Leelanau County added two new craft cideries in 2026, and could get another one soon, depending on the outcome of a public hearing in Bingham Township tomorrow (Thursday).

Nick and Andi Strevel are seeking a Special Land Use Permit (SLUP) to build a new cidery at 8557 East Erdt Road in Suttons Bay. Their application calls for a 7,424-square-foot facility (drawings pictured) that would include on-site cider processing, a tasting room, a separate dining room area, a kitchen “for primarily appetizer type foods,” and a patio and outdoor courtyard. The plan also calls for hosting “up to 20 special events per calendar year.”

If approved, the facility would occupy part of a 183-acre farm the Strevels purchased four years ago.

The SLUP is currently under review with the Bingham Township Planning Commission, which will hold a public hearing for the permit during a special meeting scheduled for Thursday, October 15 at 6:30pm at Bingham Township Hall.

The Strevels are currently based in La Salle, but have long been eyeing northern Michigan as a destination for their next life chapter.

“I’m a Michigan native, and my family has always had a place in Kalkaska, so I grew up spending summers – and a lot of other times, too – up in northern Michigan” Nick Strevel tells The Ticker. “I’ve spent a lot of time all around the world, and lived in a lot of places, and that’s just an area of the world I've always loved. So, when my wife and I were starting to think about what our next steps and plans were, we knew that area would have to be part of it.”

While the Strevels don’t hail from an agricultural background – he’s an engineer and she has a Ph. D. in biology – they started tiptoeing into the farming lifestyle some 15 years ago, after buying a home with “a lot of mature apple trees” on the property.

“We had more apples than we knew what to do with – way more than you could eat or make applesauce with,” Strevel laughs. “So, Andi got into making sweet and hard cider, and I think we got pretty good at it.”

In 2022, when the former Steimel family farm property in Suttons Bay hit the market, Nick and Andi hatched a plan to relocate to northern Michigan and become “first-generation farmers.” In addition to the farm’s existing cherry orchards, the pair have “planted over 1,000 heritage and cider-variety apple trees from custom nurseries.” Now, as those trees approach maturity, the Strevels are ready for the next step – hence the SLUP application. If all goes according to plan, Nick says the cidery could be up and running as soon as fall 2028.

In early planning commission meetings, the SLUP proposal drew some criticism from planning commissioners and members of the public alike. Concerns include the growing number of alcohol-related businesses in Bingham Township, the noise and traffic likely to be generated by the 20-events-per-year plan, and the impact of another new cidery on the township’s “rural character.”

While he’s aware that any type of development comes under scrutiny in a small, rural county like Leelanau, Strevel hopes locals will ultimately get on board with this project. The cidery is “not a large-scale planned operation,” he says, and a big goal behind the proposal is to keep one of the county’s legacy farming properties as an agricultural asset.

“This property was sold from the Steimels to a real estate developer in the early 2000s, and that developer actually fully planned and plotted a 78-unit condominium project,” Strevel says. “The project was even registered with the county, and it got all the way through the approval process – to the point where the deed we own is a condominium association. But one of the development leads passed away, and the project stalled. I don’t think a condo development is what any of the neighbors want, which is part of the reason we bought the property and why our plan is to put it into the heritage of agriculture.”

Strevel is also cognizant of the fact that cideries aren’t anything new for Leelanau County. In addition to longer-running operations like Tandem, Two K, and Suttons Bay Ciders – all located within eight miles of the Erdt Road property – Leelanau got two new cideries this year: Heartwood Ciders and Taproot Cellars. Where some may see an oversaturation issue, though, Strevel insists the proliferation of cideries is a positive sign that Leelanau County’s agricultural industry is evolving in a healthy way.

“If you look at the business model of a lot of smaller grower operations, selling fruit to processors is a hard way to make a living these days,” Strevel says. “Selling a high-value product to the end consumer has become the best way to keep land in its agricultural heritage and make it successful. It’s been fun talking to some of the other cideries in the area, because they've been very supportive of us. They want Leelanau to be a destination for ciders, so they don’t see us as a potential competitor; they see us as part of the destination.”