After an initial closure in March due to Michigan's stay-at-home mandate, Tucker’s of Northport has closed permanently. The Leelanau Ticker checked in with the owners and general manager for their insights after a 6-year run as a destination eatery and social hub at the peninsula’s tip.

The restaurant/bar and bowling alley opened in May of 2014 and employed 18 people year-round. During the summer the staff grew to 25.

“About 65 percent of our staff drove from Traverse City, Honor, Beulah or Interlochen,” General Manager Priscilla Sherwood tells The Leelanau Ticker. “We spent more time with our staff and our customers than we did our families.”

Sherwood reports that because of current social-distancing protocols, the Tucker's team did not have a full sense of closure. “When we told the staff we had to bring them in one-by-one. Anything they need, we are trying to help them with the best we can, including finding other jobs.”

She says staff members are staying in touch via a private Facebook group and “when this is all done and over with, we are definitely all going to get together.”

The fact that Tucker’s was open all year, while some other establishments in the area close for a few weeks or months during winter was appreciated by the local residents, according to Sherwood. “We want to thank our whole community for being a part of our growth. Our hope is somebody will pick it up and give Leelanau County a place to go year-round.”

Owners Bill and Nina Collins echo that sentiment. Says Bill, “My wife and I were glad that there was a place in Northport to get that many people all together. It ended up feeling that it belonged there in Northport."

He adds, "When this virus came along and we had to shut down temporarily, and saw how things were going, we thought, this was time to totally retire.”

As Janice Binkert reported in the February 1, 2020 edition of the Northern Express, a sister publication to The Leelanau Ticker: The Collinses “retired” to the Village of Northport in 1999. Soon after the couple began helping with the renovation of the marina, and then built the Northport Creek golf course, which was donated to the community. Nina is an artist, and the couple has a history of supporting the arts, which led to the creation of the Village Arts Building, which was also donated to the community and now houses the Northport Arts Association. When friends began the construction of Tucker’s, they partnered on that project, helping to open the restaurant in 2014. The other partners eventually moved to South Carolina, however, so the Collinses inadvertently become the sole proprietors.

 “Owning a restaurant was certainly never on our ‘bucket list,’ and we had no restaurant experience other than our love of good food, so we had an extremely fast, fascinating, and sometimes frustrating learning curve,” said Bill. “Fortunately, we had the great luck to have some very talented and dedicated people in our employee and management area, and we built from there. With that superb team, we have had a lot of help.”

The Tucker’s building at 116 South Waukazoo Street in Northport will be going on the market.