Local Business Owners Are Shaping Downtown Stevensville, One Board Meeting at a Time

Who decided downtown Stevensville needed an indoor golf simulator, a legal to-go beer zone, and a second farmers market day, all within about two years of each other?

The short answer is a five- or six-person volunteer board that meets once a month above a beer garden. The board is called the Downtown Development Authority, and if you've eaten at Tosi's or grabbed a hot dog from Dog Slinger on a Saturday, you've already met some of its members. Several of them also run storefronts on the block, so the volunteers shaping downtown are neighbors who open their doors there every day.

What Changed On This Block In Under Two Years

Start with the timeline, because the pace is the story. In 2024, the Village of Stevensville put a Social District on the table, the kind of designation that lets people carry a drink from a participating bar or brewery out onto a defined stretch of public sidewalk. The council didn't just approve it and move on. A public meeting drew about a dozen residents who pushed back hard on the specifics: what hours would apply, how enforcement would actually work, whether the whole idea had been rushed. The council tabled the vote to let a newly formed Downtown Development Authority weigh in first, according to WSBT's coverage of that meeting.

The state approved Stevensville's Social District that October, per the Village's own council packet, and Watermark Brewing Co. became one of the first license holders to get its participation signed off. Around the same stretch, Watermark opened Depths Society Golf, an indoor simulator tucked into its downtown space, according to Watermark's own site. Then in 2026, USA Today's 10Best readers' poll named Watermark the number one beer garden in the country. And the Village and its Downtown Development Authority added a second monthly market day, the Second Sunday Farmers Market, to run alongside the existing Mother's Day Market, with the Social District open during market hours so shoppers can carry a drink while they browse produce stands, per the Village's own announcement.

Four changes, one small downtown, under two years. That kind of pace doesn't usually happen when a board is waiting on outside developers or a state agency to move first.

Who's Actually Sitting On The Board

Here's the Downtown Development Authority roster as of the February 2026 meeting agenda:

Six of eight names are directly tied to a storefront you can walk into. That's not unusual for a Downtown Development Authority in a village this size. Somebody has to volunteer for the unpaid seats, and the people with the most reason to care about foot traffic, parking, and what gets built next door are usually the ones already running a business there. It also means that when the board discusses a Social District, a Capital Improvement Plan, or a Corridor Improvement Authority for Red Arrow Highway, people with day-to-day experience of the corridor are in the room.

The Social District Fight Nobody Expected To Take This Long

The 2024 pushback on the Social District wasn't about whether downtown should grow. Residents at that meeting weren't opposed to the brewery or the businesses around it. Their concerns, as reported by WSBT, centered on the practical mechanics: what hours the district would run, how the Village would enforce boundaries, and whether the process was moving faster than the public could weigh in on it. The council's response was to table the vote and let the DDA, still newly formed at that point, take it up first before bringing a revised proposal back.

The record shows a careful, public process: a tabled vote, time set aside for the new Downtown Development Authority to take it up, and a state approval that arrived in October 2024, months after the original proposal. Residents' questions about hours and enforcement shaped the timeline, and the district that exists today came out of that conversation.

What The State's Money Bought

The Social District wasn't the only lever pulling downtown forward. In 2024, Michigan's Match on Main program, a Michigan Economic Development Corporation grant tied to storefront revitalization, awarded Watermark Brewing Company $22,157.36 to expand its beer garden, according to ABC57's report on the grant announcement. That grant was one of 31 awarded statewide, totaling $748,018.82 and projected to create 76 jobs and activate more than 8,800 square feet of vacant or underused commercial space across Michigan.

Watermark's co-founder Chris Mason told ABC57 the expansion would help the brewery "retain and potentially increase our workforce" and position Stevensville "as a key destination for beer enthusiasts and tourists." Two years later, that bet paid off in a way that's easy to point to: a national #1 ranking from a readers' poll most people have actually heard of. A $22,000 state grant into a beer garden expansion, followed by a USA Today title, is the kind of before-and-after that's rare to trace this cleanly in a downtown this size.

The Rest Of The Block Isn't Waiting Either

Watermark gets the headlines, but it's one storefront among several that make downtown Stevensville worth a Saturday afternoon. Tosi's has built a regional reputation on scratch-made pasta and an extensive wine list. The Grande Mere Inn, perched on Covert Ridge with a dining room that looks straight out over Lake Michigan, has been family-owned and serving lake perch, walleye, and steaks since 1980. Dog Slinger, near the corner of St. Joseph Avenue and John Beers Road, built a following on specialty hot dogs and a wall of photos that makes ordering both easier and harder. The Squeeze Bar & Grille handles sandwiches. Hareloom Café covers coffee and daytime food. Tallulah Jeans and Quinlan & Fabish round out retail on the block.

Dog Slinger, The Squeeze Bar & Grille, Hareloom Café, Tallulah Jeans, Quinlan & Fabish, and Watermark each appear on the DDA roster. Volunteers who work on the block every day bring that experience to the table, and it helps explain how downtown Stevensville has kept moving on new ideas.

The Calendar That Holds It Together

None of this happens in isolation from the rest of the year. Downtown Stevensville runs on a recurring civic calendar that predates any of the recent changes: the Lakeshore Lions Car Show in early June brings hot rods, classics, tractors, and motorcycles to the streets downtown. Late June is the Village-Wide Garage Sale. Early July, neighboring Baroda puts on its fireworks display, and plenty of Stevensville residents make the short trip over. Late August is Family Fun Night, with food trucks and an outdoor movie. Early December brings Christmas in the Village, with sleigh rides and cookie decorating.

The Second Sunday Farmers Market slots into that same rhythm, not as a replacement for the existing Mother's Day Market but as an addition to it, giving downtown two market mornings a month instead of one, with the Social District open the whole time. It's a small addition on paper. But it's one more example of the same pattern: a handful of people who run the businesses on this block keep finding ways to give people more reasons to be here on a weekend, and then voting to make it official.

If you're weighing what it actually means to live near a downtown like this, on Choose Chad Team we watch these small civic decisions as closely as we watch the market itself, because they tend to show up in property values long before anyone puts a sign in the yard. Let's Connect.