Christmas #37!

It's been 37 years of Christmas Cheer. 2017 marked the thirty-seventh time Team Elmer's has donated setting Santa's house and the Christmas tree in downtown Traverse City. What people may not know is another tradition started at the same time by Butch Broad, Team Elmer's owner from 1977-2009.

Once Santa's house was set and the large tree positioned for City of Traverse City light decoration crews, Broad would purchase a smaller live tree and hoist it from the end of a crane at the then Park Drive location of Team Elmer's.  The lit tree was visible above the tree line across  Boardman Lake for miles.

The tradition continued when Team Elmer's relocated to Cass Road in the 1980s, and again when they moved to the current location at Rennie School Road in the 1990s. 

The cranes have changed and the tradition has been updated to include low energy LED lighting along the 190 ft lattice crane, strung lights in place of a live tree, and twelve foot tall letters from a Christmas display once set in Leelanau County.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! May your holidays sparkle with moments of love, laughter, and goodwill.

It's A Christmas Miracle!

West Front Street Is Open! 

Construction season can be long for the motoring public that is delayed by detours or gridlock.  Conversely, for the construction crews, the season is incredibly short, especially in Northern Michigan where the weather forces them to fit a complete year of work into seven months - May through November.

Anytime a constructon project opens early or on-time, the motoring public welcomes it enthusiastically.

West Front Street is one of those enthusiastically received completions.  A full reconstruction of West Front Street from Division Street to Elmwood Street removed curb, gutter, installed new water line, new paving, sidewalks, and storm sewer line upgrades with new filtration tanks that reduced storm water runoff and debris in area surface waters. 

One surprise, when crews looked to connect existing pipeline (thought to be under the existing stream bed) with newly placed upgrades, it was discovered the lines actually ran over the river box culvert instead. This allowed City engineers to upgrade the existing pipe system that crossed the river.

Crews completed all road construction for the project in late October to reopen West Front Street to traffic.  Local merchants appreciated the attention to detail.

"The communication is there," stated Tom Gretzmacher of West Side Beverage. "The awareness of what I'm going through and attentiveness to that...the communication has been very good."

Shawn O'Brien from Ace Hardware agreed, "They kept me up to speed... they always were letting us know what was happening."

And the project was completed on-time. Another Christmas Miracle!