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Historic Beach House To Be Demolished

The rear of The Beach House where the swimming pool was located. Photo courtesy of Petoskey architect Rick Neumann

A Beach House with some historic significance west of Mackinaw City will be torn down. Emmet County officials say it doesn’t serve the growing number of people using the county’s Dark Sky Park.

Officials estimate the Beach House needs more than a million dollars of work to bring it up to code. They left open the possibility for a private group or person to step forward with funds to save the building. But there were no takers.

County administrator Lyn Johnson says the plan is to build a new structure to handle several hundred people instead of several dozen.

A member of the McCormick family of Chicago built the Beach House in the late 1950’s as a pool house overlooking Cecil Bay. County officials checked with the McCormick foundation. “Who had very little interest in the building itself,” Johnson says. “They’re more concerned about the land and the preservation of the land.”  The foundation sold the 600 acre Headlands property to the county.

But a Petoskey architect says the Beach House is an example of mid-century modern design that would qualify for the national historic register. Rick Neumann says that style is just now being recognized as significant.

“The Beach House may be stylistically and architecturally a little too close to us yet to be able to fully realize that it is an important piece of architecture,” Neumann says.

The county is doing a new overall plan for the entire Headlands property. Neumann wonders why the county can’t wait to see how the structure might fit in.