The Big Three: Parking, Branding, and Housing

Sleeping Bear Gateways Council is working to tackle the challenges faced by dunes-adjacent communities

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore draws a staggering 1.5+ million visitors every year. Managing that level of tourist traffic poses a challenge for the area’s small gateway communities, those within the 30-mile swath between Frankfort and Leland that serve as park access points.

Local nonprofit group Sleeping Bear Gateways Council (SBGC) is dedicated to mitigating those challenges. Founded in the 1960s as the Citizens Council of the Sleeping Bear Dunes area, SBGC was assembled in response to the creation of the National Lakeshore, whose boundaries often encroached on surrounding landowners and communities.

“There was a great need for [it], because people didn’t know what their rights were. So, that was our place at the table as an organization,” SBGC board member Mike Rivard explains..

For nearly 60 years, SBGC played an active role in supporting landowners in navigating issues of park boundaries and private property rights. By the late 2010s, however, the park had matured and there was less push to acquire more land, which resulted in a decreased need for that organization’s expertise. Several veteran members took the opportunity to reposition.

“The board decided to transform into an advocacy organization to assist those gateway communities,” Rivard notes.

Parking

With a seasonal influx of nearly 300,000 people to the region, a key project for the SBGC is maximizing parking space, particularly in Glen Arbor and communities towards the lakeshore’s center.

To achieve this, the organization has explored allocating unused parking for visitors (an effort that’s been tabled for now), as well as tapping and expanding municipal ownership outlets. This initiative could involve enlisting a parking consultant, as well as coordinating with municipal officials to adapt under-utilized swaths of land.

“The [goal] would be to lay out something in character with the community, so that it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb,” he adds.

Branding

SBGC has also earmarked a potential branding initiative for the region, inspired by the Conservation Fund, wherein Sleeping Bear Dunes gateway communities could be united under a single title, for instance, “The Sleeping Bear Dunes Area,” instead of Frankfort, Glen Arbor, etc.

As Rivard notes, this strategy has proven benefits—notably, increased recognition from high-season tourists and employees planning to return. Advertising this way could also help bolster the seasonal workforce, particularly as it relates to the increasingly-formidable demographic of “work campers,” or visitors who work Up North for the summer and camp. SBGC even led a study of commutable campgrounds to determine regional RV pad and short-term rental capacities, some of which are already set for expansion.

“There’s a whole strategy about how to find and reserve available [hangers] and recruit for those kinds of workers, but it takes a dedicated effort and resources to go about formalizing it,” SBGC president Bill Witler says.

Housing

Increasingly, the most pressing issue for the SBGC’s communities is attainable housing.

It’s no secret that northern Michigan is a tough location to buy or rent long-term. In fact, recent census data names Leelanau County as the state’s most expensive housing market, with median home values clocking in at over $700,00. Per Leelanau County’s 2024 Housing Survey, the National Lakeshore’s gateway communities are also facing a serious shortage of space, with a mere 0.2 percent rental vacancy (based on Housing North’s 2023 Housing Needs Assessment).

Especially for seasonally-driven communities, that lack of housing poses further challenges to maintaining year-round infrastructure like supporting school districts, retaining residents, and attracting local employees.

“It just doesn’t work well for [developing] balanced communities,” Rivard notes.

To address this growing housing need, SBGC began by building a prototype of what attainable housing in these communities could look like, one that satisfies workforce needs without sacrificing the natural landscape.

To do this, the organization was awarded a two-year USDA Rural Development grant, through which they developed a framework for housing options in a variety of tenure structures and styles (single family homes, town houses, co-living spaces, etc.).

“We worked for two years to develop this concept that we could now go out and talk to interested [entities] about solving these [housing] problems in gateway communities. That transcended into a much larger conversation about permanent workforce housing,” Rivard explains.

Finding the right property for that concept is easier said than done. For starters, there’s the cost of buying land in northern Michigan, which, when coupled with the price of construction, far exceeds the financial threshold for most of the county’s median earners.

“To have attainable housing, the land really has to either be gifted or free,” says Rivard. “Otherwise, costs are too high.”

Then there’s the logistical framework a new development needs to operate, including infrastructural requirements, like septic connections and transportation, as well as regulatory provisions, like zoning ordinances and site management.

Still Trying

It’s that latter category, in particular, that’s proven especially tough to surmount.

A recent collaboration between the SBGC and the Glen Lake Community Schools (GLCS) district was scrapped by the school’s board in December—at least for now—due in large part to uncertainty surrounding the land’s enabling legislation.

Originally broached in summer 2023, the project would have allocated about 40 acres of a 180-acre forest plot belonging to GLCS for attainable housing geared towards public employees. The property’s enabling policy, however, MCL Act 451, strictly limits how it can be used, which, when combined with several other factors, complicated SBGC’s proposal.

The nonprofit also reports a similar recent experience when an initiative to repurpose a multi-acre swath of the Platte River Elementary School property for attainable housing was nixed on the basis of an encumbrance prohibiting property division. Nevertheless, SBGC remains optimistic in their pursuit of viable housing properties, be that building from scratch or refurbishing an existing structure.

“We got some visibility [from those discontinued projects], and at the end of the day, the study pointed out how critical rural development is and elevated the housing deficiency across all worker categories,” Witler explains.

These endeavors have also opened the door to SBGC’s next housing initiatives, which, per Witler, include a renewed focus on seeking affordable land opportunities, as well as a fresh effort to educate interested parties on the administrative and infrastructural demands of creating an attainable product.

“We’re going to focus on where the science and regulatory [aspects of housing development] can meet and work together to facilitate the kind of housing we need. Then, we can continue to search for locations in our gateway communities,” he says.

For more information on the Sleeping Bear Gateways Council and their work, visit sleepingbeargateways.org.

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