The Grand Traverse County Road Commission voted Tuesday night to keep a state forest access road open, after they received a petition requesting they abandon it.
High Pointe Golf Club sent the petition, which was also signed by a private landowner and the Department of Natural Resources. The road in question, Arnold Road in Acme Township, is currently a public right of way that cuts through the golf course.
The board voted to deny the petition after comments from ten residents who use the road to access state forest, mostly for hiking and horseback riding. The road leads to hundreds of acres of state land near the VASA trail.
Kim Elliott, who lives a few miles east of Arnold Road, voiced his concern at the meeting that the public would lose the best way into a large swath of forest.
“I have used that road personally for 40 years for hiking and riding my horse,” he said, “along with hundreds, if not thousands, of other people. It has access to state land which is absolutely gorgeous.”
Scott Jozwiak, a civil engineer working for High Pointe, the golf club, spoke at the meeting.
He said he’d spoken with his clients at High Pointe, who were open to a permanent easement for an equestrian trail through the golf course.
Board member Jason Gillman said, “I’d want to see that easement language written prior to us relinquishing the control that we have, to make sure people can access the state land in the way they have before.”
With the recent petition denied, that easement proposal would have to come with a new petition, resubmitted to the GTCRC board.
No one from the DNR was present at the meeting, though the petition said the state no longer wanted general public access to the forest via Arnold Road.
At the meeting, residents who use the forest said they had noticed logging debris blocking the trail at the very start of the state’s land, which they said felt like an attempt to close the trails already. Jozwiak told the crowd that High Pointe wasn’t involved.