Five buildings came down in downtown Kingsley this year. The parcels sat at the center of a redevelopment plan the village has been building toward since 2022, when the Kingsley Downtown Development Authority signed an agreement with the Grand Traverse County Landbank to remake the old John's Auto and Autotech site. Now the lots are cleared, and village officials say they hope to pick a developer within the next two years.
That gap in the middle of Main Street is the newest thing to look at in Kingsley. It is also the slowest-moving thing happening in town right now. Everything a resident would actually use on a Tuesday night, a Wednesday farmer's market run, or a Saturday morning trail loop already got rebuilt, reopened, or never stopped running in the first place.
The Corner That's Still a Gravel Lot
The five-parcel demolition is real progress toward a project the village has been laying groundwork for since at least 2018, when Kingsley started its monthly "Business Coffee" meetings between local leaders and pursued Redevelopment Ready certification through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. The timeline gives a sense of how long public redevelopment takes to move compared to everything happening around it.
- 2018: Kingsley forms the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority and starts monthly Business Coffee meetings
- 2019: The village joins Traverse Connect and begins the state's Redevelopment Ready program
- 2022: The DDA signs a redevelopment agreement with the Grand Traverse County Landbank for the former auto shop parcels
- 2023: The village secures or begins more than $3.7 million in grant-funded infrastructure work, including Brownson Avenue reconstruction and water main upgrades
- 2025 into 2026: Demolition clears five downtown properties, and village officials begin the search for a developer, with a selection targeted within two years
That is eight years of steady groundwork between the first planning conversation and today's cleared lots, with the developer selection still ahead. Meanwhile, the restaurants, the park, and the trails carry on at their own pace.
The Bar That Never Actually Left
Walk two blocks from that cleared site and you land at 211 East Main Street, where the Kingsley Inn reopened under new ownership and reclaimed its old nickname, KI, for good. Brian McAllister and his wife Laurie Bouwman, who have run Interlochen's Hofbrau Steak House and American Grille for 25 years, brought their son Max in to run the day-to-day at the Kingsley Inn. The building was already set up as a roadhouse, with seating for more than 90 people, a mix of booths and bar seating, and a deck that adds room for horseshoes in warmer months.
The name mattered enough that it outlasted a full sale and a rebrand. The property was sold in 2020 and briefly operated as the Judson Market and Restaurant before the McAllister family brought back the old name locals never stopped using anyway. That kind of continuity is easy to miss from outside town, but it is the difference between a building changing hands and a gathering place actually disappearing.
A Second Burger Joint Down the Street
Kingsley picked up another sit-down option when Tiffany and Jason McQueer, who already run J&S Hamburg, announced plans to open a second location in the village. Terry Beia of Southtown Property Management, who owns several commercial buildings in Kingsley and has spent years courting businesses to the village, said at the time that the whole community was excited about the McQueers' decision to expand there.
The pattern worth noticing is that Southtown Property Management, a private commercial landlord, has been filling storefronts in Kingsley on its own timeline while the public redevelopment project a few blocks away has spent years in planning and permitting. Private investment in Kingsley's small commercial footprint has not been waiting on the DDA's process to finish.
| What Changed | Who's Behind It | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Kingsley Inn reopened as KI Bar & Grill | Brian McAllister, Laurie Bouwman, Max McAllister | Open, seating for 90+ |
| Second J&S Hamburg location | Tiffany and Jason McQueer | Announced, backed by local landlord Terry Beia |
| Five downtown parcels demolished | Kingsley DDA and Grand Traverse County Landbank | Cleared, developer search underway |
| Brownson Memorial Park rebuild | Village of Kingsley | Completed spring 2025 |
Brownson Park Already Finished Its Rebuild
If the downtown block is the project still waiting on a developer, Brownson Memorial Park is the project that already came out the other side. The village rebuilt the park in spring 2025, adding a splash pad and playground that get daily use through the summer. The park also hosts the Kingsley Farmer's Market on Wednesday nights, a tradition the village revamped back in 2022 and has kept running through the season since.
A park that gets used every day for something as simple as a kid cooling off in a splash pad does more to define what living in a place actually feels like than a construction fence around a cleared lot. Brownson Park shows what a finished public project looks like in Kingsley today, and the downtown parcels are the next chapter in the same village effort, on a longer timeline because a developer still has to be chosen.
The Adams Fly Festival Came Back First
Kingsley has a niche claim to fame that predates any of this year's development news. The Adams Fly, one of the most recognized dry flies in American fly fishing, was tied by local angler Len Halladay, and an original sits in the Kingsley Branch Library. The village celebrates that history every year with the Adams Fly Festival, held the first Saturday in June in Brownson Park.
The festival went dark for a few years before returning, and the village's own description of the event treats its comeback as something worth looking forward to again. A niche fishing festival built around a local library artifact is exactly the kind of detail that never shows up on a portal listing, but it is the kind of thing a longtime resident plans a Saturday around.
The Trail System That Was Never Waiting on Anyone
None of this year's downtown news touches the Vasa Pathway, and that is the point. The Vasa sits on state forest land just outside Kingsley and offers loops at 3K, 5K, 10K, and 25K distances used by cross-country skiers, runners, mountain bikers, and walkers depending on the season. The High Rollway Observation Deck trailhead near Kingsley gives access to singletrack and wooden platform lookouts that have been there long before any of this year's construction started and will still be there after the last downtown parcel gets built out.
Twenty miles of maintained non-motorized trail sitting on state forest land is not the kind of amenity that gets torn down for redevelopment. It runs on its own schedule, and that schedule has nothing to do with a developer selection process.
What's Actually Missing Downtown
The honest read on downtown Kingsley right now is narrower than it looks from a drive down Main Street. One block is genuinely incomplete, cleared and waiting on a developer the village hopes to land within two years. Almost everything else that makes up daily life here, the bar and grill, the burger place, the park, the farmer's market, the fishing festival, the trail system, already exists, already reopened, or was never at risk in the first place. The gravel lot downtown is a real story. It just is not the only one, and it is not even the most finished one.
Joe Van Antwerp keeps closer tabs on what's actually changing in Kingsley and the rest of Grand Traverse County than any portal listing ever will. If you're curious what a specific block, park, or property in Kingsley looks like up close, reach out to Joe Van Antwerp for a straight answer.
