Sawyer's Whole Downtown Started As Somebody's Side Project

Cam Mammina and his wife Alex Cihlar used to drive past an empty lot on Sawyer Road every day on their way to work. Cam mentioned to Alex that he wanted to put a tiki bar there. Alex had already bought a food truck, planning to cater weekend weddings, but when the lot came up for rent, the two pivoted and combined both ideas into one place. That lot is SideYard now, the outdoor bar and beer garden with cornhole, ping-pong, and a permanent food truck called Fresh to Death parked on the grounds.

It is a small story, but it is not an unusual one here. Walk the two or three blocks that make up downtown Sawyer and you will find that almost every business you know by name started the same way: someone moved to town, looked at a building or a lot that was sitting there doing nothing, and decided to make something out of it themselves. That pattern is worth noticing, because it explains why a town this size has this much going on, and it means the next few weeks are a good time to catch the parts of that pattern that are seasonal before they wind down.

The Beer Garden's Season Is Running Out

SideYard's live music runs from March through August, which means mid-August is the tail end of it, not the middle. If you have been meaning to catch a Thursday night out there, the window is closing. Hours run noon to 10 p.m. Monday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and noon to 9 p.m. Sunday, with the kitchen cutting off an hour before close. Alex's food truck rotates through handhelds like a pulled pork banh mi and a salsa macha labneh platter, with a Sunday brunch menu that includes mango coconut muesli and a breakfast burrito.

Cam has stuck around in more ways than the bar. Since he and Alex moved to Sawyer in 2019, he has also served on Chikaming Township's planning commission. That is the kind of detail that tells you something about a town: the guy running the beer garden also has a say in what gets built next door to it.

A Hardware Store, Reinvented Twice

A few blocks over sits Section House, a wedding and event venue with a 200-person capacity, a bridal suite called the Loft, and a groom's waiting room called the Green Room. Before any of that, the building was Sawyer Hardware & Lumber, and before that, in the early 1900s, it was a lumber and coal yard with its own rail spur running behind it for logging. Drew and Johanna Ytterberg bought the building in May 2012 and ran the hardware store for almost a decade before pausing in 2020 to reimagine the space entirely.

Johanna has said the location does the venue favors it never has to advertise. Warren Dunes is close, the beach is close, and guests can walk to three restaurants without needing a car. Section House works with Classic Catering & Events of Bridgman as its preferred caterer, along with Haunt of Hounds and Beverage Specialists for bar service, and its guest list runs about even between locals and visitors from South Bend, Northwest Indiana, Grand Rapids, and Chicago. A building that spent a hundred years moving lumber now spends its weekends hosting first dances.

The Food You Already Know, With the Details You Might Not

Smokin' Woody's is easy to describe and harder to categorize. It sits at 12620 Red Arrow Highway, open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., closed Monday and Tuesday. The menu is written on a big sheet of paper. The fountain drinks are self-serve out of a mismatched pile of cups. Woody himself tends to greet tables, clear plates, and cook the food, which is part of why regulars keep coming back even though it is a cash-forward operation with no pretense about it.

A short walk away, Susan's Sawyer sits inside the historic Flynn Theater building, built around 1923, serving a seasonal, in-the-moment menu in a room where a painting of Susan hangs above the bar. The contrast between these two places, one built on Woody's personality and one built on a restored 1920s theater, says something about what Sawyer actually is now. It is not one thing dressed up for visitors. It is several very different things that happen to share a zip code.

Eighty-Seven New Acres, Funded by Two Hundred Neighbors

The most consequential thing happening in Sawyer right now did not open a tab or take a reservation. Chikaming Open Lands, the local land conservancy founded in 1999 that has protected more than 2,300 acres across Berrien County, recently completed fundraising for the Founders Preserve, an 87-acre property on Three Oaks Road in Chikaming Township. More than 200 donors gave over $1.2 million in less than a year, helped along by a $250,000 challenge grant from the Carls Foundation. The plan is a parking area, hiking trails, and habitat restoration, with guided hikes and volunteer stewardship days to follow as the work gets done.

That adds to a network that already includes the Jens Jensen Preserve, 45 acres of beech-maple forest with oak, maple, and tulip poplar canopy, and the adjacent Pepperidge Dunes Sanctuary, a 20-acre parcel owned by the Michigan Nature Association. Together they form a continuous forest corridor that matters for migratory birds moving along the lakeshore, not just for people looking for a quiet trail. Chikaming Open Lands also held its Boot Scoot benefit at Deer Creek Ranch on August 8, and under current executive director Ryan Postema the organization has been running an accessibility survey with University of Chicago students to figure out where its preserves fall short for visitors with mobility or other access needs.

Warren Dunes State Park remains the anchor for all of it, at 1,952 acres with three miles of shoreline and six miles of hiking trails. Climb Tower Hill, the park's tallest dune at 260 feet, and on a clear day you can pick out the Chicago skyline sixty miles across the water. It is a fact locals tend to mention almost in passing, the way you'd mention a good parking spot, but it is genuinely one of the more striking views in the region.

A Few More Worth Checking In On

Some of Sawyer's regulars don't need a whole section, just a reminder they're still there:

• Solasta Winery, directly across from Warren Dunes, pours 19 wines and welcomes both kids and dogs on the patio.
• Local Pour, the tasting room for Michigan-made wine, beer, and spirits, open Wednesday and Thursday from 1 to 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday until 8, and Sunday until 6.
• The Great Chair Stack, the towering, colorful chair installation near Sawyer Home & Garden Center that has become the default photo stop for anyone passing through.
• Sawyer Antique Mall and Stewart James Antiques & Galleria, both worth a slow lap if you have not been in a while.

What It Adds Up To

None of these places were dropped into Sawyer by a chain or a developer with a five-year plan. They were built by people who lived here, saw a gap, and filled it themselves, often in a building that used to be something else entirely. That is a specific kind of town to live in. It rewards paying attention, because the next thing to open is more likely to come from someone you already wave to at SideYard than from an outside company scouting locations.

If you are weighing what a property here is actually worth, that same texture matters. A town where the businesses are homegrown and the land trust is actively expanding its footprint tends to hold its character differently than one that is just passing through a growth cycle. That is the kind of context Chad Gradowski brings to conversations about property in Sawyer and the rest of Harbor Country, alongside the straightforward numbers. If you want to talk through what that means for a specific address, Let's Connect.