Elk Rapids Library Brawl

A proposal to add a 6,230 square foot addition to an old, beloved library proved complicated.

By Patrick Sullivan | Dec. 9, 2017

 

Architects drew up designs. Fundraising plans were afoot. State historic preservation officials signed off. Earlier this year, Elk Rapids District Library supporters believed they would soon get permission to build a 6,320-square-foot addition to a building they say they’ve outgrown.

And then this summer, from the perspective of library director Nanette Miller, some ominous signs appeared around town. They read “Preserve Our Island House and Property.”

“People didn’t know what it meant — they would come in and ask us, ‘What do those signs mean?’” she recalled.

Turns out those signs meant that a small but determined group of village residents had decided they didn’t like the sound of the expansion, and they were determined to stop it. And that’s what they did. At a meeting on Nov. 6, the village council rejected the plans.

COMPROMISE PLEASES NO ONE
When the village council voted 4–3 to ask the library board to come back with smaller plans —for an addition that’s less than 4,000 square feet – the decision left both sides unsatisfied. The Preserve group wanted the expansion voted down outright. Miller thought the library proposal already represented a compromise.

To say Miller was disappointed that the plans were not approved would be an understatement.

She said the library board worked hard to get public input and come up with a plan that respected the history of the Island House, the 151-year-old building that sits on a 4.8-acre island at the mouth of the Elk River and has been home to the library since 1949.

“Our architects worked very closely with the state historical preservation office so we would not lose the historic marker,” Miller said. “It wasn’t easy. We had a plan we all really liked, and the state historic preservation office said no, so we scrapped all that.”

The library board worked with architects to adjust the plans so that they could win approval with state historic preservation officials, but when they took the plans to the village, things got complicated.

“I know that there’s a group of people who are resistant to all change in Elk Rapids,” Miller said. “They have surfaced on a lot of issues.”

Tim Moller, one of the core members of the Preserve group, lives on River Street across from the island. He can see the classic white cottage from his living room. And he wants it to stay as it is.

He said Miller and the library board should not have been surprised so many people were upset about the expansion plans because soon after they were announced in summer 2016, he and others started writing letters to the editor to the Elk Rapids News decrying them.

“As a result of the public hearings, it was a spontaneous combustion, [and] this committee was formed,” Moller said.

Miller said she believes the library board was responsive to criticism and made changes to accommodate objections. She said they specifically hired architects who are able to work on historic structures, and those professionals worked hard to respect the building’s history and to come up with a plan that had as little impact as possible on the island. 

A LONG AND COMPLICATED HISTORY
The building’s history goes back to the beginning of Elk Rapids.

Edwin Noble, one of the town’s founding fathers, built the house in 1865. Today, the building retains an aura of comfortable hominess, with creaky, uneven floors and hallways that twist around to rooms that were added on as the Noble family grew.

The building also has a connection to a legendary woman’s rights activist.

Katharine Dexter McCormick (see sidebar) donated the property to the village in 1948. Although she never actually lived in Elk Rapids, she helped shape the village with her gift, which came with some strict deed restrictions. The building must be used for something to benefit the public, like a library, but isn’t to be used as a convalescent home. (The sides disagree whether the building could be a senior center.)

Miller said there is nothing in the deed restrictions that prevent a library expansion.

“She was very progressive — I think she would want to see a better library. But that’s my opinion. I don’t know,” she said.

Preserve member and village resident Dianne Richter said she believes the deed restrictions rule out an expansion because, with most residents against those plans, McCormick’s mandate that it be used to the public’s benefit is violated.

“The village residents have spoken pretty loudly that they don’t want an expansion; I just don’t see how it could benefit them,” Richter said.

The spark that started the plan to expand the library came in 2014 when the library received a $400,000 bequest from the estate of a local man, Charles Heffer.

The library board hired consultants to undertake strategic planning and seek input from the community. Miller said they learned that many patrons found the library too small, and people wanted dedicated space for kids and teens, more comfortable seating areas, space to grow the library’s collection, and a place to hold events.

In 2015, the library board asked the village for permission to explore an expansion. They hosted public input meetings throughout the summer of 2016. Miller said the first sign that there would be trouble was when parking was discussed.

“They didn’t have anything to say about it until someone mentioned parking, and then people started getting really concerned,” she said. “Parking is a valid concern.”

Miller said she thought the library board addressed parking concerns by requesting five new parking spots down the hill, in the marina parking lot, that staff could use.

QUESTIONS ABOUT A PETITION
This summer, however, the opposition dug in.

The Preserve signs started to appear throughout town. But more troubling for Miller, she said, was that they were accompanied by what she believes was a misinformation campaign. Miller said that residents were told that scores of trees would be cut down, and everyone’s taxes would be raised if the expansion went forward.

Miller said the plan submitted to the village called for cutting down just one tree, and that the library board designed the plan so that it could be paid for through fundraising, not tax hikes.

“We proved that we would not need to raise our operating millage for at least eight years, probably 10,” Miller said.

Members of the Preserve group say there was no misinformation campaign.

The Preserve group circulated a petition and gathered 200 signatures of village residents who said they were opposed to an expansion of the library.

Richter said she was one of 10 or so people who circulated petitions and asked village residents to pledge their opposition to the expansion of the library. She said 82 percent of village residents who made their opinion known opposed the expansion.

There are questions about those petitions, however.

James Janisse, village council president, said he asked around and learned that some people who signed them did not have all of the facts.

“What I found was that the petitions were circulated before the questions were answered,” he said.

Those questions included whether the plans meant the library could keep its historical designation status, how many trees would be cut down, and whether the project would raise people’s taxes.

