What 1.26 Million Visits Tell Us About Our Downtown

Brief

In todays article we do a deep dive on a study using cell phone tracking data to understand the flow of people through Harbor Springs. The original study is attached to this article. But first a few reminders…..

The next Special Meeting of the Planning Commissioners is Thursday, July 30th at 2 pm. for Zoning Code discussion. To facilitate remote participation, the City is providing the public the opportunity to participate via this link ZOOM Please attend to voice your opinions. Here is the agenda

Suggested language by Beckett & Raeder: No mention of the number of stories:

“The maximum height downtown is 35 feet. Rooftop mechanical equipment can protrude another 42 inches above 35 feet and must be located so it is not visible from an adjacent street. Rooftop decks are allowed, but the top of the railing cannot exceed the 35-foot maximum building height. For buildings on corner lots, the maximum height is 30 feet. Rooftop mechanical equipment can protrude another 42 inches above 30 feet and must be located so it is not visible from an adjacent street. Rooftop decks are allowed, but the top of the railing cannot exceed the 30-foot maximum building height.”

The next Open House Downtown Development Authority (DDA) meeting is Thursday July 30th from 5-7 pm. To facilitate remote participation, the City is providing the public the opportunity to participate via this link ZOOM

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The Mobile Phone Data

Downtown: Key Takeaways and Facts

A foundational visitor study landed this spring. We read all 52 pages so you don’t have to. The short version: our downtown economy runs on a small, loyal, place-attached group of people. Not on the quick-hit tourist. Not on bigger buildings. The data points to a strategic shift focused on expanding off-season businesses in lieu of more summer business. Here is some more…..

Of the many strategic options we face to improve downtown business and tax revenue, the DDA has two substantive options…..

1. Build more retail space and reshape the streetscape? or

2. Attract loyal seasonal families to visit in off-season?

One-third of our downtown visitors generate roughly three-quarters of all visits. These are the people who come back five, six, eight times a year. They are seasonal residents, multigenerational families, and deeply attached individuals.

Summer is full. Winter is not in our downtown. July runs about 230,000 visits. March runs about 45,000. That is a five-fold swing. We do not have a capacity problem. We have a timing and an outreach/identity problem. The ski lifts at one of three local ski hills cite a capacity of 15,500 persons per hour, and 11,800 skiers per hour at another. If Harbor Springs is interested in more business, the visitors missing are a few miles away all winter.

The study shows our recurring visitors are affluent and committed. Median household income of $90,235, about 21 percent above the county. Sixty-two percent travel more than 100 miles to get here. They are not bargain hunters. They come for what Harbor Springs is.

Business revenue is people and timing, not square footage. We can build more buildings in the hope that more businesses will come, build a following, and maybe attract more new visitors. Or we can encourage more off-season visits from the people who already love Harbor Springs, and spend more.

If the goal is more revenue and taxes from downtown activity, the choice is clear to us. Invest in the year-round community and the loyal base that funds the town. Focus on the people attached to Harbor Springs. Do not spend money on physical expansion that serves eight weekends a year and risks the very character that draws the loyal base in the first place. The loyal base doesn’t need price promotion. They need event triggers, exclusivity, and reasons to come in October, January, or April, or to visit downtown Harbor Springs during their ski trips.

Where This Data Came From

In April 2026, Cobalt Community Research delivered two Visitor360 Foundational Reports for Harbor Springs. One covers the downtown commercial core. The other covers the broader city. Both study the same twelve months: April 1, 2025 through March 31, 2026. Two Springs, one summer and one fall season.

The method is anonymous cell-phone movement data, scrubbed of personal identifiers, then extrapolated to a full count. Margin of error is roughly 3 to 5 percent. It is not perfect. No data is. But it is the best objective picture we have ever had of who actually uses our downtown, when they come, how far they travel, and how long they stay.

For the purposes of this essay, we will focus on the downtown report. It isolates the commercial economy. The broader city report blends in residents and workers, which is useful for housing questions but muddies the picture of the merchant economy.

The Numbers That Matter

Here is the foundation. Downtown core, full year.

• 1.26 million total visits

• 488,050 unique individuals

• 2.6 average visits to Harbor Springs per person

• 75 percent of activity is visitors. 14 percent residents. 11 percent workers.

