How to Kill a Goose

Feb. 12, 2016

In an age before children’s books had lessons about diversity and blended families, there was the story of the farmer who had a goose that laid golden eggs. The farmer and his wife were delighted with the wealth the goose provided. Traverse City has such a goose in the two bays that define our geography. We have drawn people from all over the midwest as a respite from the chaos of their daily lives. Our quiet, quaint downtown was a sweet distraction from the hustle of big cities like Detroit and Chicago. For decades people here understood why we drew so many.

Like the golden goose, our eggs came reliably, yet slowly. We had a lifetime of modest riches available. But, like the farmer and his wife, we wanted more. As the various fables tell it the farmer overfed the goose hoping to get more eggs, only to have her stop laying altogether. In another version, the farmer and his wife became convinced the goose had a cache of gold inside. They dissected the goose only to find it was flesh and blood, like any other goose. We’ve started to overfeed our goose, and lately there are people with scalpels at the ready, eager to find out what’s inside.

Those of us who have been around longer than 15 years know that Front Street had more or less the same level of activity for the last 40 or so years, steadily increasing as our population grew. In the 1990s, Amical and Poppycocks were already thriving and it was just as hard to get a table on a Friday night. There were lots of people on the street in the summer and the crowds always thinned out on a cold February night.

One day, using a cost-free location and without paying any taxes, the State Theatre reopened with the help of Michael Moore. It has been an undeniable success on Front Street. There is no question that the steady growth of downtown has been fueled by the State, but one theatre didn’t make Traverse City, and if it closed tomorrow we’d still be here the next day. Yet for too many people the State Theatre and the Traverse City Film Festival have become Traverse City’s raison d’être. It could be that our area’s left-leaning political class, so long stranded in a sea of conservatism, found purchase and held on to Moore’s unabashed politics. It could be that we have a different group of newcomers who were looking for an urban setting they could mold, and found one that just happened to be on the finest waterway in the country. Whatever the reason, a new urbanism mindset — one that completely ignores our golden location — has taken hold.

Unelected City Planner Russ Soyring has steered development to remake Traverse City into a place like Birmingham, Mich. As a result of his vision our new buildings crowd within a few feet of the roadway. The windows of the new Indigo Hotel will be sprayed with debris every time a plow clears the Parkway. The Tart Trail will be in shadow until the sun clears the top of the Indigo. People of Birmingham wait all year for their one or two weeks in quaint Traverse City, and in a misguided effort to imitate their urban centers, we have turned the West Front area into something resembling a strip mall parking lot.

Soyring and his political buddies are reading papers and blogs on how to “build communities.” But those communities are land-locked in the middle of nowhere. Their traffic calming and placemaking strategies don’t work here. We don’t need to aspire to someone else’s vision of what a city should be; we already have a place, and everywhere but in the minds of certain people in Traverse City, it’s a place people love.

Now the same masters of planning want to put flashing lights in the middle of an otherwise dark area along the Bay. In a political allegiance to anything Michael Moore, there is a movement to add blinking lights to The Bijou Theatre. There is no sensible paradigm where lights would be allowed along that stretch of road. The Bijou is positioned in a shoreline park. It is along a stretch of roadway that offers a beautiful open view of the sand beach and Grand Traverse Bay beyond. From that road pedestrians and motorists can see across the bay to twinkling lights at the Centerpointe Marina, and as far as Suttons Bay. It’s a vista cities across the country would love to have. And yet Traverse City Commissioners are poised to allow chasing lights on the front of the one building situated along that landscape.

In a recent commission meeting, Russ Soyring tried to justify the chasing lights by comparing it to Times Square, as if there is any universe where Times Square can be compared to downtown TC. Oddly enough, people didn’t laugh out loud. We do have one thing in common: Tall buildings in Manhattan also extend to within a few feet of the road.

The City spent significant resources to replace the lighting across from the Bijou with something lower impact, reducing “light pollution.” Just a few years ago, the very people asking to bend the rules hosted a dark sky presentation and put the concept of light pollution into our vocabulary.

We all know one thing for sure: If it was any other enterprise, private or public, the City Commission wouldn’t have brought flashing lights to the table. Their blind political adoration of Michael Moore is allowing them to not only kill our goose; they are ready to give away the few golden eggs we have left.

Thomas Kachadurian is a photographer, designer and author. He lives on Old Mission with his wife and two children. He is a member and past president of the Traverse Area District Library Board of Trustees.