Schoolcraft Soccer Wins First District Semi-Final Game

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By Travis Smola

Schoolcraft soccer made marked improvements over last season. That culminated in the team’s first District semi-final win in an aggressively-played, 4-0 contest against Constantine.

“The boys played a great game today,” Head Coach Chad Earles said after the victory. “We got a little sloppy towards the end of the first half, but we got up early on them with two goals. Constantine, they’re a tough team. They played hard, they played very physical.”

Sophomore Myalz Berkheiser opened the scoring for the Eagles. Senior Chandler Guiter added to the score with two goals of his own. Senior Buddy Kelecava gets the credit for the last goal. It came on a shot that Constantine accidentally deflected into their net. The game marked the first time the Eagles have won in the semi-finals and first time they’ve made it to the District finals.

It’s a marked turnaround from last year when the team was losing by large margins. This year they’ve kept all but one game close while tallying an 8-9-1 record with a 4-3-1 record in the conference.

The boys moved on to face Dowagiac the following week in the District Final and got out to an early lead on a Jacob Steeby goal. But the Chieftains ultimately took the game 3-1 and ended the Eagles’ season.

“Our stats don’t show how good of a team we actually are,” Earles said. “We’ve lost a lot of close games because we couldn’t put the ball in the back of the net.”

Mill Project Approved by Unanimous Village Council Vote

Vicksburg village council members seated from left to right: Julie Merrill, Bill Adams, Gail Reisterer, James Earl. Standing left to right: Ron Smith, Tim Frisbie, Colin Bailey. Village Manager Jim Mallery, Planning Director Bobby Durkee.

Members of the Vicksburg High School class of 1983 were in attendance at the village council meeting to decide the future of the Mill project in support of Chris Moore, a member of the graduating class. From left to right: Patsy Evensen Van Schoick, Chris Moore, Joe Krill, Sheri Freeland, Noni Lowe Heikes, Kelly Swope Oswalt, Dan Oswalt, Rick Holmes. Missing from the photo: Mike Oswalt, Toby Hardy, Kemi Cousins Laing, Peggy Evensen LaPorte, Tim Kudary, Shawn Roberts Fritz, and Michelle Shearer Fulton. Photos by Taylor Kallio.

By Jef Rietsma

Tearing the corner off a piece of notebook paper, Vicksburg Village President Bill Adams gave a visual example of how much work remains for redevelopment of the former Simpson Paper Co.

Adams, speaking prior to the council’s 7-0 approval of the $60 million planned-unit development Oct. 29, said the corner of the torn paper represents the amount of work already completed. The rest of the sheet, he said, signifies the work that lies ahead.

“We have voted on the small portion of the plan tonight,” Adams said, indicating he intended to present the two-piece puzzle to his wife as a means of explaining the current state of the project.

Village Manager Jim Mallery said in a perfect situation, village staff “would have been here with all the details. But working with the developer, we felt it best to proceed this way in order to receive the county- and state-level economic incentives, and then move forward.”

There’s plenty of work ahead, but for now, backers of the ambitious plan to redevelop the former mill will take a moment to celebrate the council’s milestone vote.
Buoyed by the unanimous decision, the crowd of more than 150 – most of them proponents – applauded as the meeting adjourned at Vicksburg High School’s Performing Arts Center.

Chris Moore, a Vicksburg native who is backing the Paper City Mill project, said there was good reason to celebrate a vote that has been several years in the making.

“We’re a lot closer to the start line now … it’s such a huge project, you have to think about the thing incrementally,” the 53-year-old Moore said. “So, there is the initial study, figuring out the brownfield issues, then the next step is to get the traffic plan, the sound plan, the parking plan and all that stuff put away. It’s all incremental and if you don’t think of it incrementally, your head will blow up.”

While behind-the-scenes work takes place over the winter, project manager Jackie Koney said visually, the public will see progress commence in the spring. She made a reference to the Transformational Brownfield Redevelopment plan under review by Michigan Department of Economic Development.

“We are waiting on it and if awarded, it truly (would be) transformational,” Koney said.

Supporters indicated the need for such a destination with the facilities the development will provide, while others noted it would help preserve a building and property that impacted thousands of area families over nearly a century before closing in 2001.

Vicksburg native Joe Krill, a Stryker employee, said Paper City has the potential to impact the county’s larger employers. He said large meeting spaces – which are included in Paper City’s plan – are needed in the area to enhance manufacturers’ recruitment and retention of prospective and current employees.

