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Deal Nixes New Hotel On Mackinac Island

Peter Payette

The view of Mackinac Island’s oldest ferry terminal has been protected. Island officials worked out a compromise this week with a developer who wanted to build a new hotel in front of the Arnold Transit dock. It looks like a victory for supporters of new historic protections on Mackinac Island.

Even though Mackinac Island’s downtown is a 200-year-old city, there were no rules in place to protect that history until last year. A lawsuit challenging the new authority was filed in March and another seemed possible.

On Monday, all the disputes were settled.

Andrew Doud chairs the historic district commission and says the deal was a good solution to a difficult situation.

“I think Mackinac wins,” says Doud. “And I think the people of Michigan win when Mackinac wins.”

The main goal of the commission was to prevent a three-story hotel from being built in front of the Arnold Transit dock.

Arnold was in business before the Grand Hotel was built in the late 1800s and its dock, with the warehouse and terminal building, is iconic and unique on the island.

The proposed hotel would have cut off the view of the dock from Main Street, and that was the main reason the historic commission rejected it.

Doud says what the island did in the compromise is buy out the right to build a three-story hotel on the site.

“The second and third story of the top of the Arnold Dock cannot be developed.”

In exchange, the developers get 90 bike rental licenses, a precious commodity on an island that doesn’t allow cars.

They also are given permission to tear down an old building known as the Iroquois Bike Shop. The Iroquois is tilting to one side and was condemned by the island’s building inspector.

The historic district commission said it needed to be repaired, not demolished. That dispute was in court.

Hotel developer Ira Green was not enthusiastic about the agreement he signed Monday. He says there was no hope for the Iroquois building regardless of any deal.

“That building would come down either way,” Green says. “A judge would tell them to take it down.”

The losers in this deal are the other bike shops on the island.

Green and his business partner, Melanie Libby, already have about 600 bike licenses. Ninety more bikes, right in front of a ferry dock, will strengthen their advantage against competitors like Jim Fisher. He rents bikes at a couple locations on the island and has 150 licenses.

Fisher was the only person to comment on the deal before the city council approved it. He said even though the licenses will cost the City of Mackinac Island nothing, it will cost other business owners.

“It’s money that they’ll be getting that we will be losing,” he said. “And trying to raise a family over here, it kind of hurts and hits me hard.”

One loose end in the deal concerns whether anything can ever be built in front of the Arnold dock.

The only way a hotel could be built is if the city didn’t renew the 90 bike licenses. But the deal does allow a one-story building to go up if the dock is ever quote “abandoned.” The two sides don’t agree what that word means.

They might have to answer that question sooner than later. This week, Arnold Ferry Lines missed a deadline to declare its intention to run this summer.

Peter Payette is the Executive Director of Interlochen Public Radio.