Short's Brewing Plans New Traverse City Taproom Near Boardman Lake Trail

Joe Short has turned down somewhere between twenty and thirty invitations to bring his brewery to Traverse City. The one that finally worked came on a mountain bike ride.

Short's Brewing founder Joe Short and Keen Energy co-founder Tim Pulliam were pedaling the Boardman Lake Loop when Pulliam gestured toward Logan's Landing East and asked, "Could you imagine a bar here on the river?" That single question set in motion a redevelopment project that will transform the nearly 16,000-square-foot former shopping complex at 2036 W. South Airport Road into Short's third brick-and-mortar home, targeting an opening as soon as April 2027.

Short's CEO Scott Newman-Bale and Keen Energy co-founders Pulliam and Steve Morse formalized the partnership in December under a newly formed entity called South Boardman Lake District, LLC. Short's will serve as the anchor tenant in what the group describes as a mixed-use community space: a taproom with on-site brewing, food service, indoor and outdoor seating, and a riverside tiki deck built to host live music and events. The concept draws a direct line to Short's Bellaire Beer Garden, but with one critical differentiator: the Boardman Lake Loop running past the front door.

That trail matters more than it might look on a map. TART Trails recorded 212,243 trail counts at the Medalie Park and Logan's Landing node during just the first eleven months of 2023. That figure represents not weekend foot traffic but a standing audience of cyclists, joggers, and walkers who currently have no brewery at the trailhead. Short's is explicitly positioning the new location as both a neighborhood taproom and a trail-adjacent destination, the kind of stop a mountain biker builds a ride around rather than detours to reach.

"Tim and I have known each other for a long time and we've talked about working together," Joe Short said in a statement. "The Boardman loop is this hub for connection and community. Logan's Landing is right in the middle of it. We were looking for the right partners to take on a project this crazy."

The property carries real complications. Built in the 1960s, Logan's Landing straddles the Boardman River and is classified as a nonconforming structure under Garfield Township zoning, a designation that creates significant hurdles for redevelopment. Vince's Fine Jewelers, currently on-site, is expected to remain as part of the mixed-use arrangement. Whether permitting bends toward or away from that April 2027 target will hinge on navigating those zoning realities.

For homebrewers tracking what Short's actually pours at the new location, the trail-adjacency context offers strong signal. A taproom planted at a high-traffic outdoor recreation hub invites exactly the kind of seasonal, small-batch releases the brewery has built its cult following on in Bellaire: fruit-forward wheats and tart sessionable formats suited to the crowd coming off a ten-mile ride, plus the on-site-only pours that give regulars a reason to make a trip specifically to Logan's Landing rather than grabbing cans at a distributor. Newman-Bale noted that Short's held out for a riverside, trail-adjacent property rather than a conventional commercial slot, including a previous serious look at The Village at Grand Traverse Commons. That patience signals something deliberate about the kind of showroom Short's is building here.

Short's has operated its original Bellaire pub since 2004 and its Elk Rapids Pull Barn production taproom since 2008. The Logan's Landing redevelopment would give the brewery three distinct footprints in northern Michigan, each carrying a different experiential identity rather than simply stamping the flagship onto a new address.