TCAPS is getting closer to having one final former school property off the market. After eight years of vacancy, the former Bertha Vos Elementary School is slated to become a public park through a $550,000 cash deal, contingent on environmental assessments. The offer followed the rejection of higher bids over the past year, including a $700,000 offer in August from North Arrow ABA, which sought to expand its services for individuals with autism to the county’s east side.

Jonathan Timm, founder of North Arrow, saw potential in the former elementary school after spending the last few years and “tens of thousands of dollars” repurposing space in another former TCAPS school, Norris Elementary, when he first launched his practice in 2020.

“We started in one little classroom. It was me, one client, and one employee,” Timm says. Now, with 80 staff members and more than 200 clients across six locations, the Traverse City branch remains the largest. “I think we have most of the classrooms here. That’s almost 10,000 square feet of space in this building,” he adds.

Norris Elementary, closed in 2008, was purchased by GTRAC LLC in 2014 for $300,000. Initially planned as a multi-use space for art businesses, the pandemic's impact made room for startups like North Arrow. “I’m glad we invested in this space,” says Timm. “Because it continues to grow and serve more and more families that need us in Traverse.”

North Arrow’s neighbor, New Moon Yoga, has been a long-time tenant since 2016. Owner Jessica Merwin noted that the building’s huge parking lot, once reserved for school buses and parent pick-ups, is now a convenient and free amenity for both her clients and the building’s roster of health and wellness focused businesses like Gateway Fitness Gym, which operates in the old school gymnasium.
At the former TCAPS Long Lake Elementary School, a more eclectic theme took shape. After students and faculty moved to a neighboring facility, TCAPS sold the property in 2017 to Shirley and John “Chip” Hoagland for $175,000. The Hoaglands redeveloped the building into the Long Lake Culinary Campus (LLCC), a 40,370-square-foot space designed to accommodate culinary and agri-business ventures.

The original vision for the Long Lake Culinary Campus was to transform the school’s cafeteria into a food-as-medicine teaching kitchen with support from Groundwork Center and Michigan State University, but funding challenges derailed the plan.

“We had a lot of people behind it, but it took a lot of funding to get that building up to where it is now,” says Mike Lahti, CEO of Tamarack Holdings, also owned by Hoagland. Renovations to the mid-century building included asbestos and lead paint removal and the addition of sustainable features like a solar array and low-water consumption systems. The campus’s location, six miles west of downtown Traverse City, also made it hard to “build momentum” for the project. “It’s not that far, relatively speaking,” Lahti notes, but the distance made it difficult to find employees amidst pandemic labor shortages.

Today, the LLCC hosts a mix of tenants, including a martial arts school, a childcare facility, and an interior design business. Sushi chef Brent Shafer found the location ideal for his first restaurant, The Dojo, which opened in 2022. Affordable rent, an existing restaurant setup, and customization options offset the challenge of being slightly out of town. “It’s more of a destination spot,” he says. “Everyone’s plugged into their phone, so it’s not hard to find us.”

The location has also been a boon for LLCC’s anchor tenant, Food For Thought, the specialty foods producer owned by Tamarack. Food For Thought expanded from 2,000 square feet to 16,000 when they moved to the Long Lake Culinary Campus. “The new facility added quite a bit more automation and equipment,” Lahti explains. “It went from about a half-million-dollar company to something that could achieve well over four [million] based upon the capacity… we actually just landed a relatively large regional distributor contract.”

The new contract holds “the potential of doubling or quadrupling the size of our business.” With 12 employees at the Long Lake Culinary Campus, Lahti says Food For Thought plans to add up to 10 more employees over the next year to handle the extra production. “The last three years we’ve been really focusing on demand and we've been able to achieve that. So now it's all about meeting the demand.”