In 1873, as a result of the Homestead Act, my great-great-great grandfather, of French-Canadian descent, was awarded 160 acres of land in Leelanau County, Michigan for military service in the Civil War. Since then, Northern Michigan has been special to my family, and looking around at the landscape—its pine-studded bluffs overlooking the clearest blue lakes—it’s not difficult to see why.
America is known for its English-Protestant roots, for the pilgrims who settled the Eastern seaboard and the Anglos who descended from them. But America has a French-Catholic history, too, and Northern Michigan is a central location in that history. To this day, churches dedicated to Catholic saints and the Holy Family dot the land, reminding us of the loggers who worshiped in them and the Jesuits missionaries who served them, as far back as the seventeenth century.
Of course, families, towns, and landscapes change through the years, as they should. But change and growth should honor the histories and charms that make such places unique; otherwise cities start to feel corporate, soulless, and indistinct. Traverse City, it seems, is experiencing this first-hand. A recent piece in the Michigan Enjoyer lamented the utilitarian steel buildings and weed shops that are proliferating in the city, harming its sense of “rootedness” and subsuming it into the “global monoculture.” Will these types of changes come for the rest of Northern Michigan, too? And will residents have a say in what happens to their places?
Harbor Springs, O.W. Root pointed out, is “still a lake town” like Traverse City used to be. It’s still a place where principles like localism and tradition are important. But that could change. Unfortunately, some of the mechanisms that have weakened Traverse City’s “Up North” feel could be headed for Harbor Springs, and many residents feel they’ve been silenced from expressing concerns about them. Could the changes be part of a broader power-grab movement, on the part of central planning, over the small but beloved vacation towns that make America special?
New zoning changes in Harbor Springs that were approved on May 20 are related to the city’s pursuit of Redevelopment Ready Community (RRC) certification—a certification which, it is no coincidence to point out, Traverse City earned a few years ago in 2018. RRC, a quasi-governmental state program, encourages regions to develop more and to develop uniformly, tying grants and funding from Lansing to local governments’ willingness to comply with its “best practices.”
It’s the type of initiative that could perhaps be a godsend for struggling post-industrial cities in Michigan like Flint, Saginaw, and Inkster, where the decline of manufacturing activity has led to infrastructural disintegration and poverty. But it doesn’t make much sense in Harbor Springs, where the quaint, historic main street is an important tourist attraction and where per-capita income is much higher than the state average.
What’s more, these zoning changes will be the most significant code revisions in the city since 1976, and, fearful over what’s happening in Traverse City, many residents are questioning their logic. Unfortunately for those residents—and perhaps conveniently for Lansing—many of them also feel they are being stifled from voicing their concerns.
On May 6, two weeks before the final vote, Harbor Springs convened a special hearing, at some residents’ request, to discuss the zoning ordinances. But according to a July 10 letter to the editor in Harbor Light News, the mayor, Matthew Bugara, said that he would order city police to eject from that hearing any residents who would mention the RRC programming to which the zoning changes are connected.
Paraphrasing Bugara, Mike and Mauri Kilbourne wrote that while the mayor was allowing the hearing to occur, “he also said that if anyone ‘even mentions the RRC, he would have the City police there to escort that person or persons out of the meeting.’” The couple concluded, “With so much of the zoning ordinance intertwined with the RRC, it makes one wonder what was really going on.”
Next to the Kilbourne’s letter in the same July 10 edition, another letter, from the paper’s editor, Charles O’Neill, paralleled Bugara’s moratorium, banning future letters related to the new zoning changes. “This will be the end of Letters published by this newspaper on that issue, from either viewpoint,” he wrote, pointing out that he’d already devoted sufficient space to the topic.
O’Neill may have reasonable concerns about how his paper’s finite space is allocated. But at the same time, it’s not hyperbole to say that the city is silencing residents, both in meetings and the local press, from speaking on a topic that will affect their daily lives.
They’re also playing publicity games, some say. After being silenced at the May 6th hearing from mentioning RRC and banned from addressing zoning changes in the local newspaper, residents’ only recourse has been to pursue a referendum on the November ballot to reverse the ordinance. But even that process has uncovered a certain shadiness that violates the spirit of “transparency” Harbor Springs claims is driving its pursuit of RRC certification.
