Lots of News, No Pictures

The wine fest is tomorrow, and the parking lot is ready in the nick of time! Wednesday night I was at work on break when I read in both the Northern Express and the Leelanau Enterprise that the community of Leland was so resourceful and cooperative that we had figured out how to hold the wine fest at the harbor despite the delays in actually finishing the harbor project. Rains on Monday and Tuesday had meant further delays and the wine fest site on Wednesday had looked like piles of dirt with curbs. As I went back to work I worried that the printed congratulations may have been premature.

But then I saw the project foreman watching some guys play a slot. I tapped him on the shoulder.

"Do we have asphalt?"

"Tomorrow. Eight in the morning."

Asphalt went down as promised, and set up for the wine fest should be going on as I type. I have no picture, as I am in Evanston today, picking Liz up after her junior year at Northwestern. We'll miss the wine fest, but we intend to take in the Chicago Blues Fest tomorrow. (See The Leland Report for a crazy photo)

Liz wanted baby chicks when she got home, and I finally got a hen to commit to brooding a clutch in time for the first two little ones to hatch out yesterday morning. I hope she'll be a good mom and keep them safe until we get home. I wanted to download some pictures, but this morning my computer had an ominous "System file 22 corrupted" message on the screen. Good excuse to leave town and come back with Liz and her computer. It was a beautiful day to travel. Life is good.

Leland Harbor: Four Days Til Wine Fest

And it's raining at Leland Harbor. The parking lot must be graded and paved in order to host the Leland Wine Fest on June 11, and they were still pouring curbs and gutters late last week.

This drama is as good as any reality TV series. At our last Town Board meeting we decided to extend the completion deadline to:

• Parking Lot Paved -- June 11
• Operational Gas Dock -- June 26
• Building Substantial Completion -- July 10

We could have refused to grant any extensions and collected penalties and fees from the contractor, but having the harbor open, even provisionally, is worth more to us.

The docks have been in use already, almost from the moment they hit the water. Even over Memorial Day, when they were just floating in the harbor, unattached to land, there was a sailboat that spent the holiday on their own little island out there. As Anna and I left on Sunday, we saw some power boaters pull into a slip, tie up, and walk over the "Dock Closed" sign on their way to shore.

Our mission Sunday was to photograph the north side of the building, which is now almost completely covered with the grey shakes that were chosen to mirror the look of the vintage buildings of Fishtown. I have to look past the construction equipment and imagine the front porch, but I can see the building eventually feeling like an extension of Fishtown.

Even before I was elected I heard a lot of opinions about the size and style of the harbor building. I talked to people who came late to the process complaining that the building would be too big and tall. I talked to the Harbor Commission members who had put the design together based on the input from public hearings and the constraints of the site and the funding process. I went from being skeptical of the design to being a big fan. But I was also struck by the way the the people who came in late to criticize the design were talking to only each other. I had always thought of a public hearing as a mechanism for the public to make their views known to the powers that be. Now I see the public hearing as a useful forum for the various stakeholders to hear each other and figure out how to compromise. The harbor building had to accommodate the boaters' needs, the classic Fishtown architecture advocates, the pedestrian traffic, the playground crowd, and myriad state and federal agencies. Nobody was getting everything that they wanted, but the Harbor Commission did try to come up with a design that was responsive to all concerns.

Right now it takes a lot of imagination to erase the construction equipment, the tool trailers, , the piles of dirt. You have to visualize the grey shakes darkening in a few seasons. The seagulls are already depositing their own patina on the red roof. One day the flag pole will be up again, the noisy machines will be gone, and we will be standing in the harbor with seagulls flying through a stiff west wind, watching a small boat entering safe harbor, and all will be well.

Leland Harbor Still Under Construction

Unloading the new floating docks.

The latest word on Leland Harbor from the Harbor Commission:

Leland Harbor is still closed for renovation. Don't look for any mooring in the harbor until June 18th, and don't look for fuel before June 26th. The boat launch will open around the same time.

The Leland Harbor project was on a tight schedule, having been delayed last fall due to State of Michigan red tape, and one of the waterside contractors was held up by the relatively late spring. I had hoped that they could catch up in the long days of late spring, but dredging is going slowly near the shore.

Once the dredging is done, they can stabilize the retaining wall and start on the building's front porch. The roof shingle are on and the shakes, stained a weathered gray, are ready to go up.

I have heard a lot of criticism of the building's size, the roof color, and so on. As the daughter of a civil engineer and an interior designer, I have seen a lot of structures make the transformation from blueprint to finished building, and have heard this same sort of criticism before. I went to the Thompson Street beach after hearing complaints about how huge and intrusive the building looked from the beach. Of course with no siding and shingles it looked bright and huge. But when I imagined what it would look like finished and with the flag flying in a stiff breeze, well my heart skipped a beat. The scene was so impossibly perfect that I'm anxiously waiting for the finish date so that I can see it for real. I suspect that by the end of the summer we will be tripping over artists and their easels painting that very scene.

Of course if you are out on the big lake, scanning the shore for a safe harbor, that red roof will be a most welcome sight.


Anna has been taken with the building process as well. She scrambled over the rocks to get this photo of the new floating docks, as they are assembled out in the harbor waiting for the rest of the components. Only two days on the water and already the seagulls are making themselves at home! An otter was playing around and flipped its tail at us.

Leland Harbor Progress

A video from last Thursday, April 23rd.