The lights are back on inside a former Kmart in Traverse City. But you won’t find bargains or blue-light specials.
Instead, you’ll find sheets of ice, an old game and, if the Traverse City Curling Club has its way, maybe some new friends.
“Anybody can curl,” said Cara Colburn, co-founder and past president of the club. “We have a wheelchair on the ice, we’ve got two or three kids out on the ice, we’ve got people in their 80s out here, and quite a few people in their 40s and 50s.”
For Colburn, this place is as much about community as competition. In fact, community is part of the game.
The new facility includes a broomstacking room — a space for curlers to carry out an age-old tradition.
“After you’re done with your curling match, you stack your brooms in the corner and you sit down for some camaraderie,” Colburn said. “The winning team buys the losing team a drink, and it’s part of the game. You would never just play your match and leave.”
Once you step inside, it’s hard to believe this was ever a Kmart. There’s new furniture, new paint, new carpet, new walls, a big TV showing old curling matches, and a showcase of Olympic memorabilia in the entrance, a gift from friend-of-the-club, and 2018 gold medalist John Landsteiner.
But Colburn remembers where things used to be.
“If people are familiar with the Kmart in Traverse City, we are in the hardware section,” she says, standing in a hallway. “I used to get my windshield wipers here.”
Attentive Kmart shoppers will also remember the bathrooms — left untouched, having just been remodeled four months before the store closed. It saved the curling club a lot of money to not have to redo them.
“So it’s like a blast from the past,” she said. “If you came to this Kmart and you walked in that bathroom, all of a sudden you know where you are. You’re right by the layaway department. It all sort of falls into place.”
The Traverse City Curling Club has about 200 members, and they’re growing. They offer classes for new curlers and are about to introduce a new program for kids 5 and up.
This new life for the building is exciting for members of the club, which has been around since 2014. Until now, they’ve played at Centre Ice Arena, a busy community recreation center.
“Oh, it’s just so great to be in our own facility,” said Dustine Murphy, of Interlochen. She’s here with her family.
“My husband’s Canadian, and I learned to curl in my in-laws’ kitchen. I said ‘What is curling?’ and the next thing I know … they’re bringing the curling brooms from the garage and teaching me in their kitchen,” she said.
A proper curling sheet of ice is about 150 feet long. So how big was that kitchen?
“Not that big,” she laughs.
Murphy said curling makes northern Michigan’s long winters seem shorter.
“It’s just a great sport for four people to work together to get the rock where you want it to go,” she said. “There’s always action, and I need a lot of action in my sports. So I love it.”
