Leelanau Enterprise: Northport Hosts Third Community Housing Meeting

By Meakalia Previch-Liu, mea@leelanaunews.com

People packed into the Northport Public School gym on April 28 for the third community housing meeting organized by the Village of Northport and Leelanau Township.

Present at the meeting was leadership from both local municipalities — Leelanau Township Supervisor Barb Conley, and Northport Village Council President Chris McCann and Village Manager Jered Ottenwess — as well as representatives from area-nonprofits focused on expanding attainable housing including Beth Verhey, vice board president of New Community Vision (NCV); Jonathan Stimson of Homestretch Nonprofit Housing; and Larry Mawby of Peninsula Housing. In addition, there were builders at the event with more information about the type of projects they work on.

“It’s extremely important to have these community meetings to be able to understand what people need and for people to be able to understand what we as governments or others can do about it,” Conley said at the meeting.

Ottenwess was the first panelist to talk about the Village of Northport’s efforts of expanding attainable housing over the last year. He said the affordable housing issue is particularly acute in Leelanau County, but it’s not unique as it is a national issue.

Northport village council has addressed the need for attainable housing in specific ways, Ottenwess explained, such as by creating and approving incentive housing ordinances last year — one for a workforce housing PILOT as well as an attainable housing facilities exemption. The attainable housing facilities exemption ordinance establishes an “attainable housing district” that encompasses the entire village of Northport, with the intent being to offer a tax incentive to owners of small-scale rental housing developments (1-4 units) that are affordable to moderate-income households. The workforce housing PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) ordinance encourages the development or rehabilitation of workforce housing by exempting such projects from ad valorem property taxes and instead providing for a service charge in lieu of taxes.

Ottenwess also talked about Northport’s efforts to produce conceptual site designs of the village-owned Seventh Street and High Street properties, two locations being considered for attainable housing development. 3-D renderings of those Seventh Street and High Street conceptual development designs were available for viewing at the meeting. Ottenwess said getting feedback from the public on those designs is part of the process in figuring out how the village moves forward before they make any final decisions.

“I’m glad to be a part of the process of trying to address what at times can seem like an insurmountable issue, but there’s a huge demand for attainable housing in this area and county, and I think the village is trying to do its part, it can’t solve it all, there’s a lot of macro issues involved, but the village council seems really committed to doing what it can with the resources it has,” Ottenwess said.

Conley then spoke about the efforts of Leelanau Township, noting how the board also approved a PILOT ordinance in 2025 to help make housing more affordable. In addition, the board has made the commitment to make a portion of township- owned land located north of the fire hall available for attainable housing and have put out a request for proposals for the possible development. The township hopes to break ground on the project by 2027.

Verhey of NCV spoke next about where they’re at with developing attainable housing on the 25 acres adjacent to the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians’ nature preserve called Mashkiigaki. NCV’s property, which is on the former Timber Shores campground in Leelanau Township, was acquired in December 2024, and the nonprofit is currently in the midst of completing a conceptual planning process utilizing a conservation development approach. That approach means designing something that fits in with the natural surroundings which includes an open space and a focus on conservation.

Aside from informing the community of local housing efforts underway, much of the meeting was reserved for interacting with others and the information tables spread out around the school’s gym.

Sticky notes were used to gather feedback from people for general questions about housing. Some of the questions included whether rental housing was needed in Northport; what type of housing would people like to see; and if people had trouble finding a place to live in Leelanau Township.

The feedback left by attendees via sticky notes all noted that rental housing was indeed needed in Northport. People also left numerous examples of different types of housing they’d like to see and included everything ranging from single family townhomes and workforce housing to developing Habitat for Humanity homes and more rentals, such as apartments, for young people.

The interactive period was followed by a panel discussion that took questions from community members about housing. Questions for panelists varied from topics about restrictions to short-term rentals in the area to the hurdles builders face when trying to construct attainable housing in a community.

Mawby of Peninsula Housing said during discussion that one thing people need to recognize in Leelanau County and in Northport is even if you have things in place like the appropriate zoning and approvals, the cost of everything exceeds what people can afford to pay. Nonprofits like Peninsula Housing have a limited array of sources for funding of housing projects and is one of the main issues they face.

“The gap between the cost of doing construction, the development, and what people can afford to pay needs to be covered somehow,” Mawby said at the meeting. “One of the biggest impediments that we have is access to grant money or federal or state dollars that are directed at affordable housing to subsidize that gap. Most of the federal and state dollars go to urban areas, their programs really don’t direct money to rural areas.”

Those with ideas or suggestions regarding housing can contact the township or village offices directly as both municipalities continue to navigate what attainable housing should look like in the county.

See Article on Leelanau Enterprise

NCV thanks the Leelanau Enterprise and Meakalia Previch-Liu for allowing us to share this coverage with you.

Winter Update

We hope you are enjoying the beauty of winter in Leelanau!

We have a couple of exciting progress updates on New Community Vision’s commitment to our mission and our supporters. Progress on creating the nature preserve is underway and we have also been working on the attainable housing.

