The marina and associated waterfront in Suttons Bay are set to get some significant improvements thanks to a pair of state grants.

Suttons Bay Village Manager Rob Larrea says the village recently was informed that its application for two grants totaling roughly $860,000 from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources’  Waterways Program were approved.

The grants, which require local matching dollars, will be used to replace the village’s aging bath house/restroom facility at the marina and make improvements to the marina itself, including adding more docks in an area once occupied by a small boat launch. 

A third grant through the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund (MNRTF) is pending, Larrea says. That grant would be used to create a pedestrian bridge between the sections of marina that for years have been separated by a wetland area. A bridge that was there faltered a few years ago during high water levels.

“What we’re trying to do is make a circular pedestrian walkway through the area, make it an educational loop,” Larrea tells The Ticker. “We have a lot of nature there, a lot of history, and the wetland is sort of like a wild bird sanctuary. We want to have interpretive signs and things of that nature.”

Money is frequenty tight in muncipal operations, and securing the grant dollars is “huge” for the village’s strategic objectives, Larrea says. These improvements were identified in the master planning process and would be very difficult to tackle without external funding. 

“We’re certainly not usually this lucky,” Larrea says. “It was definitely a group effort trying to get these three grants in within a week or so. The hope was we’d get at least one, and so far we have two. If we get the third one, it would be a ‘holy smokes’ situation.”

The village has long discussed a need for more year-round public restrooms, and has also fielded some complaints (particularly from boaters) about the state of its dated current bathhouse. They’re now looking at tacking both issues (at least partially) with a new facility at the marina.

“Our marina is getting a lot of use and attention, and these amenities are important to provide to both our leaseholders and our visitors,” Larrea says. “So we’ll build a new bathhouse, and attached to it we’re also adding public, year-round restroom facilities.”

The new building is also planned to have a pavilion for use by boaters and the general public. Grant application paperwork for the building shows three conceptual designs with considerable variation. 

Over at the marina itself, village officials decided to not restore a boat launch that had fallen into disrepair during high water levels, especially since there is another boat launch just down the street. After deciding to not restore the launch, new docks in its place made sense. 

“We'll be purchasing new docks with water, electric availability, as well as lighting,” Larrea says. “We’ll be putting four or five docks in, and they’ll be for large boats, probably able to handle 40 or 50 foot boats.”

It is unlikely that work on either project will begin anytime soon, Larrea says, though it’s possible the current bathhouse could be removed before the end of the year. While the village has conceptual designs, it still needs to finalize a design and complete the engineering process, Larrea says. 

In other news, crews recently finished creek restoration work at Waterwheel Park. They had started earlier this month in an effort to improve the creek there, which had badly degraded over the years. The winding, cascading creek replaces one that had channelized and dug into the earth.

“We had the creek totally redone from point A to point B,” he says. “It’s pretty impressive now.”