“Those questions were answered, and once we received the petitions, I made a few phone calls on my own,” Janisse said.

He said he found that some people who signed the petition did so believing that the library expansion would cause their taxes to go up.

“I was then told that, ‘You know, if I had that information, I don’t know that I would have signed it,” Janisse said.

 

LIKE SPRAYING PERFUME ON A HORSE

Richter said there was no mention made of added taxes on the petition, and she didn’t believe that any of the circulators talked about taxes or made exaggerated claims about tree removal, or suggested the structure would lose its historic status.

Moller said signature gatherers were telling the truth when they warned residents about taxes. He said the library expansion has already cost taxpayers.

He said his group learned that when the library board decided to go ahead with a project, in 2014, it started to collect the full .6 mills it is entitled to collect, and that historically the board only collected a fraction of that amount

“That’s completely legal, okay? No one said it’s illegal,” he said. “What we were saying was it’s already cost you money.”

Miller said Moller’s claim isn’t entirely true; the consultants did recommend in 2014 that the library collect more of the millage, but less than .6 mills was actually collected.

Moller acknowledged that the library officials responded to the criticisms: They altered plans to save trees; they made sure to keep the historic designation; and they reconfigured parking so that new spaces wouldn’t intrude into the park.

But he said that wasn’t enough.

“You can spray perfume on a horse, and it’s still a horse,” he said. “It’s still a massive, massive expansion.”

Moller said the Preserve group attempted to get the library board to look at other options. Moller believes the main purpose of the expansion is to create a community center, and he said he believes there are already plenty of places where the community can gather around Elk Rapids.

Moller appeared before the library board in August and proposed that the library could lease space at the Lighthouse building owned by First Presbyterian Church. Board members rejected that idea.

“It was very acrimonious, unfortunately,” Moller said. “Before I even got into it, they said, no, we already looked at that.”

The sides also dispute a detail in the 2014 consultants report that recommended a 4,000-square-foot, two-story addition.

Preserve members say that the library board tried to bury that recommendation because they wanted a bigger building.

“For some reason, they chose to ignore that,” Richter said.

Miller said that proposal from the strategic planning study was by not meant to be definitive and that architects later determined the library needed more square footage in order to incorporate the features patrons said they wanted.

“The consultants took it upon themselves to toss in an architectural proposal,” Miller said. “It was, ‘Here’s an idea for something you can do.’ It was in no way a proposal. … I realize now they didn’t do us any favors, because these people took it as gospel.”

 

Thom Yocum, library board president, said several members of the board will soon have a conference call with the architects to talk about scaling down the plans to 4,000 square feet. They will bring that information to the library board for a discussion at the December or January meeting.

Richter said she is open to seeing what’s proposed next but that she doesn’t understand why the library needs to be expanded.

“We’re basically a small community — our winter population is only 600 people in the village,” she said. “We can’t just look at two months out of the summer to define what we need year-round.”

Moller believes expanding the Island House building would do “irreparable harm” to the parklike setting of the island. He also said he doesn’t believe Elk Rapids needs a bigger library because the population isn’t growing.

He can’t imagine supporting plans for an addition unless they come back much, much smaller than 4,000 square feet.

“They should redefine the existing space they have, and then they should focus on technology,” he said. “They could make the whole island a hot spot.”

Moller said he hopes that when the library board offers a proposal, the village council decides to put it on the ballot. He believes that would settle what’s become a bitter dispute once and for all.

Yocum said he was surprised by the opposition. He expected people to be opposed, but he didn’t expect some of what transpired.

“We knew there would be opposition to doing something, but their tactics kind of surprised us,” Yocum said. “They’ll tell you they were 400 people, but it was basically a small group of five to eight people that spearheaded the whole opposition.”

He’s not sure how to go forward, and he expects the opposition group will oppose whatever they propose.

“We are working through it, and I am hoping that we’ll be able to come up with something that looks reasonable,” he said. “It’s very difficult because we spent over a year trying to get these plans.”

The Fireball Who Started It All
Katharine Dexter McCormick inherited a fortune, including what is today the library building in Elk Rapids, and she used her money to fight for civil rights for women.

She funded campaigns for women’s suffrage and later funded research that led to the development of the birth control pill.

McCormack’s roots were in Elk Rapids and Dexter, Michigan, but she didn’t have much time to spend Up North. In fact, though much of her father’s business took place in Elk Rapids, she never lived in the community.

McCormick, who was born in 1875, became the first woman to graduate from MIT with a science degree. She married Stanley McCormick, who later suffered from schizophrenia, and she inherited his fortune after he died in 1947. (Stanley’s father, Cyrus, patented the mechanical reaper in 1834, and Stanley helped start International Harvester.) The same year Stanley died, McCormick donated the Island House to the Village of Elk Rapids.

Meanwhile, McCormick had served as vice president and treasurer of the National American Woman Suffrage and, once the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, she became vice president of the League of Women Voters. That’s how she met Margaret Sanger, another crusader for improving the lives of women, who would go on to form an organization that would become Planned Parenthood.

Sanger struggled to find a way to get an effective means of birth control to American women. Once McCormick inherited her husband’s fortune, becoming independently wealthy, she was able to turn her attention to that cause.

She asked Sanger how she could best put her new wealth to use, and Sanger introduced her to Gregory Pincus and Min-chueh Chang at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, scientists who were researching fertilization and hormones.

McCormick donated $2 million ($22.9 million in today’s dollars) for research that led to the development of the first contraceptive pill, which won FDA approval in 1960.