The Nature Preserve Called Mashkiigaki

Last year’s successful acquisition and transfer of the former Timber Shores property to the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (GTB) has allowed theimportant work of returning ancestral lands to indigenous stewardship to begin.

The GTB recently received  $1.3 million from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), funding that was part of the original grant application approved in 2024. These new monies are earmarked for restoration and community outreach for the 187-acre nature preserve, now called Mashkiigaki. This is great news! We are especially thrilled to relay this information, given concerns that this important funding would slip away due to recent government cut backs.  

Also, over the last few months, tribal leaders have started to “reconnect” with the cultural and spiritual aspects of the property which had been removed from their community for many decades. This includes an internal survey of the tribal community by GTB to listen and understand their memories associated with the property and ideas for its future. This is an understandably important process for tribal members, to celebrate and embrace Mashkiigaki. Other next steps anticipate tribal-led visioning sessions, including with the non-native community,  as part of the NOAA grant requirements. NCV will share more information about tribal-led community engagement sessions as they take shape. 

Key steps have also been taken by the GTB’s Natural Resources Department (NRD) to better understand the site from a standpoint of biodiversity as it plans for restoration activities. This has included several notable activities:

1. A bird survey (viewable here) conducted by three volunteer birders and NCV was completed last year that underlines the breadth and diversity of the birds living on or migrating through the property.  Some 78 different bird species have been identified and a bald eagle family was seen nesting on the property! This diversity of bird species continues to underline the property’s quality of habitat.

   
   

2. With the arrival of the NOAA funds, the GTB has contracted the Invasive Species Network to conduct a detailed Invasive Species Survey this spring and summer to help develop a plan to remove and control invasives and make way for critical native habitat restoration.  This survey will also include near neighbors to Mashkiigaki who will be contacted to participate because people living nearby are an important part of the long-term health of the nature preserve. This also promises to bring GTB and the non-native community together in nature. 

   
   

3. The GTB’s NRD is also planning a geo-hydrological study related to restoring the creek flow and any connections to the wetland areas changed by the former Timber Shores campground, where culverts and roads impeded natural water flow patterns. 

   
   

4. The NRD has also begun careful mapping of Mashkiigaki to explore existing trails, stream crossings, critical habitat areas and potential access points that work within the existing natural infrastructure. This work is a key step in planning for a publicly-accessible nature preserve. 

   
   

Attainable Housing on the 25 Acres Adjacent to Mashkiigaki

A big thank you to all of you who participated in the community engagement listening sessions about attainable housing last summer that we had pledged to host during our successful fundraising campaign. The results of these sessions have been very helpful to New Community Vision as we plan the next steps on the 25 acres of preserved land reserved for that purpose.

Read Session Highlights

The listening sessions were part of a conceptual planning process conducted by Urban Design Associates (UDA), a national affordable housing land planning firm with an office in Suttons Bay. Peninsula Housing, a not for profit land trust, also collaborated with us on these sessions.

Initial site, zoning and civil engineering analysis indicates that no more than 30 units – and likely somewhat less – are possible on the site, including a possible mix of stand-alone single-family homes, duplexes and, possibly, two smaller-scale townhouses. Environmental research on the property regarding civil engineering and initial test pits have been conducted and reviewed with the County Environmental Health Department identifying the northern area of the site as optimal for drainfields.

NCV’s mission to a conservation development approach means designing a community that fits in with its natural surroundings, with a human-scale and right-size approach, including open space and a focus on conservation. We are also committed to respecting the environmental protection of the adjacent nature preserve Mashkiigaki. All this will also influence the final number of homes.

NCV also is cognizant of the wider community priorities in the township and village to address the significant attainable housing needs in Leelanau. The NCV property will contribute to the community’s attainable housing needs, however, our township needs multiple, and a variety of, projects to meet the overall need.   

Next Steps

Over the early months of 2026, UDA will prepare a couple of conceptual site plan options that integrate NCV’s conservation development approach and all of the analysis and inputs described above. These first steps to create possible attainable housing layouts for the site will serve as a planning baseline to facilitate further consultations with partners, stakeholders and donors for more detailed planning, including the anticipated costs to build. 

We are excited for the progress on the restoration and nature preserve planning and we continue to work to develop a plan for attainable homes to contribute to Leelanau.

Baseline Bird Survey of Mashkiigaki:

A Brief Report to The Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and New Community Vision

In May 2025, three experienced birders from Leelanau—Ed Ketterer, Greg Nobles, and Bert Thomas—spent three mornings a week, from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m., taking note of the birds observed.

Walking the main trail of the Mashkiigaki site over the course of twelve visits, we identified 74 species. It is also worth noting that earlier observations in 2024 had seen an additional 4 species, including the Grasshopper Sparrow which is a species of Special Concern.  See the full consolidated list at the end of this report.

We submitted our daily observations to eBird, the community-science resource sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, via creating a place specific page for Mashkiigaki for such observation uploads. We have so far kept those lists hidden from public access, pending further discussion with GTB to ensure elaboration on the role of a public list in ongoing and future citizen scientist engagement.  While previous observers associated with the former Timber Shores owners had largely downplayed or dismissed the significance of the avian diversity and numbers at Mashkiigaki, we found the bird identifications there to be impressive, sometimes even surprising.