The referendum will indeed be on the ballot in November, but only after a strange cat-and-mouse game transpired. After residents gained the requisite number of signatures on a petition to put the referendum on the ballot, the city clerk, Nick Whitaker, initially denied the petition on a technicality, following back-room conversations. “The City of Harbor Springs deemed a petition to put a referendum on the November ballot defective, despite having more than the necessary number of signatures needed,” wrote Karly Graham in the Petoskey New-Review. “A total of 349 valid signatures were collected for the referendum, but because the submitted petition was not delivered and addressed to the city council, the city denied the petition.”
But Graham further reports that the “cover letter of the petition, which was submitted by Mark Wagoner, was addressed to all members of city council, and the start of the letter reads, ‘Dear Members of the City of Harbor Springs City Council,’ according to agenda materials.” Thus, Graham’s account seems to contradict Whitaker’s claim that the petition was not addressed correctly. To make matters worse, residents may never understand what drove Whitaker’s conclusion about Wagoner’s letter, since the legal opinion that somehow enabled it was “considered during closed session,” Graham reports.
The referendum is now on the November ballot anyways, despite originally being denied, thanks to a special favor from the city council. But what was their purpose in pretending the petition was invalid, only to then put it on the ballot anyways? Was it to paint themselves as clement, merciful heroes, and its signatories as backwards ingrates?
“We live in a democracy, and as much as this pains me to put this on the ballot, I truly think it’s the right decision,” said council member Michael Berhmann, melodramatically, in what can only be considered a tone of ingratiating noblesse oblige if the reporting from Graham about Wagoner’s letter is correct.
My cousin, Jay Kenney, is involved in an effort called “We Love Harbor Springs,” a PAC that’s raised questions about the ordinance and transparency surrounding it. He thinks the situation is a PR stunt. “They wanted to look like the good guys and make it seem like we were idiots for not doing referendum right. Even though we did,” he texted me.
People like Jay, who question the wisdom of the zoning changes—and even the integrity of the council advancing it—will have to wait until November to see if neighbors in Harbor Springs share their hesitations. But in the meantime, these concerned citizens shouldn’t be blocked by fabricated technicalities from participating in the democratic process when policy changes threaten their neighborhoods. And they shouldn’t be made to feel stupid for not wanting Harbor Springs to turn into Traverse City.
Residents in the Cherry Capital lament what their home is becoming. Meanwhile, in Harbor Springs, where the iconic main street is crowned by the nineteenth-century Holy Childhood of Jesus Catholic Church, neighbors gather to pray that “the global monoculture that flattens every place it conquers” can be stopped. Please God, don’t let it come for towns like Charlevoix, Leland, and Harbor Springs, where veterans settled peacefully after the Homestead Act, and where beauty and history, to some degree, still persist.
Image via Flickr
This is just a rerun of urban renewal, where larger governments use combinations of force and bags of money to destroy communities. What’s truly diabolical is that at least in the 1960s the targets in general were places that were truly struggling, now they’re deliberately targeting in many cases places that are doing fine. The end result is going to be the same. Unless you’re going to try to ban people from leaving, if you destroy what makes a place attractive that’s what they’re going to do…
Great article – a tragedy for these communities if the mayor & his associates get their way – tragic for those of us who thoroughly enjoy an afternoon stroll down Main St & finding those specialty items in the lovely shoppes then he a lunch or dinner at one of the eateries ! Traverse City has lost its ambiance – sometimes The best thing to do for a community is to Leave It Alone & let it be what it is !!!
The Northern Lower Peninsula will continue to become more widely known and accessible to wealth and capital. All of us living up here can expect to see Traverse City become more like Ann Arbor with knock-on effects to all the other lake towns. The economic reality aside – readers sympathetic to this story should remember that the people who lived here before the Homestead Act were also displeased by the arrival of “the global monoculture that flattens every place it conquers.”
Ridiculous comparison
Well said
This can be addressed at the ballot box. Be cognizant of who you are elevating into positions of public trust. Ensure they support the constituency, not the just corporate dollars.
Even the “lowest” offices have the control that we give them.
Truth. But don’t go all OI on your area either. Too much of a bad thing can go both ways. Get to the community meetings and see and hear what’s being talked about. Then vote.
The vast majority do not show up at these meeting unless a topic has some kind of personal effect on them, not the good of the whole community.
