Flocking To Fishtown: Fresh Off Its Busiest Year, Fishtown Preps For The Future

Maybe it was an appearance two years ago on a list of the most beautiful small towns in America. Maybe it’s just the result of years of word-of-mouth. Whatever the reason, Leelanau County’s Fishtown is getting busier and busier – so its leaders are seeking ways to prepare for future spikes in traffic.

Amanda Holmes is the executive director for the Fishtown Preservation Society (FPS), the nonprofit that works “to assure public access to Fishtown and to maintain its historical integrity.” For years, Holmes says the FPS has given the number of “at least 300,000 a year” when asked how many visitors pass through Fishtown. But after what Holmes describes as perhaps the busiest year in Fishtown history, the organization is wondering whether that estimate is still accurate.

“Starting next year, we’ll be able to do occasional people counts, and so we’ll have a better idea of the numbers of people coming through,” Holmes tells the Leelanau Ticker. “We realized that we’ve always given the estimate of at least 300,000 a year. But when you start feeling the numbers increasing in the summer, and especially in the shoulder seasons, we realized that our numbers are actually probably bigger than that. We want to have more accurate counts so we can have a better idea of what to anticipate in future years.”

Summer is almost always a bustle, and Holmes says 2024 was no exception. Fishtown staples like the Village Cheese Shanty thrived as usual, while new shops like Leelanau Goods immediately found a following.

The bigger revelation, though, was an ultra-busy autumn, with fall color weekends bringing record days for several businesses.

“There were some days in October this year that were busier than any of our summer days, and the businesses sold more,” Holmes says. “It was just unbelievable.”

While Holmes says busy shoulder seasons are a good thing for places like Fishtown, which largely shuts down during the winter, she also notes that many businesses still operate with a summer peak in mind. If peak season is expanding to a full-on mad dash from April to October, that could change how business owners strategize.

“I think that, when it is that much busier all the time, then if anyone is having a hard time with something like staffing, that means there's that much more of a strain.” Holmes explains. “By the time some of these businesses get to October, they might be like, ‘Whoa. That might have been too much.’ The energy level that it takes to sustain that level of traffic is just really high.”

Therein lies the reason for Fishtown’s new people-counting plan. Using “strategically-placed cameras,” Holmes says FPS will be able to take periodic visitor tallies throughout the year. Those counts will give a more informed estimate of how many people are passing through Fishtown annually, but they’ll also provide a better sense of what tourism patterns look like in the post-pandemic era. Beyond helping businesses, Holmes says the goal of the project is to make sure Fishtown is providing the best visitor experience possible.

“We need to remember that the people we’re talking to or encountering, most of them have never been here before,” she says. “I can’t tell you how many times this year I would encounter a young couple walking around Fishtown and find out they were on their honeymoon and were visiting our area for the first time. Those kinds of things remind us why it's important to keep the place in good shape – and not just cared for, but cared for strategically in order to keep what is authentic about Fishtown alive.”

The people-counting project is part of a broader effort to modernize Fishtown’s technology infrastructure. While much of the draw of Fishtown has to do with its historic structures and old-timey feel, Holmes stresses that technology can still be a very important “layer” to how visitors experience the place and how businesses operate more efficiently. One big project this season was an overhaul of Fishtown’s internet system, which should make Wi-Fi more available throughout the area.

Next up is an expansion of the FPS website, with QR code integration around Fishtown to make it easier for visitors to access “abundant information." From the commercial fishing history of the place to a record of the various businesses that have operated in shanties over the years, Holmes says the website should allow for a deep understanding of Fishtown's past.

The tech modernization work at Fishtown follows a period of intense physical infrastructure improvements on the historic destination, necessitated by wear and tear from years of high water. At this point, Holmes says most of that stability work is done, including restorations of key shanty buildings and a rehabilitation of Fishtown’s retaining wall and entrance area. The final historic building in need of serious work – the shanty known as the Ice House – is getting a makeover that includes a new foundation.

“We’re just lucky it’s still standing,” Holmes says of the Ice House. “That poor thing took a lot of damage from the high water. It sat so long with its feet wet, and the condition of it was just horrible. When we were removing some of the inside boards, we realized that the shiplap on the inside was helping to stabilize the wall. It is just so ready to be fixed.”