Beach Town Board Battle

A long-simmering dispute between two Frankfort retailers has intensified in recent years over conflicts ranging from business practices to beach proximity to local ordinances.

In this week's Northern Express - sister publication of The Ticker - writer Patrick Sullivan chronicles the tension between Beach Nut Surf Shop and Crystal Lake Adventure Sports. Larry and Nancy Bordine opened Beach Nut Surf Shop on Frankfort’s Main Street, a mile from the water, in 2010. They were pioneers of stand-up paddle boards in northern Michigan; Larry started making them in 2004, buying from Home Depot slabs of Styrofoam, which he’d glue together, shape into boards and wrap in fiberglass.

Crystal Lake Adventure Sports previously had been located in Frankfort but had moved to Beulah before Beach Nut opened. In 2011, Crystal returned to Frankfort, moving into a kiosk on American Legion property. The move irked Larry Bordine because it meant Beach Nut had to face a competitor who was closer to the beach and didn’t have the overhead of a brick-and-mortar store.

“They came back. And they had that little garden shed that they operated out of,” Larry Bordine says. “When they first started, they had that, and they parked their trailer on the street and just rented off that. And we kind of complained to the city — like, is that legal? Can you do that? That doesn’t seem fair.” The city told the owner of Crystal Lake Adventure Sports - who didn't respond to a request for comment for the story - to get rid of its trailer. But the Bordines were still upset that the competitor didn’t have to pay the transient business fee that’s on Frankfort’s books. The two paddle sports businesses competed over the years, and as each season went by, bad feelings seemed to ratchet up.

At the center of the saga is the manner in which Beach Nut gets paddle boards to its customers on the beach. For the past three seasons, employees as young as 14 used motorized electric skateboards to haul surfboard-hauling trailers from the store to the beach. The employees are trained to operate the skateboards, and their parents must sign off. But an accident last summer led to a protracted legal battle in which charges were brought against the Bordines, then dismissed in exchange for an agreement that they would no longer allow unlicensed riders on electric skateboards. Since then, Frankfort has attempted to regulate skateboards in the community while running up against vague state laws on their usage.

Frankfort resident Jim Barnes, who has attended some of the meetings when skateboards have been on the agenda, says he hopes the city doesn’t send the wrong message. “Frankfort’s kind of developed itself into a really cool northern Michigan lake town, and it might even be one of the best surf towns in the Midwest,” he says. “If you start regulating skateboarding, you start dampening the morale of all those people who participate in a sport that has a board associated with it.”

Read more about the issues at play in Frankfort and the conflict between Beach Nut Surf Shop and Crystal Lake Adventure Sports in this week's Northern Express story, "Beach Town Board Battle." The Northern Express is available online, or pick up a free copy at one of more than 600 distribution spots across 14 counties.