What do you do with a 12,000-square-foot bowling alley when your library runs out of room next door?
That's not a hypothetical in Northport this fall. The Leelanau Township Library has a purchase option on the building at 116 South Waukazoo Street, the same address that's spent the last five years as Northport Pub & Grille: bowling lanes, pool tables, a sports bar, and a kitchen that's fed wedding rehearsal dinners and Euchre nights alike. If the deal closes, the building that currently hosts league bowling on Monday and Thursday nights will become the village's new library and community space.
The building hasn't sat still in a long time, and that's the part of this story worth understanding before you get to the library at all.
The Building That Keeps Changing Jobs
Before it was Northport Pub & Grille, the building was Tucker's, a Northport landmark long enough that when it closed, the loss registered as more than a vacancy. Owner Michelle Hemeyer bought the space in June 2020 and spent the following months turning it into something new, opening in early summer 2021 as a year-round eatery, a boutique bowling alley carved out of the old kids' arcade, and an event space built for everything from birthdays to bowling leagues. Chef Bryon Figueroa, previously of Fig's in Lake Leelanau, came on to run the kitchen with sous chef Nikki Scott, and Hemeyer structured the bowling itself around actual local feedback, charging by the game instead of by the hour because, as she put it at the time, that's what a few locals had asked for.
Five years later, the same address is being eyed for a completely different kind of gathering. Not league night. Story hour.
A Library That Ran Out of Room Next Door
The Leelanau Township Library currently shares its building with the township hall, a setup that made sense when the library operated as a township department. That changed in 2022, when the library separated from township governance and secured its own millage. Since then, according to library board president Mark Morton, the library has expanded its hours and seen a steady increase in visitors, enough that the shared space it occupies now can't keep pace with demand.
The plan on the table would move the library into the former Tucker's and NPG building, giving it room for more books, more programming, and more of whatever a library board decides a community space should hold. Morton described the plan to the Leelanau Ticker in blunt terms: "It's incredibly exciting. It's exciting for the library, but it's also exciting for the community." The purchase option is real, but the deal isn't final and the library still has money to raise before Waukazoo Street's bowling lanes give way to bookshelves.
Why This Building, Why Now
Northport is a village of roughly 500 year-round residents, which means the inventory of buildings large enough to hold a crowd is short. There's no surplus of 12,000-square-foot commercial spaces sitting empty downtown, waiting for whichever institution needs one next. When Tucker's closed, Northport didn't get a second landmark restaurant to replace it. It got NPG, built inside the same walls. If the library moves in next, it won't be because a new building went up. It'll be because the same address absorbed another version of what the town needed.
That pattern shows up elsewhere in Northport this year too, just in a different direction. Leelanau Paddle Club, formerly known as Paddle Courts of Leelanau, didn't wait for a dedicated athletic facility to open in July. It built its new platform tennis courts at Dune Bird Winery instead, on raised surfaces with heaters underneath that keep the courts playable through winter. A winery hosting a sports facility and a restaurant building potentially becoming a library are the same story told twice: in a town this size, civic and recreational needs get grafted onto whatever structure already exists, because building something purpose-made from scratch isn't usually how it works here.
The Season Emptying Out Around It
The library news landed in late August, which happens to be exactly when Northport's summer calendar starts folding up for the year. The timing isn't a coincidence so much as a rhythm the village runs on every year, and this fall's version of it includes:
- The Northport Farmers Market, which ran Fridays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. across from the marina at 105 South Bay Street from June 5 through September 18, and has now closed for the season.
- Music in the Park, presented by the Northport Performing Arts Center at the Ken Holton Pavilion in G.M. Dame Marina Park, billed as the longest-running weekly music event in the area. Its free Friday concerts ran through late August and have wrapped for the year.
- Leelanau UnCaged, now in its 12th year, which turned downtown Northport into open-air stages for music, dance, and art vendors this past Saturday, September 26. Locally, it's known as the unofficial hinge point between the county's summer and fall seasons.
- The Northport Tea Dance, now in its sixth year under the Chetcuti Evans Foundation, running today, Sunday, September 27, from 2 to 6 p.m. at Willowbrook Mill. It's one of the county's largest annual LGBTQ+ community events.
- The Northport Arts Association's fall slate, including an open mic night for writers earlier this week, alongside Spooky Saturday on October 10, a Leelanau Township Library event with science experiments and snacks that the Arts Association is joining with its own spooky-themed art activities.
None of this is background noise to the library story. It's the same civic muscle flexing in a different season. When the farmers market tables come down and Music in the Park goes quiet for the winter, the organizations that keep Northport's public life running indoors, the library, the Northport Arts Association, the performing arts center, start carrying more of the weight. A library that's outgrown its room isn't an isolated capital project. It's one more sign that the town's few large gathering spaces are being asked to do more than they were built for.
What Happens to the Building Next
The purchase option gives the library a path, not a guarantee. Fundraising still has to close the gap, and Morton has been candid that there's considerable work left before Waukazoo Street changes hands again. But the momentum is unusual for a small library: a millage that freed it from township budgeting in 2022, growing visitor numbers since, and now a board willing to chase a 12,000-square-foot building that most towns Northport's size would never have the leverage to consider.
If it goes through, the building will have done something rare even by Northport standards: gone from a landmark restaurant, to a bowling alley and sports bar, to a library, inside a single decade, without ever leaving the same four walls. The bowling league will need somewhere else to play. The Friday night crowd will find another sports bar or none at all. But the building itself keeps doing what it's always done in this village: whatever the town needs it to, next.
If you're watching how a small town's civic life reshapes its own buildings and want to talk about what that means for property here on the Leelanau Peninsula, Found Realty Co knows this stretch of Waukazoo Street and the village around it better than most. Reach out and let's talk about what's changing in Northport.