The village council’s vote followed the Vicksburg Planning Commission’s Oct. 17 unanimous recommendation for approval. The recommendation was sealed after commission members in last-minute negotiations won concessions from Moore reducing permissible sound levels and late-evening hours for entertainment at the site.

Vicksburg-area resident Don Wiertella was the first of eight people to address the council. He reminded the members that Mallery and the planning commission’s support spoke well of the project.

“I believe that the mill project will be successful and will allow Vicksburg to become a destination village and not a travel-through village,” said Wiertella, a former Michigan Department of Transportation engineer who oversaw traffic studies at locations such as the Pontiac Silverdome and Michigan International Speedway. “I believe that what is in the best interest of the village is a yes vote on this project.”

Jo Ramsdell, a Vicksburg resident, said the Village Council “is the equivalent of a watchdog whose job is to bark and alarm when something or someone suspicious approaches, to sniff out potential problems and to stand your ground to protect our interests. You have done your jobs well.”

“Chris Moore has offered Vicksburg an amazing opportunity,” Ramsdell said. “We, the residents and the voters, are the watchdog owners. We hear the barks and the growls, we step out from our doors with caution, but when we realize it is actually Santa walking toward us, delivering gifts, it is our responsibility as owners to tell our watchdogs to sit, stay, but don’t go away.

“We know that many gifts come with warnings and they need to be monitored when in use, but that does not mean the gift is no good, or even worse that it should be returned,” she added.

Virginia Corners Homestead Circa 1840 on Home Tour

virginia corners 2 — Don and Cheryl Ulsh stand on the east side of their Virginia Corners historic home.

By Linda Lane

Aaron Burson Jr. might be a great-great-great-great- grandfather to some families in Schoolcraft. He’s the man who built the Virginia Corners home for his family in 1840, 178 years ago, moving west from Virginia to settle here with three other families. The stately Greek Revival home at the corner of Oakland Drive and U Avenue has nurtured over six generations of families.

Virginia Corners is currently owned by Don and Cheryl Ulsh. Very active within the community, Don currently serves as the Schoolcraft Township supervisor and is president of the Vicksburg Rotary Club.

“It’s an honor to own a home like this with so much history,” Ulsh said. “When we purchased the property, we were told, ‘You never own Virginia Corners, you are just stewards for a while.’ We’re very sensitive and careful about making any changes or modifications to this historic home.”

“This was a weird coincidence, but when staff members were cleaning out an old vault in the Township offices, they happened upon a photocopy of a land grant deed to a property. I looked at it and said, ‘That’s our home’s property!’ It’s a copy of a land grant registered in Washington D.C. and was signed by President Andrew Jackson on June 1, 1831.”

Somehow the deed had been registered in the Kalamazoo County Registrar’s office in 1991, the year the Ulshes purchased the home. But Ulsh has no idea who went to Washington D.C. to obtain a copy of the land deed. A thick abstract of the property chronicles each owner since 1831.

The home originally had two kitchens, one called and used as a “summer kitchen” with a tiny fireplace. Previous owners discovered the fireplace when they pulled off some newer wall covering on the room while renovating. The Ulshes currently use the space as a small bedroom.

“If I put a level on any window sill, I can tell you, it is perfectly level on every one of them. It’s the quietest home I’ve ever lived in. There are no creaks or squeaks in floors. It’s just incredibly well-built and has withstood the years,” Ulsh said. With five bedrooms, almost all of the 2,400 square-foot home is original, except for a 6-by-12-foot porch on the west side of the home.

Another unique aspect of the house: it’s on one of the highest spots in the township, another tidbit Ulsh learned from a topography map he found at the Township Hall. He doesn’t know if the original settler selected the site because of that. But the Ulshes have never had a problem with water in the basement.

There are also four original outbuildings on the property and a sign of another. “When it’s really dry for a period of time, we’ve found a defined circle, maybe 18 inches in diameter, that we’re not really sure what it might have been originally. Maybe a well? We’re not sure. We keep talking about digging up that area to see what it might have been,” Ulsh said.

“We removed five layers of linoleum from the kitchen floor when we renovated. The contractor couldn’t believe it. He said, ‘The oak flooring is in such good condition, it doesn’t look like it’s ever been walked on.’ There literally weren’t any scratches or damage to the original tongue and groove flooring,” Ulsh said. Previous owners passed on several original tools from the home and barns, including the original tool used to create that tongue and groove flooring in the kitchen.

The biggest downside to owning a historic home? Maintenance. “It’s expensive to maintain the roofs and to keep everything painted,” Ulsh said.