Among the surprises were several species not altogether unknown to the region, but comparatively uncommon: Alder Flycatcher, Bobolink, Palm Warbler, Pine Warbler, and Scarlet Tanager. During our repeated visits, we also began to get a better sense of the landscape itself, with several small micro-climates, including grassy meadows, woodlands, wetlands, and of course the shoreline. Each of these provided valuable habitats for different species, and we increasingly came to know what to look for where. 

One of those locations provided us the opportunity to observe on a near-daily basis a Bald Eagle nest, with two adult eagles close at hand, typically one visible inside the nest and another flying and perching nearby.  We cannot attest to the success of the eagles’ producing offspring, nor can we rule out nest failure, and quick research is inconclusive about Bald Eagle behavior regarding a second nesting.  Sometimes when there is a nest failure, they will attempt to produce another clutch that same year, but ordinarily, with successful nests, eagles do not have a second nesting in one year.  Whatever the case here, it would not be unusual for eagles to return to a nest to make repairs, etc., so they could use it in subsequent years. Clearly, that bears watching in the future.

So, for that matter, does the entire Mashkiigaki site. We are grateful to NCV and the GTB for the opportunity to have made repeated visits to Mashkiigaki this May, and we hope such careful observation can continue in the future—and not just at the height of avian migration season in the spring, but throughout the year, including winter. The prospect of gaining a year-round, long-term understanding of the abundance of the bird species at Mashkiigaki can contribute to both the scientific and spiritual appreciation people experience at this remarkable place in our peninsula.

Background

In a few site visits over May -June 2024, local birders volunteering with New Community Vision (NCV), undertook preliminary birding notes towards establishing insights on the significance of the ecosystems of Mashkiigaki and raising community awareness.  They encountered 45 different species and proposed that the special habitats of Mashkiigaki were likely much more significant for bird diversity and species of concern.

Following the completed acquisition of Mashkiigaki, and in view of NCV’s future roles in ongoing community engagement and citizen scientist initiatives under the NOAA Restoration, Engagement, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge: An Indigenous Approach to Comprehensive Resiliency (RETEK) grant, GTB agreed to a proposal for three local birding experts to voluntarily undertake a more extensive bird survey during the prime May – June season in 2025 to help establish a baseline of the bird population.

As noted, the best tool for doing so is eBird, an app developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology - https://ebird.org/home - that allows users to record bird sightings, by both species and number, and submit them to a larger database that helps scientists record bird populations over the longer term. By using eBird, ordinary people, including local school children, can participate in a valuable and exciting community science initiative and thus make a critical contribution to our understanding of environmental changes taking place around us—and not just to birds, but to plants, fish, mammals, and human beings.

Mashkiigaki bird identifications, May 2025

74 Species, Listed in Ornithological Order

Mute Swan

Mallard 

Common Merganser

Canada Goose

Mourning Dove

Ruffed Grouse

Sandhill Crane

Spotted Sandpiper

Killdeer

Ring-billed Gull

Herring Gull

Double-crested Cormorant

American White Pelican

Turkey Vulture

Osprey

Bald Eagle

Belted Kingfisher

Great Blue Heron

Broad-winged Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk

Hairy Woodpecker                                                                                                                            

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Pileated Woodpecker

Northern Flicker

Least Flycatcher

Alder Flycatcher

Great Crested Flycatcher

Eastern Kingbird

Red-eyed Vireo

Blue Jay

American Crow

Black-capped Chickadee

Tufted Titmouse

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Winter Wren

Northern House Wren

Tree Swallow

Purple Finch

Gray Catbird

Brown Thrasher

Eastern Bluebird

Wood Thrush

American Robin

Cedar Waxwing

American Goldfinch

Chipping Sparrow                                                                                                                                               

Field Sparrow 

Song Sparrow

White-crowned Sparrow                                                                                                                                

White-throated Sparrow

Vesper Sparrow

Bobolink

Eastern Meadowlark

Red-winged Blackbird                                                                                                                                         

Brown-headed Cowbird

Common Grackle

Nashville Warbler  

Pine Warbler

Common Yellowthroat

Wilson’s Warbler

American Redstart

Magnolia Warbler

Black-and-white Warbler                                                                                                                                             

Bay-breasted Warbler                

Blackburnian Warbler

Yellow Warbler

Chestnut-sided Warbler

Palm Warbler

Black-throated Green Warbler

Ovenbird

Scarlet Tanager

Northern Cardinal

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Indigo Bunting

Notable Mashkiigaki bird identifications in May 2024 that were not identified in 2025

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

American Woodcock

Red-shouldered Hawk

Grasshopper Sparrow *

*As a species of Special Concern, the identification of Grasshopper Sparrows on Mashkiigaki upland fields in 2024 was reported by botanist Liana May to MSU:  https://mnfi.anr.msu.edu/species/description/11220/Ammodramus-savannarum.  

Ed Ketterer leading a bird walk on the property in July 2024