It’s all a short term boom. Dropping birth rates, lower wealth levels for younger generations, and a local economy focused on service industries leads to a very precarious balance
I hate to get overly partisan here, but I must point out the overwhelmingly obvious:
Democrats up north need to stop voting for ideas coming out of the places that make everyone outside our State, think Michigan is merely a suburb of Detroit. If they keep voting for the corrupt Karens that want to run our lives, Northern Michigan will cease to be what makes it a place people want to go to.
If Republicans had any power in this State, I’d be encouraging them to stop voting for corporate interests, but that’s not where we are right now, and everyone knows it.
If Harbor Springs goes, it won’t be long before my home in Boyne City gets screwed up as well!
Boyne City isn’t really much like Harbor Springs comparing all sorts of socioeconomic metrics. You think Harbor Springs would sign up for the floating carnival act known as Pirate Fest, for example? All the cool kids are in Advance (except for Karentown aka Somerset Pointe). Keep Porter Creek clean!
What has happened in Traverse City in the last few decades is so sad. It was once a Beautiful Resort town that offered visitors peace of mind and relaxation…Now it offers nothing but the Big City Hussle and traffic jams.
It would be a Horrific loss if that type of environment were to be allowed to take over the entire surrounding area in the name of big investment companies.
We need to preserve the Beauty of our natural resources across Michigan. 🌞
Densification is a responsible strategy for reducing our reliance on harmful car-centric policies, especially in places that will continue to be desirable to live in. Low density zoning in such places is irresponsible and throws the rest of a surrounding region under the bus. We don’t need defacto gated communities supported by the surrounding degraded region.
Then live in an urban area- don’t urbanize the wild.
It’s disgusting how city councils, in positions to make positive changes enhancing the lives of the residents and their landscapes, choose to be sheep following whatever is the latest corporate influences. Their weak will and errant focus on building ugly structures in the name of progress; allowing weed shops to perforate the area; while losing sight of essential qualities that make these Northern cities appealing, is tragic. They are like children playing with matches and, in the aftermath of an uncontrollable fire, will look back on the destruction they contributed to without accepting any accountability. One of the comments mentioned being wise enough to elect the right people in those positions. I couldn’t agree more.
I mean what else are you supposed to do? Just not build housing or sprawl out forever when a lot of people want to live in the area and it’s expensive? Everyone’s kid who grows up in the traverse city region gets priced out.
The tourist economy is not sustainable for TC
I don’t agree with building those hideous buildings that they build today and I think proper buildings should be mandated again. I’m Guatemala some architects made a modern town that has colonial Spanish influenced architecture and it’s gorgeous the US needs to do that again.
But the people in the article and in most of the comments have an archaic Boomer mentality where they think ‘because things are perfect for them’ it’s perfect for everyone.
There’s pros and cons to both sprawling urbanism (more single family homes over a large space) and trying to density towns, but regardless if a place is desired more must be build.
As Don Henley of the Eagles sang in The Last Resort, ” call someplace paradise and you can kiss it goodbye.
My wife was born raised in old TC family living by old the court house.
TC is just another ugly Plymouth/Canton/Auburn Hills/Novi.
As a local to Petoskey(near harbor springs) and my wife who works for someone who owns a business downtown harbor springs. I find this article to be quite narrow minded. Many of the people advocating for this change are the people that don’t have million dollar houses on the lake, and what to live in the place where they were born. My wife’s boss who owns a business downtown can’t even live in town because it’s so expensive, and can’t vote on any of this because they are forced to life out of town because its the only option.
Instead you have people from down state buying up the houses and making it impossible for a middle class family to live in the places they are from. It is not the buildings that make a town, its the people that know the place, know the history and the culture of the town. But it sounds like you’d rather have the buildings than people that actually care about the town.
All I see in this and in the comments are entitled people that what to keep others less fortunate out of their towns.
I agree building large apartment buildings that are eyesores is disheartening. very short sighted to see this zoning change, which is to help make more housing available to the people that love what makes harbor springs, harbor springs, only in a negative light.
Right on, totally. I live in Grand Haven. Like TC it is on Lake Michigan and serves as a de facto mental health spa for the region and beyond. People want live in my city but can’t afford to because of the worst forms of ugly elitism. America needs housing and zoning reform. This can deliver a win for everyone. The staus quo in America harms everyone.
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