"There's nothing like it anywhere in the Midwest," Mike Sheldon said in a report by Adventure Golf & Sports the summer he opened River Club Glen Arbor on the banks of the Crystal River. He was talking about mini golf holes shaped like Lake Michigan and a green modeled on Big and Little Glen. He could have been talking about the whole stretch of the village he built it on.
Walk the east end of Glen Arbor this fall and the storefronts near the boat launch look different than they did even two years ago, and different again from five years before that. The instinct is to read that as ordinary restaurant churn, the kind every resort town sees. It isn't quite that. Two hospitality groups have spent the last three years quietly building out multiple concepts on the same short run of river, while the one business nobody expected to change hands did exactly that without altering a single thing on the menu.
The Building at 6281 Western That Won't Sit Still
For nearly forty years, the building at 6281 Western Avenue was Riverfront Pizza & Specialties, run by Tim and Sue Nichols right on the banks of the Crystal River. When the Nichols retired in 2021, they sold to Katy and Matt Wiesen, who already owned the neighboring Crystal River Outfitters. The Wiesens didn't run the food themselves. They brought in Fernhaus Hospitality Group, the team led by Kelsey Duda that had just finished restoring the old grain mill down the road into The Mill Glen Arbor.
Fernhaus reopened the space as Millie's Pizza and Ice Cream on August 10, 2023, with pies made from grain milled at The Mill and ice cream churned in house. Millie's ran for a little under three years. This past May 15, it reopened again, this time as Upriver from The Mill Glen Arbor, a counter-service spot built around sandwiches on Mill-baked bread, salads, and ice cream by the scoop.
Same building, same landlords, same operator for the last two concepts. Three names.
| Concept | Operator | Opened |
|---|---|---|
| Riverfront Pizza & Specialties | Tim and Sue Nichols | closed 2021 after roughly 40 years |
| Millie's Pizza and Ice Cream | Fernhaus Hospitality Group | August 10, 2023 |
| Upriver from The Mill Glen Arbor | Fernhaus Hospitality Group | May 15, 2026 |
The Mill itself followed a similar path without changing its name. It opened April 14, 2023, as a café only, coffee and scratch bread served Thursday through Sunday mornings. Fernhaus later added Supper, a lower-level dinner room on the river helmed by chef Bobby Thoits, running Wednesday through Sunday evenings. The same group also manages Leland's Riverside Inn and a coffee pop-up in downtown Traverse City called Outpost. Duda's operation isn't standing still anywhere it touches.
The Other End of the Block
A few hundred yards away, on a different parcel entirely, Mike Sheldon and his wife Gina built something with no landlord history to inherit. River Club Glen Arbor opened June 24, 2024, at 5963 S. Oak Street, on 400 feet of Crystal River frontage that had sat undeveloped. The concept: an 18-hole mini golf course designed by Adventure Golf & Sports, Mexican-inspired food, and live music five nights a week, all facing the water.
By the time River Club marked its first anniversary in July 2025, it had hosted wedding receptions, corporate outings, and the afterparty for the M22 Challenge, an event that sends 900 athletes up the Sleeping Bear dune climb, around the Glen Lakes on bikes, and across Little Glen Lake by paddle before finishing in Sheldon's backyard. By early September of that year, ownership said visitor counts were running more than 25 percent ahead of the debut year, with over 80,000 guests already tallied. The full 2025 season closed north of 100,000 visitors, and the business didn't shut down until November 1.
River Club opened its third season on May 1, 2026, with a new lineup that includes a Walking Frito Bandito Taco, a River Club Choco Taco, and a 16-ounce Mega-Rita. New this year is the River Club Run, a 5K and 10K that finished with a free meal and a chance to sink a putt on a specially built hole. It ran September 12.
None of that came out of a legacy building or a family recipe. Sheldon built it from an empty riverbank in under two years and has grown it every season since.
What Didn't Change
Not every business on this stretch has been rebranding. Art's Tavern, the cash-only institution that's anchored downtown Glen Arbor since 1934, sold to new owners Paul and Barb Olson in June 2025. The sale made news precisely because nothing else did. Still cash-only, still the same menu, still the closest thing Glen Arbor has to a living room.
Blu has been under chef and co-owner Randy Chamberlain since 2008, and it's still the most decorated kitchen in the village, carrying a James Beard nomination and a DiRoNA award while sommelier Mari Chamberlain runs the wine program. Good Harbor Grill is still Cady Hall's, and the restaurant was profiled by America's Best Restaurants last year, more than two decades after Hall started waiting tables there as a teenager.
The contrast is the point. On one end of the block, ownership has consolidated around two operators who keep opening new concepts inside old footprints. On the other, ownership changed once, quietly, and the business stayed exactly the same.
What It Adds Up To
If you already live on Big Glen Lake or Little Glen Lake, you've probably clocked each of these changes separately. The sign on the pizza building looked different this spring. River Club felt busier this September than last. Somebody mentioned Art's had new owners.
Put together, the pattern is less about any single opening and more about how few names are actually behind the turnover. Fernhaus is building a small cluster around the Mill's original footprint and reaching into Leland and Traverse City at the same time. Sheldon built an entirely new destination from the ground up and has grown it by double digits every year it's existed. Between them, the two groups now touch four different storefronts and food trucks within walking distance of the Crystal River Outfitters boat launch, an area that used to be mostly kayak rentals and a bike shop.
The village itself, the part further west toward the Homestead and the older Western Avenue storefronts, hasn't moved at the same pace. Blu, Good Harbor Grill, and now Art's Tavern under its new owners are still operating on the same terms they always did. Two different rhythms, running a few blocks apart, on the same lake.
Living near a place that's still figuring out how much of itself to change is its own kind of interesting to watch. If you want to talk through what any of it means for your particular corner of the Glen Lakes, from dock rights to shoreline zoning to what the next few seasons might bring, reach out to The Jon Zickert Group and we'll walk through it together.
