On the evening of September 4, a few hundred runners lined up at Hull Park for the start of Loop the Lake, the annual race that circles Boardman Lake on the trail system residents use every day of the year that isn't this one. The 6 p.m. start meant a sunset finish. Playa Bowls handed out açaí bowls to anyone who crossed the line, a new addition for 2026. Munson Healthcare's name was on the banners, same as always. From the sidewalk, it looked like the park was working exactly as it's supposed to.
What the runners couldn't tell, and what most visitors never would, is that this particular stretch of shoreline spent more of the past twelve months closed, detoured, or under a tarp than it spent simply open. Hull Park is the one piece of infrastructure Traverse Heights residents can't route around, and this year it kept needing to be fixed.
A Boathouse, a Boardwalk, and a Trench
The disruptions weren't a single event. They were a rolling sequence, each one addressing a different part of the same small piece of ground.
| When | What closed | Why |
|---|---|---|
| October 2025 | Trail sections near Hull Park | Boathouse roof replacement |
| Winter 2025 into early January 2026 | Boy Scout Boardwalk, with additional work near Hull Park | Boardwalk replacement, wrapped up by January 6, 2026 |
| June 18 to June 30, 2026 | TART trail access point between Hull Park and Franklin Street; Hannah Avenue and the east driveway to the boat launch (June 22-24) | New force main pipe installation, open excavation near the water treatment plant |
The June closures were the most disruptive to daily foot traffic. The city routed pedestrians and cyclists through Railroad Place and Woodmere Avenue for the stretch between Hull Park and Franklin Street, and for three days at the end of June, Hannah Avenue and the boat launch's east driveway were closed to all traffic while crews worked the excavation near the water treatment plant. Anyone who normally walked the dog along that segment or drove down to launch a kayak had to know the detour or lose the trip.
None of this is unusual for infrastructure that sits this close to water and this heavily used. But strung together, October through June covers nine of the last twelve months with some version of Hull Park either partially closed or actively under construction. For a park that functions as the neighborhood's main connection point to the trail, the library, and the lake itself, that's a long stretch of low-grade disruption that never quite added up to a single headline.
The Trail That Circles Back to One Corner
The Boardman Lake Loop Trail is a four-mile paved and boardwalked path that fully encircles the lake, finished in 2022 after more than three decades of planning. It's the busiest segment in the TART Trails network, and it's built so that no matter which direction you walk it, you eventually pass back through Hull Park.
That's not incidental. Hull Park sits at the trail's north end, directly behind the Traverse Area District Library, with a boathouse and dock providing the only formal water access on this side of the lake. Walk south from the park and the trail heads into wooded shoreline before crossing the water on a boardwalk near the lake's southern cove. Come back around the west side, past the office and retail development that's replaced the old industrial land along that shore, and you're back at Hull Park within four miles.
For Traverse Heights, this geometry matters more than it would in a neighborhood with three or four ways in and out. The library, the boat launch, the main trailhead, and the closest thing the neighborhood has to a formal gathering lawn are all stacked on the same few acres. When that ground is disrupted, there isn't a second Hull Park to fall back on. There's a detour sign and a longer walk.
What the Race Proves About This Corner
Loop the Lake has run at Hull Park for years, and the fact that it went off without incident this September, weeks after the last of the summer's excavation wrapped, says something about how the neighborhood and the city have learned to sequence around each other. The race offered an evening 6 p.m. start this year, an 8-mile two-lap option for runners who wanted more distance, and relay teams that split the four-mile loop in half. It's the kind of event that only works if the trail underneath it is reliably passable, which means the timing wasnasn't an accident. The construction calendar closed things down hard through June and then left the back half of summer alone.
That pattern is worth remembering if you live nearby and want to predict the next disruption rather than get surprised by it. Public works on this stretch of shoreline has consistently targeted the shoulder seasons, fall and the dead of winter, and left the trail clear for the months when the most people are using it. It's not a guarantee, but it's a pattern with three consecutive data points now: the boathouse roof in October, the boardwalk in winter, and nothing scheduled through the late-summer race season.
The Rest of the Neighborhood's Front Door
Hull Park doesn't do all the work alone. A few blocks in from the water, ELEV8 Climbing Gym and the original Mundos Roasting Co. location give the neighborhood two indoor anchors that don't care what the trail is doing. Both sit close enough to Traverse Heights Elementary School on Carver Street that it's common to see the same families move between school pickup, a coffee run, and a climbing session in a single afternoon loop that has nothing to do with the lake at all.
That's useful context for understanding what "the neighborhood" actually means here. Traverse Heights sits east of Boardman Lake, and it's one of twelve neighborhoods in Traverse City with a formally recognized association, alongside places like Oak Park, Slabtown, and Old Towne. The northern half of the neighborhood, organized separately as North Traverse Heights, is where Mayor Pro Tem Amy Shamroe and City Commissioner Mark Wilson both live, which means the neighborhood has a more direct line to city hall on questions like construction sequencing than some of its neighbors do. Whether that's part of why the closures this year stayed relatively short and well-communicated is hard to prove, but it's not a bad guess.
What's Actually Open Now
As of this September, the picture is about as clear as it's been all year. The June utility work concluded on schedule, the boardwalk replacement wrapped in early January, and the boathouse has its new roof. The four-mile loop is walkable start to finish, the boat launch on Hannah Avenue is running normally, and the library sits open behind the park the way it always has.
What's less certain is whether the pattern holds. Infrastructure this close to water needs this kind of maintenance regularly, not as a one-time event, and a boathouse roof or a stretch of boardwalk built to survive a Michigan winter still has a shelf life. The smart bet for anyone who uses this trail daily is to watch for city notices in the shoulder seasons, the way they've come the last two years running, rather than assuming this fall and winter will pass without any tape going up near Franklin Street again.
For now, though, the loop is clear, the library is open, and the boathouse has a roof that isn't currently being replaced. In a neighborhood built around one small stretch of shoreline doing an unusual amount of work, that's worth noticing while it lasts.
If you're curious what else is changing in Traverse Heights and the neighborhoods around Boardman Lake, or you want a local read on what a property near this corridor is actually worth given how much foot traffic runs through it, The Mitten Group knows this stretch of Traverse City as well as anyone. Reach out anytime.
