Top 8: Comeback Stories Were The Recurring Theme In Leelanau's Biggest News Of 2025

Don’t call it a comeback…except, maybe do! Returns and resurrections seemed to be the prevailing theme in Leelanau County’s biggest stories this year, ranging from Sugar Loaf's return to businesses coming back from lengthy hiatuses. In honor of the last day of the year, we’re counting down our eight most-read stories of 2025.

8. The Slater Nalley saga

Leelanau Ticker readers clearly loved following the story of American Idol contestant Slater Nalley this year. The 18-year-old singer-songwriter hails from Atlanta, Georgia, but his family has spent summers in Leelanau, and he made a name for himself locally prior to Idol with regular gigs at Dune Bird Winery. We caught up with Nalley in March, right at the beginning of his Idol journey, then followed along with the season through his elimination in May and the news in October that he'd inked a major label record contract with Warner Music Nashville.

7. Leelanau Commissioner donates salary

Our third-most-liked story on social media in 2025 was this one, about Board of Commissioners member Rick Robbins and his decision to donate all of his government earnings to Habitat for Humanity. “Since January, I’ve had the county deposit my check in a special account, and I just watched it,” Robbins told The Ticker. “Once it got up to $10,000, that’s when I wrote a monster check.” The news garnered nearly 1,000 likes on Facebook, with many commenters thanking Robbins and expressing hopes that other elected officials would follow in his footsteps.

6. The unfolding tale of Northern Latitudes Distillery and Locals Lake Leelanau

Like Slater Nalley, this multi-story saga tended to generate a hefty amount of interest every time we wrote about it. In January, Northern Latitudes announced it would be vacating its longtime premises at 112 East Philip Street in Lake Leelanau – even though its new 12,000-square-foot tasting room and production facility just down the road wasn’t done yet. We covered that news, and then introduced the public to Locals Lake Leelanau, the new restaurant that opened its doors in the former Northern Latitudes space in May. In terms of raw pageviews, the latter story was our second biggest of the year, with more than 10,000 hits on our website. Northern Latitudes finally moved into its new space in October.

5. A new chapter for Shady Lane Cellars

In July, we broke the news about The Loamstead Project, a new vision from local restauranteur Amanda Danielson (Trattoria Stella) aimed at turning Suttons Bay’s Shady Lane Cellars into “a transformational rural development initiative rooted in regenerative agriculture, sustainable wine production, and community education.” Planned out over four years with an estimated $10 million in capital expenditure, the Loamstead Project will retain the branding, identity, and team of the winery while also adding new components all around it, including a commercial kitchen, a culinary classroom, 8,500 square feet of meeting and event space, and more. The story racked up nearly 42,000 views on Facebook alone.

4. NJ’s Grocery closes – and then opens again

The Leelanau Ticker was one of the first local news outlets to report that Lake Leelanau’s beloved NJ’s Grocery had closed its doors “until further notice” in the wake of a June 10 fire. Nearly six months later, we were also the first to talk to owner Sam Chugh on the eve of the popular grocery store’s December reopening. Both stories generated thousands of pageviews, hundreds of social media reactions, and dozens of shares, with the latter inspiring lots of well-wishes from local customers. Ticker readers were particularly impressed that the business had kept paying its employees during the half-year-long closure.

3. The return of the Blue Bird

In terms of comebacks, few in northern Michigan were bigger this year than the long-awaited return of Leland’s beloved Blue Bird restaurant, a local staple since 1927 that had been shuttered for three years. The Leelanau Ticker was quick to share the news when the establishment quietly returned for a weekend of takeout orders in early October – a post that netted more than 500 likes on Facebook. A month later, we sat down with Blue Bird owner Skip Telgard to learn all about the newly-rebuilt restaurant – another social media hit, with 647 likes and more than 40,000 views.

2. Art's Tavern sold

Speaking of Leelanau County staples, our report about the sale of Glen Arbor’s famous Art’s Tavern this June was clearly big news among locals. The story netted 17,000 views on our website and 53,000 views on social media, to say nothing of everyone who read it via our email newsletter. The article, fittingly written by our own Art – Art Bukowski, that is – told the tale of Art’s, from when Art Sheridan opened the restaurant in 1934 to when Tim Barr and Bonnie Nescot became the establishment’s third set of owners back in 2000. Barr and Nescot have now handed the reins to Paul and Barbara Olson, best known locally as the owners of Mission Table on Old Mission Peninsula.

1. The return of Sugar Loaf

Leelanau County’s biggest news of the year was a story 25 years in the making: the long-awaited return of Sugar Loaf as a publicly-accessible asset. The Leelanau Ticker was the first publication in the state to break the news widely on the evening of Thursday, July 17, immediately following a donor event where the Leelanau Conservancy announced it was acquiring the 285-acre property. Our initial Facebook post became one of the top three biggest in Leelanau Ticker history, with 320,000 views, 3,400 reactions, 370 comments, and nearly 500 shares. The next day, we ran the news as our feature story, explaining the complicated history of Sugar Loaf, its last days as a ski resort in 2000, and the subsequent quarter-century of dormancy. Sugar Loaf will now become a four-season recreation area, with the first parts of the property projected to open to the public sometime in 2026.

Honorable mention: Though not tied to an actual news article, our Facebook post from December 17 about “snow rollers” in Suttons Bay – a natural phenomenon that occurs when light and sticky snow, icy ground, and cold windy weather combine to create tumbleweed-like formations in the snow – was technically our biggest post of 2025. Featuring photos snapped by Lisa VonReichbauer, the post was liked nearly 6,000 times and reached more than half a million people. VonReichbauer’s photos have since been picked up by Yahoo News, FOX Weather, AOL.com, MSN.com, and many more, making an impression far beyond northern Michigan.