Walk the Boardman Lake Loop on any weekday evening and you already know the rhythm. Runners peel off the boardwalk near Medalie Park. Dogs pull their owners toward the water access stairs. Somebody's always locking a bike outside Oryana Community Co-op or grabbing a pint at Right Brain Brewery before finishing the last mile home. It has worked this way since the final stretch of trail closed the loop in July 2022, connecting neighborhoods on both sides of the lake into one four-mile circuit.
But if you've kept walking south past the University Center toward South Airport Road, you've probably noticed the part of the loop that never quite caught up. Logan's Landing has sat there for years, with parts of the property vacant and boarded. That's the piece of the story that just changed, adding a new dimension to the trail and its surrounding area.
The Loop Took Thirty Years to Finish. This Corner Took Even Longer.
The Boardman Lake Loop Trail was three decades in the making before TART Trails, the City of Traverse City, Garfield Township and Grand Traverse County finally closed the gap in 2022. That's a long runway for a four-mile path, and most of it paid off immediately. By the first eleven months of 2023, TART Trails had already logged 212,243 trail counts at the Medalie Park and Logan's Landing crossing alone, a volume of foot and bike traffic that would make most commercial corridors in the region jealous.
Logan's Landing itself tells a different story. Built in the 1960s, it straddles the Boardman River with two separate halves connected by a pedestrian bridge that's been closed off for years, structurally sound but unused. The complex is grandfathered in as a nonconforming structure under Garfield Township zoning, which has scared off buyers who might otherwise have converted it into something denser. So you had a trail pulling in six-figure annual foot traffic passing directly by a property that had not yet been converted to a denser use.
That mismatch is exactly what just got interesting.
Short's Brewing Bought the East Side with Nearby Residents in Mind
In April 2026, 9&10 News reported that Short's Brewing had purchased Logan's Landing East along South Airport Road and teamed up with Keen Technical Solutions under a new partnership called South Boardman Lake District LLC. The plan is a taproom with a riverside deck, using roughly 10,000 square feet of the 16,000-square-foot site, with a target opening in spring 2027.
What makes this worth paying attention to isn't the square footage. It's who Short's says they're building for. In an interview with 9&10 News, the company's CEO, Scott Newman-Bale, said:
"We are here to create people, bring people together. Not just to drink, but to eat, to enjoy the outdoor space, to shop at other places around us."
Newman-Bale pointed to Short's own Bellaire location, where he says about half of visitors don't drink alcohol at all, as the model for what he wants on Boardman Lake: an affordable, consistent taproom for nearby residents. He's also framed the Bellaire footprint as having helped revive a downtown that was once roughly 70 percent vacant. Whether that repeats itself on South Airport Road remains to be seen, but the intent is on the record. This is a bet on local customers at a site on South Airport Road.
In an interview with 9&10 News, Tim Pulliam of Keen Technical Solutions described the trail this way:
"Everyone talks about the loop, but I really look at it as like a hub," he's said. "And it's a hub that connects all of our neighborhoods."
The Mill District Is the Same Bet, Placed on the Other End of the Loop
Pulliam isn't just involved at Logan's Landing. He's also the developer behind the Mill District, a four-building mixed-use project going up at the former TC Millworks site on Woodmere Avenue. The Traverse City Commission approved the project's planned unit development in August 2025, and crews broke ground that November.
Taken together, these two projects aren't a coincidence sitting on the same trail network. They're the same developer making the same argument twice: that the loop has value as daily infrastructure for the people who already live within walking distance of it. The same 9&10 News report quotes Pulliam calling the Logan's Landing project a catalyst alongside the Mill District to help "create activation around the entire loop."
The Loop the Lake Race Returned on Labor Day Weekend
Labor Day weekend offered another example of activity along the corridor. The Traverse City Track Club's Loop the Lake race returned on September 4, 2026, presented by Munson Healthcare, with a new vendor this year, Playa Bowls, serving finishers. The evening race started at 6 p.m. at Hull Park on the lake's north side.
The Construction You Might Still Remember Is Already Behind You
If your last memory of this stretch of trail is orange cones, that's fair. In June 2026, the city ran utility work near Hull Park and the trail's northern access point, closing the segment between Hull Park and Franklin Street for several hours at a stretch to pull in a new force main pipe, with additional excavation work on Hannah Avenue running through late June. Pedestrians and cyclists were detoured through Railroad Place and Woodmere Avenue while it lasted. That work wrapped by the end of June, well ahead of both the Logan's Landing announcement gaining traction and the Labor Day race.
It's easy to read utility construction as background noise, but it's worth connecting to the bigger picture. Infrastructure upgrades like this tend to show up right before, not after, a corridor absorbs more density.
What You'll Actually Notice on Your Next Walk
None of this changes the loop itself. It's still the same four-mile circuit past Medalie Park, the University Center, and the wooded eastern stretch that locals have used for laps, commutes, and dog walks for years. What's changing is what sits along it. Here's the short version of the timeline:
- Spring 2027: Short's Brewing's taproom targeted to open on the east side of Logan's Landing, with a restored riverside deck.
- Now through completion: The Mill District's four buildings under construction on Woodmere Avenue, following an August 2025 approval and November 2025 groundbreaking.
- Already resolved: The June 2026 utility work near Hull Park that temporarily rerouted trail traffic.
- Labor Day weekend 2026: The Traverse City Track Club's Loop the Lake race returned, with a new food vendor.
The pattern underneath all of it is the same: both projects add new activity for people who live near this water. For anyone who's spent the last few years wondering when the south end of the loop would catch up to the rest of it, that's the answer. It already has, it's just still under construction.
If you're watching this stretch of the lake change and wondering what it might mean for property values or timing nearby, that's a conversation worth having before the taproom opens rather than after. Schedule a consultation with Traverse City Real Estate and we'll walk you through what's actually happening on the ground, block by block.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
