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Beaver Island Master Plan, 2023

Also 2023 Beaver Island Master Plan · Resilient Beaver Island Master Plan

Draft — sources verified, prose evolving

TypeDataset
Date2023-09
WithinBeaver Island archipelago
ErasModern era
On this page
Dataset
Date
2023-09
Eras
Modern era
Concepts
governanceenvironmentsoilsgeologyduneswetlandshydrologywater-qualityforestsvegetationfishanimalswildlifebirdsconservationstewardshipinvasive-speciescartographyland-usecommunitytransportationeconomy
Within
Beaver Island archipelago

Summary

The 2023 Beaver Island Master Plan is a joint long-range planning document for Peaine and St. James townships and the wider archipelago. It updates the Resilient Beaver Island effort and addresses natural resources, housing, built environment, economy and tourism, an Action Plan, and future land use and zoning policy.

Map: Beaver Island access and infrastructure.
Beaver Island access and infrastructureDrawn from the archive's own data in EPSG:3078. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0); PAD-US protected-area context and USGS 3DEP (public domain). · CC BY 4.0 for the drawing; underlying data under its own terms (see credit)

The Plan describes itself as a guide for future development, public investment, and land-use decisions. Its recommendations identify possible partners and priorities; they do not by themselves commit a government or organization to funding or work.

Adoption and implementation limits

The held Plan includes adoption and participation material, while separately modeled 2023 records document the St. James Planning Commission’s approval and referral, Peaine Planning Commission adoption, and a reported joint-commission approval. Those planning actions do not establish a later township-board action, zoning amendment, capital appropriation, permit, or the completion of any individual recommendation.

The project’s recommendation ledger preserves this distinction. It must be paired with a specific subsequent government record before a recommendation is reported as implemented.

The related 2026 implementation-evidence coverage dataset identifies which ledger actions have at least one such independently dated record in the held dossier. It is a coverage measure, not a completion score: each linked action still requires review of its specific evidence and limits.

Contents and research use

Chapters 2–5 provide planning-context summaries of natural resources, population and housing, infrastructure, and tourism. Chapter 7, the Future Land Use and Zoning Plan, is a policy and planning source, not a current consolidated zoning map or parcel determination. The appendix preserves process documents useful for tracing particular hearings, public comments, and adoption steps.

Chapter 6, the Action Plan, organizes close to a hundred numbered ideas by topic and assigns each a priority level — Low, Medium, High, or Very High — and a list of possible partners, while stating on its opening page that the chapter “does not commit” the government or any listed partner to funding or working on an idea (p. 164).1 Under Economy and Recreation, it rates as High priority providing directional signs or a kiosk to welcome tourists arriving downtown and at the Island’s beaches (p. 164). Under Housing, it rates as High priority both developing and implementing an affordable housing plan and developing short- and long-term rental regulations (p. 168). Under Community Services, it rates as Very High priority each township developing its own capital improvement plan and the two townships working with Charlevoix County on a shared plan for jointly owned facilities such as the waste management facility and municipal airport; under Transportation on the same page, it separately rates as High priority looking for opportunities to make the Island more walkable and bikeable (p. 169). Under Community Services Continued, it rates as Very High priority ensuring Advanced Life Support and EMS services remain available on the Island and increasing cell phone signal strength and coverage (p. 170).1

Open questions

  • Which remaining recommendations have a later, source-specific implementation record not yet captured in the coverage dataset?
  • Do both townships have later board actions or zoning texts that supersede elements of the 2023 Plan?
  • Which planning claims in older KB entries should be refreshed from this official held edition rather than a secondary copy?

See also

Footnotes

  1. Land Information Access Association, Beaver Island Master Plan (September 2023), Chapter 6, “Action Plan: Ideas for Government Action,” pp. 164, 168–170. ↩ ↩2

Sources

  1. Held official plan PDF retrieved from Peaine Township’s planning page. It identifies a 2023 update of the Resilient Beaver Island planning effort; contains chapters on natural resources, population and housing, built environment, economy and tourism, an Action Plan, Future Land Use and Zoning Plan, and appendices. The Plan describes policy guidance, not itself an enacted zoning ordinance, budget, permit, title record, or proof that an action was implemented. Page citations in this article to the Action Plan (Chapter 6) are printed page numbers, confirmed against the printed folio visible on the scanned page (no offset between PDF page and printed page in this section).
    planning · beaver_island_master_plan · documents · 2023-beaver-island-master-plan-2eb885fe
  2. Records the official source-page URL, document URL, local path, checksum, and collection context for the 2023 plan and associated public planning documents.
    planning · beaver_island_master_plan · manifest
  3. Project recommendation ledger derived from the 2023 Master Plan Action Plan.
    Captures page-specific recommendations and treats each as recommendation-only unless separately supported by an ordinance, resolution, budget, or completed-project record. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    research · island_governance · master_plan_recommendation_ledger

Added 2 August 2026 · revised 3 August 2026. Recent changes

Cite this article

Beaver Island Archive, “Beaver Island Master Plan, 2023”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/documents/beaver-island-master-plan-2023/, accessed [date], citing Land Information Access Association, Beaver Island Master Plan (September 2023). (and 2 further sources listed on the page).

Last revised 2026-08-03. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.

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