The Suttons Bay Township Planning Commission last week approved a special land use permit to add a tasting room at the new "Forty-Five North" winery off Horn Road north of M-204.

The winery, located on property formerly owned by Dean and Cindy Robb, went into operation earlier this year after the Suttons Bay Township Board endorsed a liquor license for the facility in June. The winery is owned by an ophthalmologist from Indiana, Dr. Stephen Grossnickle.

The township board’s endorsement of the liquor license had stipulated that the owner would need to seek the special land use permit to add a tasting room to the winemaking operation, explained township zoning administrator Steve Patmore. The owner’s representative, Nancy Kotting of Leland, presented a site plan that township planners reviewed and approved at their regular monthly meeting on Dec. 5.

Patmore said that conditions attached to the special land use permit will require the owner to revise the site plan to reduce the size of a parking lot slightly, as well as live up to other routine “performance conditions” spelled out for wineries in the township’s zoning ordinance.

Patmore noted that the number of wineries in Suttons Bay Township had increased by three this year. One of them is actually a hard apple cider operation that is allowed under zoning ordinance provisions for wineries – the “Tandem Cidery” owned by the director of the Northwest Michigan Horticultural Research Station, Nikki Rothwell, and her husband, Daniel Young. The other new winery is “Silver Leaf Vineyards” owned by local real estate agent Mark Carlson.

The zoning administrator reported that approval of the special land use permit for a tasting room at the “Forty-Five North” winery was the only major item of business on the Suttons Bay Township Planning Commission’s agenda this month.