An estimated eight thousand people gathered in Sturgeon Bay this weekend for the Door County community’s annual harvest fest.
In addition to its classic car show, craft fair and root beer holding contest, attendees experienced a first. They had a chance to walk inside a historic granary being restored along Sturgeon Bay’s waterfront. Its restoration is a story of perseverance.
I first saw the granary on Sturgeon Bay’s west waterfront back in 2017. It sat on a forlorn parcel next to the city’s maritime museum. The granary stood vacant for over 50 years, and its days appeared to be numbered.
READ: Door County community divided over waterfront development plan
But its trajectory has almost miraculously shifted. Now, it’s been restored enough to open to the public.
Project manager Nate Brown gives a glimpse of the restoration in progress.
“This lower level where we’re standing right now, we did a sandblasting treatment. We actually used salt to take any of the residue of paint and just the grime and dirt. And it’s really started to reveal like the beauty of the building, like the understructure. And you can see the grain bins now,” Brown says.
Granaries used to dot the American landscape—connecting farmers’ yields to storage and rail or ship distribution.
This particular design, which looks like a little wooden house atop a big house, was invented on the Erie Canal.
Only two remain on the Great Lakes. The Teweles and Brandeis Grain Elevator —now known as the Door County Granary— is the only restored one.
In project manager Nate Brown’s opinion, "[It’s] pretty amazing to think that this is like all hand-built and hand-hewn timbers and to be able to save this and not just pitch it was a really valiant effort on the historical society’s part,” he says.
Valiant because the granary was not a cherished artifact in the community and city leaders proposed selling the land to a private hotel developer.
It was the hotel plan that first caught Kelly Catarozoli and other residents' attention.
“Yeah, it was what we thought was like a big, ugly, dumb hotel. It was just not thoughtful. It was blocking off our prized waterfront,” Catarozoli says.
Catarozoli says people like her didn’t feel heard, even when several hundred showed up at city council meetings.
“It’s very hard to get people to come to a city council meeting to begin with, but when you’re filling a firehouse because you can’t fit ‘em in city hall quarters, you should pay attention,” Catarozoli says.
Catarozoli decided the only way to shift the tide was to run for office. She served two terms.
In the meantime, others argued the waterfront is public land – filled lakebed that it’s covered by a tenant of the state constitution called The Public Trust Doctrine.
In the thick of the debate about whether the land could be privately developed, Catarozoli says the unbelievable happened.
“To rescue the granary, we had to move it, and the closest available vacant lot just happened to be on the other side of the bridge. It’s really not that far, but it looked dramatic because you had to go over a bridge,” Catarozoli says.
In the meantime, the recently created Sturgeon Bay Historical Society Foundation rallied and succeeded in getting the granary listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Public Trust Doctrine ultimately prevailed and the granary returned to its original footprint on Sturgeon Bay’s west waterfront.
It took six years, but the Sturgeon Bay Historical Society Foundation raised $6 million thanks to a generous anonymous donor, a USDA grant, plus gifts from hundreds of local individuals and families to launch the first phases of restoration.
“I think for me this project just represents this outpouring community involvement,” says Kelly Avenson.
She, along with Kell Catarozoli and several other women, served on the Sturgeon Bay common council throughout the tumultuous times and continues to serve on the community’s historical society foundation.
“The granary has always represented just a massive sense of community of people who look toward the future. And they’re not looking just this year. They’re looking 50, 100 years and how will that impact the next generation,” Avenson says.
Five months ago, the Wisconsin Association of Historic Preservation Commission recognized Sturgeon Bay’s historical society for its “work that has a real and beneficial impact on the local community."
The granary brigade still has plenty on their plate. They’re raising money to make the facility fully accessible —from bottom to its soaring head house— rich in programs and to make the living monument a 21st-century community gathering space, of historical significance, of course.
