'This Is Who I Am:' Family & Heritage Alive At Cedar's Polish Art Center

Kathleen Bittner-Koch couldn’t get it out of her head. What are the odds?

Bittner-Koch grew up in Hamtramck (southeast Michigan’s legendary Polish enclave) working at a Polish art store owned and operated by her parents. It was the best upbringing and a wonderful community, she says, but she and her husband yearned for a wide-open space where they could farm on a larger scale than their small urban plot allowed for.

So, with no prior connections (or even visits) to the Grand Traverse region, they found a listing for a Leelanau County farm on Craigslist and decided to drive up and have a look in the winter of 2013. Bittner-Koch’s jaw dropped as they drove through Cedar on the way to the property.

“We passed through this little town, and all of the lights had flags with little Polish eagles on them,” she tells The Ticker. “I looked over at my husband and said ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

It felt, in a way, like destiny.

“I got goosebumps,” she says. “We didn’t just by chance end up here. Something brought us here.”

On that very first visit she saw an empty storefront that would later become the Polish Art Center, a northern outpost of the family business. The idea had to wait a few years as they worked to establish their farm, which now raises (among other things) Mangalitsa pigs, a specialty breed known for their flavorful meat.

Back home, her parents were still running the shop they bought in 1973, the year before they got married. Over many years and dozens of visits, they established relationships with artisans in Poland, sourcing the very finest pottery, trinkets, handcrafted goods and much more. To Bittner-Koch, it was a no-brainer to open a location in Cedar, which has long been deeply proud of its Polish roots. 

“Every time I’d drive past this little store, which was vacant, I look over and I think, ‘Oh my gosh, how does this little Polish town that I didn't know was a Polish town not I have a Polish store?” she says. “And I’d call my dad and very calmy say, ‘Hey dad, that store is still there – I could fill that whole place and you wouldn’t even know I took a thing.’”

After a couple of years of hard lobbying, her dad “cracked” (despite never visiting the space) and Cedar’s own Polish Art Center was born.

“My husband would drive back to Hamtramck every week or so with a trailer. I told my sister, ‘Don’t even tell Dad, just put a little bit of everything in there,” Bittner says. “We set the whole store up.”

About nine years later, Cedar’s Polish Art Center has no shortage of customers or good will from the local community, Bittner-Koch says, something that started before the shop even opened.

“When we were first looking at buying the building, the Pleva family actually did some scouting – they came down to our Hamtramck store,” she says. “They were sold. They knew it was going to help bring some Polish heritage back to Cedar.”

The store itself is a rich, multi-layered and almost overwhelming collage of colors and shapes, representing more than a half century of Raymond Bittner’s relationship building in the Polish countryside.

“Most of these people are not the type to have websites. These are craftspeople. You have to go to their farms or go to their homes,” Bittner-Koch says. “My dad has made all of those connections, and his mind is this incredible encyclopedia of all of these craftspeople and folk artists over the 50-some years he’s been doing this.”

Bittner-Koch, who moved hundreds of miles away from Hamtramck and is now raising three kids in Leelanau County, is glad to have a regular pipeline back to her hometown.

“This really gives my parents a good excuse to come visit,” she says. “They used to have such a hard time leaving work, but now that they have another ‘work’ to come to, it’s great. So they’ll fill two vans and drive up here. But I also get (other deliveries). Anytime anyone comes up from Detroit, they’ll bring stuff.”

The two stores help each other find customers, which continue to discover both locations.

“I’ve been here nine years, and I’m still getting people who are visiting from the first time from Traverse City, or Frankfort or Honor or wherever,” she says. “And we’ll get people who will come in here to Cedar (because they vacation here), and I tell them we have a store in Hamtramck, and they live 20 miles from there and didn’t even know about it.”

Above all else, Bittner-Koch is thrilled to continue her parents' legacy of celebrating and promoting Polish crafts and heritage. 

"I grew up hearing my parents tell these stories, and then one day I stood up here and opened my mouth, and I thought 'Oh my God, I became my mother.' It all just just flowed out exactly in the exact verbage she would use," she says. "I feel like this is who I am, and I'm very happy to do it."