Is a home near work in Glen Arbor an impossible dream?
Photo by Laura Ann Johnson
By Linda Alice Dewey
Sun contributor
Ever wonder why so few young families live year-round near Glen Arbor? Here’s the story of one couple who tried to live here just last year and couldn’t.
After living all over the country — from New York to Jackson Hole, Wyoming to Nashville, Tennessee with several stops along the way — Tony Finnestad heard about a job opening that might be right up his alley in northern Michigan: corporate chef for Cherry Republic in Glen Arbor. Though he knew nothing about the company or the town, he was willing to come and take a look. Positions like his didn’t come up every day, and the couple, married for just a year, had agreed that it was time to settle down.
Both Tony and his wife, Leann, are from northern Minnesota; so when they drove into Glen Arbor and looked around, they said, “We’re done. We want to put down some roots.” In April 2014, the couple moved from Nashville, and Tony started his new job, which he likes. “I oversee the café here,” he explains, “development of our retail food products for our stores, and the café in Traverse City.”
Finding a place to live was a different story. They took a room in a Traverse City hotel room while they looked for a place to rent that would serve them during the longer search for a house to buy. After finding a rental in Empire, they moved right in.
Tony and Leann loved Empire. The people were so friendly. But it didn’t take long for them to discover safety issues that forced them to look for another place. They thought they had found a place in Glen Arbor, “which was going to be great,” Finnestad adds, “because it was just a few blocks from here [work],” but tax issues forced their would-be landlady to rethink her plan.
“Then we went to the Leelanau School,” he continues. “They wanted to rent a bunk house with 10-12 bunk beds in it with just a light — no running water, no bathroom: we would have shared a bath house with other renters. We were ready to jump on that, too, because I just wanted to get out of there [the Empire rental]. The Leelanau School wanted $600 a week [it was summertime now], and it was vacant. It wasn’t like they were going to have to kick other people out for us to live there.” For what it was, that price didn’t seem reasonable to Finnestad.
As they looked further, he relates, “It got to be pretty tough … We had people here [at Cherry Republic] looking. It seemed like everything we found that was just about to work out, didn’t.”
What could they do?
“We ended up buying a camper,” a small, class-C RV with two bunk beds, “… and pitched it at the Empire Township campgrounds. I believe its $30 a day for an electric site.” There was no running water, only a communal bathroom. “You have to pay for showers,” he added — 50 cents for two minutes. But there were no electric sockets at the showers for blow dryers: his wife went back to the camper to do her hair. They had to pay to do their laundry elsewhere. Plus, they had two good-sized dogs in the camper with them, a young Lab and a German Shepherd mix.
After a few weeks, they could see that this was not going to work. “[Y]ou’re spending a lot of money each month to do all those things,” he adds. So they moved their camper to a nearby friend’s place, where they rented a campsite for the rest of the summer. “While we were living in the camper, even on the friend’s property, we were still driving to Empire Township to shower every day if we could,” or they bathed in area lakes.
A couple of months later, they found a mother-in-law suite attached to a garage in Lake Ann — a one-room affair with a kitchen, bedroom, closet and a bathroom. “Holey moley!” they said to themselves. The place was safe and clean. “They were just fantastic people … wonderful to rent from,” exclaims Finnestad. “We found them on Craig’s List.”
All this time, they had also been looking for something permanent they could buy. “Before I even started to work here,” he says, “we looked and looked and looked. We looked at six houses … There was next to nothing in Glen Arbor and Empire you could move into year-round.” Finnestad’s wife, who now manages the M-22 Store, did not have a job when they first arrived, so, “the price range [was] based on my salary alone. We were pre-approved right when we moved up here.”
They kept on with the search. “A lot of places we looked at were just in rough shape in our price range,” he remarks. They looked at the New Neighborhood, where there were vacant lots for sale but no homes. Why not build from the ground up? “Most of the winter rentals wanted a lease from October to May,” he explains, “and we thought, ‘Well, if we build a house in August and it’s done in February, we can’t afford to pay an extra four months’ rent.”
Finally, after being transient for nearly five months, they found a house on Little Platte Lake that they love and moved in late last October. Problem is, they had wanted to live in Glen Arbor, where they could be part of the community where Tony works. Plus, there’s the drive — about 25 minutes in good weather.
Other employees aren’t as lucky. “People are driving from 40-50 minutes away, that work here,” he states. “Some of the cooks who worked here last summer lived on the east side of Traverse City. We have kids from Beulah who drive here to work — Lake Ann, definitely Traverse City, Honor.”
Talk about leaving a carbon footprint.
Regarding the issue of how affordable housing might look in Glen Arbor, he comments, “I understand that the people here — especially [those] who have retired here and have second homes — I understand them wanting to maintain their property value. I don’t fault them for that … But there needs to be some sort of break…
“What’s the average age of people living in Glen Arbor?” Tony wondered aloud.
The answer is 63, as of the 2010 census.
“You’re kidding me!” he exclaims. “So who do most of these people think is going to … Who serves? Who works in the places [where] they want to come in the summer? And this is such a tourist mecca! Well, people have to live here.
“If the average age is 63, and there aren’t people moving to this area to work and to live, what does that say? What’s Glen Arbor going to be in 15 years? … We’ve met lots of people who are older than us, who are — when they hear that we moved from out of state, especially — they’re just thrilled … to see that there’s [sic] some younger energy coming into the community.
“It’s kind of a chicken and egg thing for me. It seems like it’s hard to draw people out here, because there’s a lack of housing. In addition to that, there aren’t a lot of people.”
“So then you’ve got this growing company like Cherry Republic. How do they draw employees here? Most of our marketing department that works down the street — there are five people in that department — they all live in Traverse City. So what does Cherry Republic have to pay them to get them to commute out here every day, when they could all find a similar job in Traverse City? I know Bob [Sutherland, owner] and Todd [Ciolek] work really hard to keep things local and keep things in Glen Arbor, and it’s tough. It’s tough for them.”
Finnestad has heard that, when the New Neighborhood was proposed in Empire, “It seems like there were a lot of people who were not in favor of it. But it’s not like … they didn’t build triplexes. It’s not like a little slum. They’re cute little neighborhood houses that people can afford. The yards aren’t huge; they’re not spectacular, but I certainly don’t think they’re an eyesore for anybody … Opening up housing for people like these [homes] would behoove everyone,” he says.
The question is, does Glen Arbor want growth? “To maintain and support what we have,” he declares, “there has to be growth … It has to be calculated and smart.”
“I think,” reflects Chef Finnestad, “when people hear ‘affordable housing,’ they think, Section 8 [the government rental subsidy program for low income families]. But that’s not what it means. It means, ‘I just need a safe, clean place to live where I don’t have to drive 40 minutes.’ Even 30 minutes is too far.”
