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Sleeping Bear Gateways study shows need for seasonal workforce housing
NewsEach summer, more than 1,000 workers look for seasonal housing in order to take jobs in Leelanau and Benzie Counties, according to a new study funded by the Sleeping Bear Gateways Council. Businesses in gateway communities from Glen Arbor to Thompsonville say the lack of housing for summer employees may limit the services they can offer their customers.
Reporting from the most beautiful newspaper delivery route in the world
NewsWhat it’s like to launch, edit, and write your own small-town newspaper. This story was originally published in The Boardman Review.
Riding Out the Pandemic
NewsBy Kathleen Stocking Sun contributor March is a dead month in Northern Michigan. In March 2020, when the pandemic hit, the snow fell like little gray feathers for days. I live in housing for senior citizens in Traverse City, a tiny apartment two blocks from Grand Traverse Bay. Older people with underlying health conditions, we were […]
Adapting to COVID: Leland’s Bluebird moves outdoors, reclaims parking lot
NewsAs the State-mandated closing of all restaurants eased up over Memorial Day, business owners scrambled to come up with solutions for this topsy turvy summer season, knowing full well that indoor seating would be either eliminated or reduced dramatically in their desire to serve safely. For Skip Telgard, owner of The Blue Bird and The Early Bird in Leland, opened 80 years ago by his grandfather and ever since beloved fixtures in the county, the solution materialized through a phone call from the State Liquor Control Commission.
Using riprap rock to save a lawn on Glen Lake
NewsMichelle and Greg Christensen bought their house on the east side of Big Glen Lake in September 2016, when they still had a sandy beach. Within a couple years the rising water had claimed the beach and threatened to erode and devour their grass lawn. They hired Len Allgaier of Peninsula Pavers in 2018 to install stone riprap to protect their lawn.
Private beach wall could dramatically change Empire shoreline
NewsThe Storm Hill Homeowners Association, whose properties are located on the high ground between Empire’s public beach and the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore’s Empire Bluff, applied in June to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a permit to armor the base of their bluff near the shoreline with a 740-foot-long steel seawall along 6 properties—that’s the length equivalent of 2.5 football fields.
Fight COVID. Fight plastic. Wear cloth masks.
NewsInvasive PPE masks routinely defile oceans but rarely the Glen Lakes. “Fight invaders,” says Jack Beam. “Fight COVID. Fight plastic. Wear washable cloth masks.”
Please don’t come to Leelanau County
NewsKurt Luedtke, who died on August 9 at age 80, wrote this tongue-and-cheek essay about 30 years ago. The Glen Arbor Sun republished it in 2011 after the Sleeping Bear Dunes was selected “The Most Beautiful Place in America” by the Good Morning America TV show. Luedtke was a former executive editor of the Detroit Free Press, wrote the screenplay Absence of Malice, and won the Academy Award for his screenplay of Out of Africa. He and his wife Eleanor lived for decades at The Homestead where they were the original owners of a condominium in the “Wilderness” neighborhood.
Afraid of COVID in the city? Buy a home in Leelanau
NewsThe Nickeys and other working families are deciding that now is the time to buy their home in Leelanau County, in part because of the Coronavirus and the inconvenience of living in a big city during this trying time of physical distancing. “The pandemic has levied a huge human toll on the world,” said Ian Nickey. “During this time we have realized, as a country, the possibilities of remote work and that we can be just as productive away from the office while also attending to ‘the real business of life’.”
Racist road commissioner resigns. What’s next?
NewsIn the wake of former Leelanau County Road Commissioner Tom Eckerle’s public racist tirade, and subsequent resignation, activists are pondering whether to launch a movement to change the name of Eckerle Road, a small stretch of road just south of Suttons Bay, and coincidentally where the Leelanau County Road Commission sits. Here’s what it would take to change the road name.