Egg Harbor Village Administrator Ryan Heise believes business owners in his community are providing the rest of the county with a template on how to address the area’s summer housing concerns. The Northrop family, owner of Main Street Market, and the Pollman family, owners of several local businesses are the latest to start investing in their own summer housing projects so their seasonal employees have a place to live. It is a project the village was unsuccessful in starting when they looked into it in 2016. Heise says the projects could serve as a model for the rest of the county because of a couple different reasons.

Heise says part of the reason why the village’s dormitory-style seasonal housing project failed was it could not get enough local businesses to pay the proposed monthly rate on rooms. A lack of affordable seasonal housing for workers was one of the conclusions of a recent study done by the Door County Economic Development Corporation.