By Scott Sullivan
Editor
“Only connect,” E.M. Forster’s advice in the novel, later made a movie “Howard’s End,” has nothing on Saugatuck Township’s Lakeshore Drive washout.
The township board Nov. 13 voted to seek national designation to design and build a new road parallel to Lakeshore Drive from 126th to 130th avenues.
Built inland from where Lakeshore washed out after a 1988 storm, from Wiley Road south to 126th Avenue, it would provide alternate north-south access to homes on either side of the gulley.
Public discussion of replacing that missing link has abated since erosion from record-high Lake Michigan water levels in 2020-21 swallowed dune bluffs, stairs, decks, roads and more infrastructure.
Public beaches popular with tourists were closed and gated. A new handicap-accessible stairway with decks and ramps at the county’s West Side Park was removed and never been replaced.
Fire District Chief Greg Janik said in 2017, with lake levels already threatening, emergency service responses to sites south of the washout from the department’s station took an average 42-percent longer than would a more-direct route did.
Big lake levels have dropped in the past four years, but historically are cyclical and the quarter-mile gap remains. “We’re still seeing erosion from groundwater runoff near the lake, township manager Daniel DeFranco said.
To qualify for a federal grant sought by the Allegan County Road Commission to partially fund designing and building the new go-around, it must first be classified as a major connector road.
The county is seeking a federal Restoring American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) grant to fund a major portion of its hoped-for work.
The most recent grant cycle saw $1.8 billion awarded for 148 projects across the country.
Once all the parcels have access to the new road, the county would abandon its Lakeshore Drive right-of-way in the air and create a non-motorized, linear park nearby that land instead, DeFranco said.
