Two Leelanau County wine producers will seek approval from Traverse City commissioners tonight (Monday) to offer tastings and wine and bottle sales downtown, with MAWBY planning to partner with Mundos 305 on a wine/coffee bar concept at 305 West Front Street and Shady Lane Cellars updating its permits for shared tasting room space with Grand Traverse Distillery at 215 East Front Street. Commissioners tonight will also review the draft Mobility Action Plan, part of the city’s new master plan update.

Liquor Licenses
Sparkling wine producer MAWBY is seeking approval for several permits that will allow the company to offer tastings, wine by the glass, and bottle sales at the Mundos 305 coffee shop downtown.

In a statement to The Ticker, MAWBY’s Peter Laing said the company plans to “connect the coffee drinker, the wine connoisseur, and the foodie under one roof.” He continued: “Traverse City is a culinary destination. Mundos and MAWBY are excited to provide the downtown area with a wine and coffee bar concept with special food offerings, something we believe the city will appreciate.”

According to Laing, the space will continue to be operated by Mundos, with wine tasting and bottles sales “incorporated seamlessly into the space.” Customers will be able to order “any combination of Mundos coffee and food items and MAWBY/bigLITTLE wine products from the same person in a single transaction,” Laing said. bigLittle, a boutique wine brand from Peter and Mike Laing, is co-located on the same property as MAWBY on Elm Valley Road in Suttons Bay.

Shady Lane Cellars will also appear on the city commission agenda tonight seeking new updated permits for the Grand Traverse Distillery tasting room on East Front Street. A selection of wines from Shady Lane Cellars – located on East Shady Lane in Suttons Bay – are already available for tastings and sale by the glass in the downtown tasting room.

“Nothing will change, we are just updating permits,” says Executive Winemaker and General Manager Kasey Wierzba. “The Michigan Liquor Control Commission requires the permits for the joint off-premise tasting rooms to all match, so we are updating our permits to match those of Grand Traverse Distillery, along with updating our license to reflect a joint off-premise license with the MLCC, which requires local approval. We will be operating as is with no changes.”

As part of the MLCC permitting process, state law requires applicants to obtain approval from the local legislative body, such as the city commission. Anytime an applicant is seeking a license in Traverse City, therefore, that request comes to city commissioners and is placed on their agenda for approval. City commissioners earlier this month revisited the Healthier Drinking Culture, the city’s strategic plan adopted in 2021 that identifies ways to improve the city’s drinking culture. Commissioners at that meeting said they didn’t want to try and put a cap on the number of liquor licenses in specific blocks or neighborhoods of the city, as that can be difficult to implement equitably and can create business monopolies. However, they agreed to periodically review the number and type of liquor licenses in the city in order to monitor and address trends.

Mobility Action Plan
As part of a series of meetings this summer to review the city’s new draft master plan – culminating in its planned adoption in September – commissioners tonight will review the Mobility Action Plan, a subplan dedicated to addressing transportation and mobility issues in the city.

The Mobility Action Plan uses both qualitative and quantitative data to tell “Traverse City’s mobility story,” according to presentation materials from City Planning Director Shawn Winter. Staff compiled annual average daily traffic volumes, maps of where existing infrastructure like bike lanes and sidewalks exist (or don’t) in Traverse City, and public input from residents on areas where they feel uncomfortable walking or biking.

Major corridors are where people tend “to feel the most uncomfortable and find it the most challenging,” Winter says, and thus tend to be areas where more protected cycling or walking facilities – like the cycle track on Eighth Street – are needed. Such facilities, however, would likely be overkill on a neighborhood street like Webster Street, he notes. Because the types of improvements that would benefit a particular street are specific to that corridor’s conditions – and those conditions can change over time – the Mobility Action Plan doesn’t prescribe a list of recommended improvements to each street but instead includes a matrix to guide decision-making when city leaders have an opportunity to reconstruct or improve a corridor.

“We didn’t want to say there’s only one option and prescribe that to a section on the map,” Winter explains. “When we have the opportunity for a project, the matrix helps look at things like how much money do we have, what’s the traffic volume and speed in the corridor, what are the right-of-way constraints, and other factors that can help us in the decision-making process.”

The plan includes “low-hanging fruit” that would be easy to implement in the near future – things like signage, painting, and striping, Winter says – as well as opportunities for larger projects that could be slotted into the city’s capital improvement plan (CIP) for long-term planning. Implementing the Mobility Action Plan is “not going to happen overnight,” Winter says. “These are expensive improvements. But the city commission has the opportunity to put their money where their priorities are, like they did in the past with sidewalk bonding. If the city commission wants to do something like that again, we’ll design and implement it as quickly as they’re willing to support funding it.”