A nearly 50-acre vacant parcel on Cedar Run Road that Traverse City Light & Power (TCLP) has long sought to turn over to a new owner or user could instead become home to a nearly $40 million new campus for the city-owned utility. The headquarters would replace TCLP’s Hastings Street campus, which Executive Director Brandie Ekren called functionally obsolete – allowing that site to be repurposed and a new “sustainable innovation campus” to be built with its own microgrid, renewable energy, and public natural area.

TCLP board members voted Tuesday to establish an ad hoc committee to work with Ekren on planning for the new campus. Chair John Taylor and board members Maura Brennan and Suzannah Tobin will serve on that committee. The goal is to bring more data and a financial strategy to the board in March for a “true project authorization,” Ekren said.

TCLP’s decision to pursue a new campus was driven by two key considerations, Ekren said. One was the roughly five-acre campus at 1131 Hastings Street reaching “maximum operational capacity,” facing limitations including “yard constraints, building configuration challenges, circulation inefficiencies, and aging infrastructure,” Ekren wrote in a project memo. She told board members there are “safety concerns…we're triaging, making certain that there's no imminent threat or danger” at the facility. “The building has undergone an excessive number of modifications over time, creating inconsistencies that elevate operational risk and complicate compliance,” the memo states.

Staff looked at rebuilding the Hastings Street campus, according to Ekren. However, reconstruction would require “major enabling work, temporary relocation of core operations, prolonged disruption, and significant investment – while still failing to resolve fundamental site limitations.” At the same time staff reached the conclusion that “rebuilding at Hastings is not recommended as a financially or operationally sound option for TCLP’s future,” according to Ekren’s memo, a planned housing development for TCLP's Cedar Run Road property fell through. The property, which once served as a disposal site for coal ash from the former Bayside Power Plant, has seen multiple proposals in recent years but none that have been realized.

The most recent withdrawal opened the door for TCLP to keep the property and build a new campus on Cedar Run Road, Ekren said. The utility could keep Hastings Street operational until construction was complete. The site’s “large, flexible acreage” offers the opportunity to build a modern facility modeling the various types of clean energy TCLP encourages its own customers to build, she said. “We want to be all electric, we want to integrate renewables, we want to take advantage of geothermal, and we absolutely want to do energy storage,” she said.

While part of the property can’t be developed due to sealed underground contamination, that area could host a ground-mounted solar array. TCLP looked at solar for the property in the past and found it cost prohibitive – but that was partially based on having to pay wheeling charges to an outside utility. Building out TCLP’s own distribution system for the array changes the equation, Ekren said – especially with a 40 percent federal tax credit available for solar installations. If TCLP were to break ground next summer on the solar array, it could maximize its eligibility for that credit and have four years to complete the project, staff said.

The hilly site is also well-suited for wind power, Ekren said. TCLP could build a campus microgrid capable of islanding – operating independently from the main grid – as well as facilities for community education and training like STEM classes, renewable energy demonstrations, conferences, and workforce training, according to Ekren. The property has more acreage than TCLP would need for the facility – offering the potential to preserve part of the site as a public natural area with trails, according to Ekren. Residents and community groups previously advocated for using the site as a public park, though no offers materialized for that purpose when TCLP listed the property.

TCLP’s capital improvement plan lists nearly $40 million in projected costs for the new campus, which Ekren stressed were preliminary estimates. Part of the project expense could be offset by selling or redeveloping the Hastings Street site. “From a community and a city perspective, it would be really great to put that back on the tax rolls,” Ekren said. She cited possibilities including new commercial, industrial, or housing developments. “It’s not like there's a lot of space in the city to be able to do things like that,” she said.

The ad hoc committee will work between now and March to flesh out a finance strategy. The group will also engage with Garfield Township on zoning and the state on property environmental constraints, as well as begin renewable energy planning and preparing requests-for-proposals (RFPs) for services ranging from an owner’s representative and architecture work to surveying and environmental studies. That will come back to the board as a package for consideration in March. If TCLP proceeds, project documents list a potential 2027-2029 timeline for design and construction.

City Commissioner Laura Ness, who sits on the TCLP board, asked Ekren if there were any issues with TCLP moving its headquarters outside the city. Ekren said she researched that and found the utility previously had its main offices outside the city. Ekren said she didn’t want TCLP “getting too far out” – which limits other site options, she noted – but felt Cedar Run Road was still close to town. TCLP will also maintain a physical presence inside the city limits at its Hall Street location, she said.

Ad hoc member Tobin, who is an architect, said she initially pushed back “hard” in discussions with staff about the need for a new location. But after reviewing a professional analysis of the Hastings campus, Tobin said the constraints of the site were apparent. “It became pretty clear to me that leaving that location is the best way forward,” she said.