• $90,235 median household income of visitors, against a county resident median of $74,450

• 62.5 percent of visits come from more than 100 miles away

So far this looks like a healthy, affluent destination economy. It is. But the averages hide the most important fact in the entire report.

Finding #1: A Small Core Group Is the Economy

This is the number to remember.

Sixty-seven percent of our downtown visitors come once during the year and never return. The other thirty-three percent come back, averaging nearly six visits each.

Do the math. The one-time visitors generate one-time visits. The repeat third generates roughly 933,000 of the 1.26 million total. One-third of our visitors account for about 74 percent of all downtown activity.

The broader city data is even sharper. There, 38 percent of visitors generate about 80 percent of visits.

Stop and sit with that. The economy of downtown Harbor Springs is not built on the tourist who passes through once for an ice cream cone or a quick shopping tour. It is built on a loyal core who keep coming back. Seasonal homeowners. Families who have been coming for generations. People with or gaining a real attachment to this place.

That is the group that fills our restaurants in May and October. That is the group that keeps a shop owner willing to sign a year-round lease. Or to decide to stay open in the winter season. That is the group that funds the food pantry, the festival, the churches, and the school auctions.

If we want to grow the local economy, the data could not be clearer about who to focus on. Not strangers. The people who already love us.

Finding #2: We Have an Outreach/Identity and a Timing Problem, Not a Capacity Problem

Look here at the seasonal curve.

July: about 230,000 visits, with single days topping 15,000

The shoulder months of May, September, and October: about 4,000 visits a day

The winter floor, November through March: about 1,800 visits a day

That is a five-fold swing inside one year.

Here is what that means in plain terms. In July, downtown is at or beyond its capacity. Adding more retail space or taller buildings does not create more July revenue, because the town is already full. It just adds carrying costs the merchant pays all twelve months to serve eight crowded weekends.

The slack time of identity is what needs to change. The ski areas alone bring thousands of visitors to the region each winter. Those visitors are mostly not coming downtown. Converting even 20 percent of regional winter visitors to take downtown trips would increase daily winter traffic by 30 to 40 percent.

The opportunity is not a bigger building. It is a busier November, December, January, February, and March. Harbor Springs sits minutes from two ski resorts, yet you’d never know it walking downtown. That’s not an accident of geography; it’s an opportunity. Harbor Springs could feel like a ski town if downtown leaned into it a little more. Right now, that opportunity is sitting mostly untouched.

So what would it take? It means letting winter in the door a little more.

A window display that says “just off the hill” instead of closing early because the season feels slow. A rack of wool hats and hand warmers by the register, not tucked in back. A chalkboard sign out front with the day’s snow report. Hot cider on a cold Saturday. Staying open an extra hour when the lifts close and skiers are looking for somewhere warm to land before dinner.

None of this costs much. It’s not a rebrand, it’s a welcome mat.

Right now, a skier who spends the day at Nub’s Nob, The Highlands, or Boyne Mountain has very little reason to drive the extra minutes into town. Nothing downtown says “we knew you were coming.” That’s the gap, and shop owners are the ones best positioned to close it.

The opportunity doesn’t need permission. It just needs shop owners to lean in.

Finding #3: They Come for What We Already Are

The visitor profile is consistent and revealing.

Visitors skew affluent. Households earning over $100,000 make up about 46 percent of our visitors. White-collar work, 65 percent of visitors.

• Retirees who’ve made Harbor Springs a tradition (10.5 percent), older couples and individuals who are settled in their lives and return year after year

• Empty-nesters drawn to nature and small-town charm (8.0 percent), couples whose kids are grown, often coming from more rural areas

• Longtime, dependable regulars (7.3 percent), visitors who have been coming for years with steady, comfortable routines

• Families building new traditions here (5.8 percent), parents with kids at home who are starting to make Harbor Springs a regular part of their year

• Visitors seeking an upscale small-town escape (3.9 percent), households looking for a refined, well-kept downtown experience

• Career couples looking to unplug (4.5 percent), busy professionals drawn to a quieter pace

None of these are price-driven day-trippers. They respond to quality, character, and a sense of place. They are exactly the people who would be turned off by a downtown that no longer reads as distinct, filled with taller by-right buildings that could apply to any town.

