Empire resident Corey Smith has been working as the general manager at The Mill in Glen Arbor since he relocated to Leelanau County in 2022 for the job.
Since serving in the manager role, Smith has not only been able to see the historic northern Michigan landmark transform through its many renovation stages, but he’s also been there to coordinate and celebrate its long awaited reopening and how its come to be the multi-use destination that it is today. With his extensive hospitality experience, Smith has been able to put his own personal imprint on the project.
“In my day to day, I get to be the happy host. Much of my work really entails daily oversight of the operations, but I also have the honor of showing off all the work that was put forth to create The Mill experience,” Smith said. “Moving a lot of this stuff, you uncover hidden paintings and parchments and different artifacts that were not so obvious… We preserved a lot of that and created this timeline wall and framed some of them. So that was super exciting discovering some of these things.”
