbor’s new master plan, which encourages that commercial activity be confined within the business community (in its heyday in the late 19th century the mill was an import source of commerce for farmers).
“This goes well beyond restoring the mill’s historic character,” said Becker. “What if the project sold later on to someone who doesn’t respect Glen Arbor.” Becker pointed out that the Township’s master plan adopted early in 2019 calls for no new resorts to be established in Glen Arbor, and no new businesses scattered outside the business area.
Corinne Cochran, who also lives across the river, voiced full support for Booth and his project.
“He has a vision for this, and it’s not a Boonedocks,” said Cochran. “All of us have driven by that mill through most of our lives. It’s heartbreaking that no one was doing anything with it. Most of us have never been inside. It’s the most amazing building. Turner is working very hard to keep it that way. I have great confidence, as someone who can see the mill, that this will remain a goldmine for our community.”