This is the part that should reframe the whole zoning conversation. The argument that we need bigger, taller buildings to attract a different kind of visitor is not supported by the data. The affluent, committed visitor is already here. They are already spending. And they are here because of what Harbor Springs is, not what a developer or a Planning Commissioner imagines it could become.

When we put the character of downtown at risk, we are not making a neutral trade for growth. We are risking the single asset that draws the core group who funds the town.

How a Visit Becomes City Revenue

It is worth being precise about how money actually reaches City Hall, because it changes the strategy.

Michigan has no local sales tax. A tourist who spends $200 downtown sends zero of it directly to the city. The city’s revenue comes from property taxes, utilities, marina fees, the DDA tax increment, and state revenue sharing.

So the path runs like this: a visitor pays a merchant, the merchant pays rent, the landlord pays property tax, and the city, through the DDA tax increment, captures the growth in that property’s value.

Every link in that chain depends on the merchant being viable year-round.

And year-round viability depends on the loyal, off-season core, not the summer rush. A shop that only works for eight weeks cannot hold a lease, cannot invest in its space, and cannot lift the property value the city is counting on.

Which leads to a harder question about the current strategy.

A Strategy Worth Re-examining

The DDA tax increment is designed to reward new construction. The assumption baked into it is simple: build bigger, capture more value, fund the town.

The visitor data says that assumption may have it backward. Capacity is not our constraint. Summer is already full, and winter is already empty. Adding floors does nothing for the off-season gap, raises the merchant’s year-round costs, and threatens the character that draws our most valuable visitors.

We’re running a strategy built around the visitor who contributes least, in a town whose economy runs on the visitor who contributes most.

A better aligned strategy is not complicated:

• Invest in year-round vitality. Programming, events, indoor gathering space, walkability, winter-time and ski trip outreach, and evening life.

• Connect the townships. Shuttles fold West Traverse, Little Traverse, and Resort into our local base without changing our footprint.

• Protect utility reliability. A summer or winter outage damages every merchant at once. The substation question is real, and it is the highest-priority capital decision we face.

• Defend the character that makes people come back.

Let merchant prosperity naturally lift property values. The city still captures that growth through the regular tax base. The math is healthier, the winter floor is higher, and the town we love stays the town we love.

If you take one idea from this report, take this

A vibrant downtown in February is worth more than a taller building in July.

The people who will get us there are already in front of us:

The loyal returning visitors and seasonal residents. Our economic engine. Give them reasons to come up one more time a year, in the shoulder seasons, and the whole economy strengthens.

Year-round residents and the nearby townships. They keep merchants alive in the off-season and they cost the city almost nothing to serve. A downtown that works for locals in winter is a downtown that survives.

The first-time visitor, converted into a returning one. Two-thirds of our visitors come once. Even a small lift in the share who come back compounds year after year. Ask yourself, and ask your shopkeeper, what can you do, what can they do, to turn one visitor or two into returning friends.

The five-minute stop for a photo and a cone is the segment that shapes our infrastructure the least efficiently. It peaks exactly when we’re already full, spends the least, and puts the most strain on parking and restrooms.

This is not anti-tourist. It is pro-strategy. The town is poorer, not richer, when we chase volume in the months we are already full and ignore the people who carry us the rest of the year.

People matter more than streetscapes. The data agrees.

How to Weigh In

These are exactly the questions the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) exists to answer. The DDA and City Council meet on a published schedule, and public comment is open at every meeting. The agendas are posted at the city website, and meetings are carried on the city’s YouTube channel and Zoom.

If you care about how downtown grows, show up, listen, and speak. The record shows that when residents participate, boards act.

A Word of Thanks

This kind of study is not free and not easy, and the city deserves credit for commissioning real data instead of guessing. The merchants who keep their doors open through a Northern Michigan winter are doing the hard, quiet work that holds this town together. The volunteers on our boards and commissions give their evenings to decisions most people never see.

We do not have to agree on every answer. But we are lucky to be arguing over a town this many people love this much. That love, the kind that brings a family back for the sixth time in a year, is not a line item. It is the whole economy. Let’s build around it.

Source: 2026 Visitors360 Foundational Report, Cobalt Community Research, compiled April; 2026. Study period April 1, 2025 through March 31, 2026. All figures drawn from the downtown core report unless noted.

V360 Downtown Harbor Springs Final

City Limits Harbor Springs Mi Final