Empire, Michigan Residents Gathered 264 Signatures Trying to Stop the Village From Cutting Down Up to 10 Maples on Lake Street

By Sunday night, 264 people had signed a petition asking the tiny village of Empire, Michigan, to stop before its crews take down as many as 10 full-grown maple trees on Lake Street. The trees stand in the path of a drainage project the Village Council approved in late September, and construction was cleared to begin as soon as Monday, Oct. 26.

The signers say the village is fixing the wrong end of its flooding problem, and that the maples themselves help hold back stormwater.

Ten maples between Wilco Road and the post office

Lake Street runs north from Wilco Road, which climbs toward the Empire Bluff trailhead, to the Empire Post Office on the west side of the village’s small downtown. According to the Glen Arbor Sun, the approved plan removes up to 10 mature maples along that stretch and rebuilds sidewalks there as part of the work.

Empire is the doorstep of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, whose headquarters sits at 9922 Front Street in the village. The park is known for bluffs rising 450 feet above Lake Michigan, sand beaches, inland lakes and preserved coastal villages.

A $248,556 fix for a street that floods

The project grew out of chronic flooding. In past storms, enough water has run down Lake Street to cover the road completely, the Sun reported, citing the Leelanau Enterprise. The Lake Street work is tied to a separate Leelanau County Road Commission drainage project on Wilco Road, uphill.

At its late-September meeting, the Village Council voted unanimously to accept a $248,556 bid from Elmer’s Crane and Dozer. Resident Karen Baja raised concerns at that meeting about how many trees would come down, and council member March Dye agreed with her, but the vote still passed without dissent.

Part of the money comes from a Federal Lands Access Program grant secured by the road commission, the village and the National Park Service. The Federal Highway Administration describes the program as a way to improve roads and other transportation facilities that lead to, sit next to or run through federal lands, with an emphasis on high-use recreation sites. Each state has a committee that chooses projects through calls for proposals.

The petition and its four demands

The effort is led by Ella Skrocki, whose family owns Sleeping Bear Surf. She served on the Village Council from 2024 to 2026, where she pushed for more transparency and public input, and left Empire earlier this year after saying she could no longer afford to live there. She now lives in Elberta, in Benzie County.

The 264 signers include registered voters, property owners and other community members. Skrocki said 125 of them are full-time residents. Measured against the village’s 362 residents in the 2020 Census, that works out to 34.5 percent of Empire’s population.

The petition is addressed to the Village Council, the Department of Public Works and village administration, under the banner “TIME SENSITIVE: PAUSE THE LAKE STREET TREE REMOVAL!” It makes four requests:

• Pause the removal of the 10 mature trees and all sidewalk reconstruction on Lake Street immediately.
• Finish the coordinated Wilco Road stormwater planning with Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore first, then decide what, if any, work is needed farther downhill.
• Publish the supporting documents, including the drainage analysis, the full scope, itemized costs, the justification for removing trees and sidewalks, and any alternatives that would save the trees.
• Reconsider the ditch construction and tree removal, including whether the work can be reduced, redesigned or avoided.

The petition argues that “the primary stormwater problem area extends from the top of Wilco Road to Aylsworth Street,” and that most of the proposed work sits below Aylsworth, where the land is flatter. “The Village should address the primary stormwater problem area uphill before committing taxpayer dollars,” it says.

Maples as stormwater infrastructure

“Mature trees are functional green infrastructure,” the petition says, noting that they intercept rainfall, help water soak into the ground, cut runoff and provide shade and habitat.

Federal guidance supports the basic point. An Environmental Protection Agency guide on street trees and stormwater lists four ways trees reduce runoff: their canopies and bark catch rain and delay peak flows, their leaves pull water from the soil and release it as vapor, the canopy softens the force of rain hitting bare ground, and growing and decaying roots open the soil so it absorbs more water.

The same guide puts numbers on it. In the cities it studied, street trees intercepted tens to hundreds of millions of gallons of rain a year, including 334.8 million gallons in Minneapolis and 209.5 million gallons in Charlotte. In Indiana, reductions in stormwater management costs made up 64 percent of the environmental value that street trees provided across 23 communities.

None of that settles whether the Lake Street maples can stay while the village still fixes a road that floods. That is the question the petition asks the council to answer before the saws start.

What happens next on Lake Street

The petition was delivered to the council over the weekend of Oct. 24 and 25. Its supporters want the council to pause the work while the uphill Wilco Road plan with the park service is finished.

Fights like this one have played out across the country this fall as towns weigh old trees against other needs, from the landmark tree protections Edmonds just extended to the 100-foot oak Gretna cut down outside a homeowner’s house.

For the families who walk Lake Street to the post office, the answer will be visible right away. Either the maples are still standing when the drainage work moves forward, or the street gets new sidewalks without them.

Get stories like this by email. Sign up for The Parent Diaries Letter.

This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: James St. John – CC BY 2.0/Wikimedia Commons