While construction work to replace the seawall and boardwalk along the Leland Township Public Library could begin as early as spring, a quiet campaign is currently underway to secure enough funding from key donors for the estimated $900,000 project.
In October, the Leland Township board voted 4-1 to transfer the Munnecke Deed property, which includes the Munnecke Room that the township meets in every month, to the library. A 2020 engineering study identified an “eventual structural failure of the seawall,” leading to the township agreeing to the transfer of ownership of the property and seawall in order to expedite the replacement.
Wilbur Munnecke, the former publisher of the Chicago Sun Times, and his wife, Louise, originally purchased the property and then gave it to Leland Township in 1974 so that a library, meeting room, and museum could be built. The Leelanau Historical Society Museum (LHS), as well the Munnecke Room which serves as a community meeting room, is also considered part of the Leland Cultural Campus. The seawall was built the following year in 1975 on the donated property as part of the construction of a new Leland Library.
The transfer essentially allows library staff to take over the critical replacement project of the Leland river seawall, with library personnel previously noting that they were concerned about “the lack of progress in repairing the seawall” and that it is “at risk of collapse and, in that event, it cannot be reconstructed under current environmental laws and regulations.”
In the intergovernmental agreement established, its noted that the library will have “sole authority over and responsibility for the maintenance of the seawall and the design and implementation of the project” and that it would “use its best efforts to secure, by means of a capital agreement, the funds required for those purposes…” The agreement continues, noting that the library will use its best efforts to secure by capital campaign the funds required to complete the repair project, utilizing not only the $200,000 provided by the township at closing, but also the funds donated to the library or to the Friends of the Leland Township Library for the “express purpose of maintenance and/or reconstruction of the seawall.”
“The seawall has become our top priority for the new year,” said Leland Library Director Mark Morton in a press release last week. “If the wall were to fail, we would lose a significant portion of our lawn and the river would threaten the foundations of the Leelanau Historical Society Museum, not to mention the potential environmental impact of large amounts of silt going into the river… The Library has many exciting things going on this year, including a renovation and addition to the Library building, but the Library Board of Directors felt they could not delay any longer in saving this essential asset.”
According to a recent library press release, the seawall boardwalk is popular with boaters on Lake Leelanau, as it is the only place on the river where the public may tie up and visit the Library, the LHS museum, Fishtown, the Leland restaurants and shops, and the Lake Michigan beaches. Besides working to secure funding for the project with the intention of starting construction in the spring, the library is currently working on locking in on a construction manager and is engaging design engineers to replace the wooden wall with a steel structure that will be designed to last 100 years.
“With the removal last year of the public dock at the DNR boat launch across the river from the library, our seawall is the only accessible place for boaters to tie up,” Morton said in the press release. “In the warm weather months, the seawall and boardwalk are used every day by dozens of boaters for temporary docking... We hope to minimize the disruptions to boaters and Cultural Campus users during the busy summer months, but the failure of the wall would be a severe blow to the community and the environment, so we are moving ahead as fast as we can regardless of the disruptions.”
