Keweenaw County’s draft master plan sets aside about 200 acres of the Keweenaw Heartlands, the forest the county spent four years trying to protect, 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 could not find it reported anywhere.
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. After the hearing it recommends to the Board of Commissioners, which has final say.
What the draft actually proposes
Two later chapters place sites near Lake Medora, and the plan’s zoning recommendations say the Grant Township parcel should be rezoned once a feasibility study is finished.
The distance between analyzed and designated is the whole story here. Nothing in the draft designates housing anywhere. No project has been proposed. 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.
Three proposed changes around 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. The county’s future land use maps show both are right, because Grant Township begins at the lake’s south shore.
The Grant map marks a parcel on that shore as a proposed change to mixed use/commercial, and the Eagle Harbor map marks two more just east of the lake along US-41. The county’s parcel viewer lists the Grant parcel, 307-10-300-001, as 141.4 acres owned by The Nature Conservancy. The plan’s whole study area is about 200 acres.
John Kern, owner of Kern Statistical Services, Inc., an independent consultant in regulatory science, 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 written years before The Nature Conservancy bought the Heartlands in late 2022.
The update was paid for with a $75,000 grant from The Nature Conservancy, drawn from a private donation tied to the Heartlands project. 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 no county notice says 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 shut its zoning ordinance down entirely; 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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