Grand Traverse County issues Level 2 advisory at Senior Center Beach
Senior Center Beach was placed under a Level 2 advisory after E. coli readings rose above the swimming standard, limiting visitors to wading, fishing and boating.
Grand Traverse County put Senior Center Beach under a Level 2 partial-body-contact advisory after water sampling found E. coli above the standard for safe swimming. At the beach on West Grand Traverse Bay, that means wading, fishing and boating are still allowed, but contact above the waist is not advised until the water improves.
The Level 2 threshold is 1,000 E. coli per 100 milliliters for partial-body contact, while full-body swimming requires a daily geometric mean below 300 E. coli per 100 milliliters. Results usually come back the following afternoon because lab analysis takes about 28 hours, and county health departments must collect at least three samples for each sampling event.
Senior Center Beach will be resampled Thursday, July 2, and results are expected Friday, July 3. All other tested area beaches met state standards and remained at Level 1, which allows full-body contact. Beach conditions can change between sampling days, especially after storms. E. coli levels are more likely to rise after heavy rain and high winds.
Senior Center Beach is a quiet beach used for picnicking and swimming, and the Senior Center itself sits at 801 East Front Street on city parkland along West Grand Traverse Bay. Grand Traverse County’s Senior Center Network has managed daily operations there since 2011 under an intergovernmental agreement.
Work on the senior center building broke ground in September 2023, the facility reopened for full programming in February 2025, and the project cost exceeded $10 million, backed by a mix of state, city, trust-fund, county and private funding.
The county’s beach-monitoring program works with the Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay to test public beaches, and Michigan’s EGLE BeachGuard system gives the public access to the monitoring data. County beach reports from 2024 show that some beaches periodically moved into Level 2 or Level 3 during the summer, especially after rain, before later returning to Level 1.
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