Old mill’s new owner: smart, young, free and open to whatever develops

By Linda Alice Dewey

Sun contributor

A former University of Michigan football player who left the New York City legal grind to follow his Glen Arbor dreams is now the proud owner of the Kelderhouse-Brammer mill on the Crystal River.

This past June, real estate attorney William Turner Booth left his position at Cantor Fitzgerald, the company which lost two-thirds of its employees on 9/11, then moved to Glen Arbor and bought the old mill on M-22 north of Glen Arbor at the bridge near County Road 675.

The job had lost its luster for Booth, who hails from Rockville, Maryland. Booth played football for Michigan, while he majored in philosophy from 2002-2006. “There aren’t a lot of professions for philosophers these days,” he admits, so he went out for pro football and was invited by the NFL to go to a summer minicamp for the Minnesota Vikings, but a previously broken foot marked him as not healthy enough. He attended law school at U of M and graduated in 2010, then headed for New York City, where the big firms are known to chew up young, new attorneys and spit them out.

“New York City finance is a grind,” Booth says. “The job wasn’t progressing in the way I was hoping. After doing that for eight years, I was looking for more, but they wanted to keep me in the same role. I considered another firm but wasn’t in love with what I was doing.”

He decided to completely change gears and move up north in Michigan, where his folks had a place at The Homestead resort as he grew up. “I always wanted to move back to Glen Arbor and permanently put roots down here of some sort,” he says. “I feel like I’m from the area.”

Booth relocated in June and currently resides at his parents’ home, where they spend half the year. The other half of the year, his father teaches law at Villanova and his semi-retired mother also practices law. Booth himself petitioned the Michigan Bar two months ago to practice real estate law here while he works on the mill. He says he’ll likely be based in Glen Arbor or Traverse City.

Like many passersby, Booth felt a sense of wonder about the old mill.

“I’ve been driving past the building for the past 35 years or so. I had fallen in love with it over the years and had been wanting to see something happen with it or just get inside it [to] poke around and explore.”

When he arrived in Glen Arbor, he decided to look into buying it. Booth contacted Bob Kuras, owner of The Homestead, who was aware of the size of the job it would take to rehabilitate the building and ultimately offered what Booth calls a “fair deal.” The deal closed on Oct. 9.

“We are pleased to know that these important structures will be restored,” said Kuras. “And we wish Turner and his team every success.”

The mill, officially designated by the State of Michigan as an historic site, has increasingly garnered attention from the community due to its deteriorating condition. Booth hopes to fix all that.

First, he plans to stabilize the building, beginning with a new roof which will be installed as early as next week. There are leakage problems with the roof over the lower part of the building, which was built more recently. “It’s that roof that’s failing the most,” he says. “The actual mill structure is sound. You can’t build things the way they used to. The thing is solid and sturdy. With a little help, it’s not going anywhere.”

The house next door was also part of the deal. Its future may be a different story, however. Significant roof damage left open for years has resulted in holes going through both floors down to the basement. A few bedrooms might be restored, says Booth. If the home is salvageable, he might live there someday. If not, restoration specialists may go in and remove some of the finely crafted amenities that can be used later. Then it may have to be torn down.

Above all, Booth hopes to restore the mill, if not to operation, at least to the point where its interior workings can be viewed by the public. What form that will take is up in the air. “I do not intend to make it private,” he says. “I’d like to share and let everyone experience it. It’s too cool not to.”

One concern for a public venue might be parking. Although the parcel includes land across M-22, Booth refuses to take down trees to create a parking lot. There is a large garage under the mill that could harbor 6-8 vehicles, but he doesn’t see this as realistic. The land the house is on is a possibility, but he won’t pave a parking lot.

Septic is not an issue, because the mill is hooked into The Homestead sewage system. However, Kuras did write certain sewage restrictions into the deed. For that reason, the only use ruled-out at this point is a brewery or distillery because of the excessive wastewater such an operation would entail. Booth is fine with that.

He is currently consulting with a plethora of restoration experts—architects and engineers, historians and builders, as well as township and county officials. He stresses that he is just in the beginning stages of learning about the property, what its restoration might entail, what the end-use possibilities might be.

The zoning is deemed “recreational,” which opens up lots of possibilities for uses. He has considered everything from making it his own residence, to a museum, to a bed and breakfast, with everything in between. All the options have been thrown around by family and friends.

“And honestly,” he adds, “I thought that I had an idea of what I wanted to do. But through the process of clearing it out (Kuras had stored seasonal items inside) and seeing how amazing the property is and how cool all the equipment is, it’s caused me to rethink everything. The plan is certainly not to remove the equipment right off the bat.”

He refers to the mill’s historic original grist millstones (1861) and the newer (1906) roller mills. “This may be the only example of both technologies in the same building,” he says. “There are three old roller mills and two sets of old millstones. Other than that, there’s all sorts of equipment that I haven’t even learned yet. I have to make sense of it all,” he continues, “hundreds of iron gears, ‘hoppers’ and ‘bolters’ and old mechanical [items], some of the old straps and chains.”

A high priority for Booth in the building’s rehabilitation will be to stay true to its original construction. “I have no intention of doing anything that would be outside rehabilitation standards,” he says. “We had a plan to reroof with what’s on it now—cedar shakes.”

Then he spoke with historian Barbara Siepker, who said, “I think it might originally have been cedar shingles.” She pointed to similar buildings built at Glen Haven around the same time.

After making some calls, Booth found out she was right.

“The goal right now,” he says, “is to restore the exterior to what it looked like when it was built and be historically accurate with what we’re doing.” Once the building is stabilized, he’ll seal or cordon off floor-to-ceiling openings where the shafts once stood. After that, the options are open.

Leelanau Historical Society’s Kim Kelderhouse’s great-great-great grandfather once owned and operated the mill. She’s happy it has been purchased by someone who cares deeply about its history. “Turner is working hard to honor the history and network with the community of history and preservation experts in Leelanau,” she says. “The mill’s beauty and legacy is near to the hearts of many people in Leelanau, and the news of Turner’s purchase is the most exciting history news in a long time.”

Booth says he wakes up at seven every day and lives just five minutes from the site. “I’m excited every morning when I get up to get out there and work on the thing,” he says. “I don’t see that wearing off any time soon. I’m looking forward to see how it develops.”

So are we.

Read this historical reflection by the late Edna Brammer, which we published in 2007, to learn more about the history of the mill. For Kelderhouse memories of the mill, click here and scroll down to reach Jim Kelderhouse’s comments.