TART Eyes New Trailhead, ‘Pocket Park’ Project For Leelanau Trail In Elmwood Township

The Leelanau Trail is getting a brand-new hub.

In its newsletter, TART Trails announced that it had “recently acquired a 5.5-acre former hop farm adjacent to the Leelanau Trail in Elmwood Township on Birch Point Road.” That site, TART says, is “ideal for a future trailhead and year-round maintenance facility.” Beyond parking and trail entry, the primary purpose for the land is to house “essential equipment and resources” for trail care and upkeep. However, per the newsletter, TART is currently underway on “conceptual planning” for the site – a process that will involve “exploring additional ways the property can serve the trail community.”

The project is a long-time coming. According to Chris Kushman, TART’s trail planning and management director, the nonprofit has “been looking for a property along the Leelanau Trail for a maintenance facility” ever since he came aboard nine and a half years ago. As with other trails in the TART network, the vast majority of maintenance and upkeep on the Leelanau Trail is handled by volunteers – ‘TART ambassadors,’ as the organization calls them. Because there isn’t a dedicated maintenance hub along the Leelanau Trail, though, some TART ambassadors in Leelanau have borne an extra set of responsibilities.

“We've got a couple of TART ambassadors that live near the Leelanau Trail that have graciously allowed us to store our maintenance equipment at their homes,” Kushman tells The Ticker. “We’ve overextended that situation, and we need a facility to house that stuff, and also to serve as our base of operations for the Leelanau Trail, and any other trails on the west side of town.”

Part of the challenge, Kushman explains, is that maintaining a trail in a true four-season town requires so many different types of work. From cleaning debris off the trail after summer storms to grooming it for wintertime use, TART’s ambassadors handle a lot of behind-the-scenes steps to make sure the trails are ready for daily use. A lot of equipment is needed to do that work, and lacking a single central location to store it all has presented significant hurdles for TART’s Leelanau County operations.

“We’ve got a couple tractors; we've got dome trailers; we’ve got wood chippers and string trimmers; we've got blowers that blow the debris off the trail. And that's just the summer equipment,” Kushman says. “So, there’s quite a bit of equipment that we have invested in, and we want to make it last and want it to be accessible. And accessibility has been a really big challenge for us when our equipment in Leelanau County is scattered around at various people's homes or properties. It takes considerable time just to get the right equipment to the trail before our volunteers can start working, and then they have to return it when they're done. It adds this whole other set of logistical challenges [for trail care].”

While TART always intended to build a maintenance facility on the Leelanau Trail, Kushman says suitable properties proved “hard to come by” for many years.

“When something did surface, oftentimes, it had a lot of wetlands, or just wasn’t big enough for the facility we knew we needed,” he explains.

That streak of bad luck finally came to an end this winter, when long-time TART supporters Bill and Nelly Heitman agreed to sell part of their property to TART Trails. “They were selling their house there [on Birch Point Road], and we approached them about splitting the property and buying the west half, and they were supportive of that,” Kushman says. “So, over the winter, we were able to work through that process, and we closed on the property in April.”

The property spans more five and a half acres adjacent to the Leelanau Trail. 

Precisely what amenities are included at the new trailhead will be decided during the now-underway visioning phase. When asked for a list of possibilities, Kushman rattles off a few, including restrooms, a storm shelter, a BATA bus stop, a pocket park with a kids play structure or a pump track “for youth bike education opportunities,” and more.

TART is also interested in promoting the trailhead as a “park and ride,” where Leelanau residents heading into Traverse City could park their cars and then ride the rest of the way into town on their bikes. Brian Beauchamp, TART’s director of strategic engagement, says that was motivated by seeing how people have been using the Leelanau Trail during the past two years of heavy road construction on M-22, M-72, and Grandview Parkway.

“We have definitely seen an increase not only in recreational use, but also in folks who are using the Leelanau Trail for transportation in and out of the county,” Beauchamp says. “Just anecdotally speaking, I have a number of colleagues and friends who live in Leelanau County, and they are now using the trail all the time, to get in and out of Traverse City. For a lot of people, it’s a more enjoyable and expeditious option than sitting in the construction. And as we see that uptick in the number of people using the trail for their commute, that’s definitely a big part of what we’re thinking about when we’re planning future trail development and design.”

Beauchamp says TART paid $300,000 for the new trailhead land, and that the organization is already “very close to raising the amount needed” to cover that expense. In the meantime, Kushman has formed a visioning committee made up of TART staffers, community members, and trail users to work out a gameplan. More details, including a potential timeline for construction, will come once that committee has settled on a vision.