Walk down Lake Street in Bridgman this summer and you will pass at least three storefronts that did not exist a year ago. A massage therapist turned a shuttered winery tasting room into a Himalayan salt room. A 1950s roadside motel came back as a boutique hotel with a pickleball court. A vacant pharmacy building at the edge of town became a hardware store. If you only look at the calendar, it looks like Bridgman had one very good year.
It did not. It had one year where several very different clocks all ran out at the same time, and the gap between those clocks tells you more about how this town actually works than any single ribbon-cutting does.
The Two Years Before The Ace Hardware Sign Went Up
The building at the corner of Shawnee and Gast Road sat empty for years after Rite Aid pulled out of Michigan. Ten thousand square feet is an awkward size. It is too big for most small shops and too small to interest a big-box chain, so the space just sat there in the same shopping center as Harding's Friendly Market, doing nothing for the tax base or the sidewalk in front of it.
Nancy Kiernan, director of the Greater Bridgman Area Chamber and Growth Alliance, started talking to the Borre family almost two years before that building reopened. The Borres already ran Ace Hardware locations in St. Joseph, Stevensville and Watervliet, and Kiernan kept the conversation going long after most people would have moved on to another lead. The store opened for business by the end of April 2026, and Kiernan has said she expects the location to draw customers from a wider stretch of the south county, an area that does not have many hardware stores of its own.
Two years is a long time to keep one relationship warm for one building. That is the part of the story that does not show up in a photo of the new sign.
A Winery Tasting Room Became A Salt Room
A few blocks away at 4209 Lake Street, the space that used to hold the Lazy Ballerina Winery tasting room is now Beachside Salt & Soul, owned by longtime massage therapist Sarah Buist. The centerpiece is a Himalayan Salt Room, sometimes called the Salty Campsite, offering halotherapy alongside her existing massage practice.
Buist did not do this alone or fast. The CGA helped her build a business plan, find the space, and secure financing, including a $30,000 small business loan through the Bridgman Corridor Improvement Authority's Revolving Loan Program, approved by the city council in July 2025. The doors opened with a ribbon-cutting on June 8, 2026, almost a full year after that loan was approved and longer still after the idea first took shape.
Buist is a Lake Charter Township resident who saw an opening and had the professional background to fill it. What she did not have on her own was the runway. That came from the same chamber office that spent two years working the Ace Hardware deal.
A Hotel That Took Four Months
Then there is the Warren Hotel, and it moved at a completely different speed.
Jordan Painter and a group of partners bought the former Bridgman Inn, a roadside motel dating to the 1950s at 9999 Red Arrow Highway, in January 2026. By March they had already replaced every roof, gutted every room, and were roughly 80 to 90 percent finished laying new flooring. The 24-room property reopened for bookings in mid-May with a pool, pickleball courts, a sauna, a fire pit and a hot tub. Design work came from Painter's wife and daughter, Valerie and Jaelynn Painter, through their firm Love Dwells.
Four months from purchase to open, for a full renovation of a 24-room building. Compare that to two years of matchmaking for one hardware store, or the better part of a year between a loan approval and a spa opening its doors.
The difference is not money. Painter's group had capital and a clear idea, so they moved on their own timeline. The Ace Hardware and Beachside Salt & Soul stories involved smaller amounts of money but needed something scarcer: a chamber director willing to keep introducing the right property to the right operator until the match actually held.
| What Opened | What It Was Before | When The Work Started | When It Opened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ace Hardware | Vacant former Rite Aid, Gast & Shawnee | CGA outreach began roughly two years earlier | End of April 2026 |
| Beachside Salt & Soul | Lazy Ballerina Winery tasting room, 4209 Lake St. | Loan approved July 2025 | Ribbon-cut June 8, 2026 |
| The Warren Hotel | Bridgman Inn, 1950s roadside motel | Purchased January 2026 | Open for bookings mid-May 2026 |
| John Gast Memorial Trail | Undeveloped roadside along Gast Road | In Lake Township's master plan roughly 20 years ago | Opened May 15, 2026 |
The Trail That Was Twenty Years In The Making
That last row is the longest clock of all. The John Gast Memorial Trail, a 1.2-mile non-motorized path along Gast Road connecting Bridgman High School to Lake Township Park, opened with a ribbon-cutting on May 15, 2026. Former township treasurer Bob Clark, now deputy treasurer, has said the trail was already in the township's master plan two decades ago.
Getting it built took a patchwork of funding: the Dalmac Fund, the Frederick S. Upton Foundation, the Berrien County Good Start Program, True Blue Financial, United Federal Credit Union and Sturgis Bank all contributed, alongside fundraising help from Julie Strating and Tara Heiser of Change Maker Studio. Cindy Gast, widow of the township supervisor the trail is named for, cut the ribbon while her family looked on. The roughly $1 million project exists now because enough small funders said yes over enough years, not because one large check arrived.
What's Still Waiting In Line
The pattern is not finished playing out. Construction on the Weko Beach Boardwalk Project is anticipated for fall 2026, funded through a Michigan Coastal Management Program grant with the city's financial commitment capped at $150,000, and engineering work is being handled by Wightman & Associates. If you walk the beach this fall, expect fencing and detours around the boardwalk while that work happens, with the timeline flexible enough to run into 2027.
Two more projects are further back in the same queue. The city council has been working with a developer to redevelop the former Olympus Restaurant site, and Susie Duroe has said she hopes to open a project she calls Tiny Green Town in Bridgman later this year, adding to the town's small hospitality footprint. Neither has a fixed opening date yet, which is exactly the point. Somewhere behind the scenes, someone at the chamber is probably having the same two-year conversation that led to the hardware store.
What This Means If You Already Live Here
If you have a dog, the John Gast Memorial Trail is now the safer route between town and the park, since Gast Road itself has very narrow shoulders and no separated path until this year. Weko Beach still bans dogs on the sand itself year-round, but the boardwalk labeled as the pet trail routes walkers toward the dog-friendly stretch near Warren Dunes State Park, which is a distinction worth knowing before you get turned around at the beach entrance.
If you're used to driving to St. Joseph or Stevensville for a hardware run, that trip just got shorter. If you've been getting massages out of town, Beachside Salt & Soul is now a few blocks closer. And if you're planning a fall walk along the lakefront, build in extra time near the boardwalk while that construction moves through.
None of this happened because Bridgman got lucky in one calendar year. It happened because a handful of very different clocks, some running for months and some running for decades, all finished counting down around the same time. The next one is already ticking somewhere on Red Arrow Highway or Lake Street. You just cannot see it yet.
If you're curious about what a specific street or block in Bridgman is actually worth given everything that's changed this year, the Jason Stroud Team knows this town block by block and is happy to talk through it, no obligation attached.
