For the first time in 35 years, the City of Traverse City has a new planning director.

Former Acme Township Zoning and Planning Administrator Shawn Winter - currently a professional planner at Beckett & Raeder - has been hired to take the reins as city planner from Russ Soyring, who is retiring. Soyring’s last day will be February 26, while Winter will start March 1.

Winter, 38, is a northern Michigan native who grew up near Bear Lake and received his undergraduate degree from Western Michigan University in earth science and biology education. He moved to Richmond, Virginia, where he met his wife Christina and taught high school science for several years before getting a master's degree in urban and regional planning with a concentration in environmental planning from Virginia Commonwealth University. Winter spent a year working for the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation before relocating back to northern Michigan in 2015. He worked for four years as planning and zoning administrator for Acme Township before taking a position at Beckett & Raeder, where he continued to provide planning consulting services to townships include Acme and East Bay. Christina Winter works at Hagerty; the couple have a three-year-old daughter named Gavin.

Winter calls the position of Traverse City planning director his “dream job,” saying that even while he lived in Virginia he would follow the Traverse City planning commission and study Soyring’s staff reports. “Russ has been a de facto mentor of mine for years, even if he didn’t know it,” says Winter. “He is one of the best planners we have in the state. He is my personal planning hero.” Winter says he and Soyring share some commonalities in their approaches as planners: “similar urban design visions, emphasis on green infrastructure and protecting the environment, improving safe equitable modes of transportation throughout the city.” 

Winter plans to hit the ground running, saying priorities in his first months on the job will include learning the city's systems and organizational structures, going through the planning commission list of goals and objectives, and considering an approach for a potential update to the city master plan. “Traverse City is sophisticated and has a complex operation, so there will be a learning curve there,” he says. Winter says his goal as city planning director will be to “keep taking advantage of the good urban bones we have here and build upon that. Trying to embrace the idea of 15-minute community nodes, where people can easily access daily needs within a safe and enjoyable 15-minute walk of their home.” 

For his part, Soyring - who has been the city planner since 1986 - is enthusiastic about his replacement. “I love the fact he lives in the city,” he says of Winter. “He's been a resident here for several years, and I have interacted with him as planners, so I know he cares very much about the community. We both support the idea of having a wise mix of land uses, of having compact mixed-use living, where communities are designed to be convenient and sustainable.”

Photo credit: Gary Howe