Keweenaw County Master Plan Hearing Is September 28

Keweenaw County’s draft master plan sets aside about 200 acres of the Keweenaw Heartlands, the forest The Nature Conservancy bought in 2022, to be studied this year for development.

The draft says those acres, in Eagle Harbor and Grant townships, “will be analyzed in 2026 for community infrastructure development, which could include workforce housing, support infrastructure, and other opportunities.” That sentence is on page 73. It has been public since July 23 and we found no news coverage of it.

The Planning Commission takes public comment on the plan on Monday, September 28, 2026, at 4 p.m. at the Eagle River Courthouse, 5095 Fourth Street.

What the draft actually proposes

The plan’s land use chapter places sites near Lake Medora, one in Eagle Harbor Township and one in Grant Township, and says several sites “will soon be evaluated for mixed use development.”

The distance between analyzed and designated is the whole story here. On the pages we read (73, 114 and 116), the draft says the Heartlands sites will be analyzed or evaluated for development, not that housing is designated on them. We found no proposed project. The county does not own the land; The Nature Conservancy still does, pending transfer to the DNR and to a new local forest authority. And 200 acres is well under one percent of the roughly 32,500 acres the Heartlands covers.

There is real demand behind it. The county’s own master plan survey found 47.86 percent of respondents chose “Housing for the area’s seasonal and year-round employees” as a residential type they wanted to see, and 33.21 percent picked affordable housing options.

Sites near Lake Medora, in two townships

Pages 114 and 116 look like a contradiction: one puts a Lake Medora site in Eagle Harbor Township, the other in Grant. Both are in the text: the Eagle Harbor section on page 114 and the Grant section on page 116 each name a site near Lake Medora.

A parcel record provided to us lists a Grant Township parcel, 307-10-300-001, as 141.4 acres owned by The Nature Conservancy, which we have not independently confirmed. The plan’s whole study area is about 200 acres.

John Kern, owner of Kern Statistical Services, Inc., provided the parcel record and first pointed Yooper Hub to the Lake Medora language.

In a December 2025 email to Kern, which he shared with Yooper Hub, TNC Keweenaw project manager Julia Petersen wrote that she and TNC’s Rich Bowman had discussed “community benefits” acres at an October public meeting “as carve outs for public needs (e.g., workforce housing, public utilities, emergency services).” She called the idea “still in its infancy.” We have asked TNC how many acres are involved and whether they would be split off before the rest of the Heartlands changes hands.

Who paid for the rewrite

The plan being replaced was adopted in 2017, five years before The Nature Conservancy bought the Heartlands in 2022.

The update was paid for with a $75,000 reimbursement grant from The Nature Conservancy that originated as a private donation from an anonymous foundation. The Mining Gazette reported in July 2026 that the grant rescued a planning process that had stalled.

That is not an accusation. But TNC owns the land, is in the middle of handing it off, and funded the rewrite of the plan that now proposes studying 200 of those acres for development. Residents should know that before they speak at the hearing, and the county’s online notices do not mention it.

How to be heard

Written comments go to the Keweenaw County Zoning Department, 5095 Fourth Street, Eagle River, MI 49950, or by email to planning@keweenawcountymi.gov. Susan M. Hockings is the zoning administrator. Don Simila chairs the Planning Commission. The full draft is linked from the county’s master plan project site through keweenawcountyonline.org.

Two notes on what this hearing is not. County zoning itself is a separate live question, and the county took public comment on September 14 on whether to repeal its zoning ordinance; we covered that meeting separately. And the short-term rental text amendment hearing is set for October 5, not September 28.

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