How algae tech may help grow Sans Souci

Earlier this year, a new nonprofit aimed at revitalizing Sans Souci on Harsens Island toured the area with local leaders when one stop left them “flabbergasted.”

“We brought them here. We had all the stores — Readers Cove was open, and the (island’s historical) museum was open — so they could get a look at downtown. And they saw that,” Chris Holcomb, secretary for SS Downtown Inc., said Tuesday. “That’s the only bathroom in town.”

Outside the Sans Souci Bar — itself mid-redevelopment — sat a bright turquoise porta-potty along South Channel Drive. Months later, it's still there.

That's because unlike on mainland Clay Township, Harsens Island properties rely on septic fields for waste disposal, and Township Supervisor Artie Bryson said it’s holding Sans Souci back from fortifying itself as a destination for resident islanders and seasonal visitors.

“So, we’re trying to have a mission to revitalize the downtown area,” Holcomb said, “and make it sustainable for everyone in the community and enjoyable for everybody.”

Luckily, they aren’t alone.

Now, a massive $2 million state budget line item earmarked for the township is promising a wastewater treatment plant for Sans Souci using “algae wheel” technology that, officials said, would give the town the capacity to grow — and to offer access to public restrooms.

Bryson has pursued the algae idea for months, visiting an established plant in Upstate New York. The funding was in limbo until the 2024 state budget was signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last Monday.

The next day, Bryson, Sans Souci business owners and island residents, state Sen. Kevin Hertel, D-St. Clair Shores, and other officials gathered to delve into the announcement — and what it will mean for the town amid its push as a business district.

“Once this goes in, you’ll see businesses flourish," Bryson said. "There’ll be someone in that restaurant. There’ll be someone in that empty building. And you know what? These businesses, they’ll have the ability to build lofts and apartments above these. You’ll actually have people living downtown. They could be rentals or apartments or whatever. Then, it’s going to make this town that destination. And who does not want that?”

Dreaming big in a little town, and a new kind of island connection

So far, Holcomb said that SS Downtown Inc. — the SS standing both for the town and as a “tip of the hat to steamships” — has done some minor things for Sans Souci.

That includes hosting a local cleanup and planning an inaugural chili cookoff as a fundraiser this October.

Sans Souci’s primary boundaries cover a small stretch of properties along the South Channel of the St. Clair River, as well as a few off Maple and William streets and La Croix Road.

It’s there, where the township’s master plan, as of 2021, called for more mixed-use and waterfront commercial. It also calls for amenities like bike rentals, more pedestrian-friendly infrastructure and circulation, and other place-making features.

However, the township had improvements in mind long before.

The township’s 2012 master plan also envisioned the expansion of the area into a large-scale, nautical-themed village area that could be developed, though no final plan ever got underway.

Bryson has pointed to an abandoned restaurant space at one end of the Sans Souci corridor, emphasizing that with a push off septic, it could once again open its doors to visitors.

Still, it's in the most recent and ongoing business developments that local islanders are also seeing a lot of hope.

Harold Bain, who opened the Island Grind coffee shop with wife Patty two years ago, was among the couple of dozen present Tuesday who said the new plant arrangement would make Sans Souci a “more viable town.”

“We’re on a septic field, so we can’t expand. They’re pump-and-haul, they’re pump-and-haul, the historical society’s pump-and-haul,” he said, motioning to the neighboring Readers Cove and Sans Souci Market. “When I was on the planning commission, we zoned the district to be a little bit more of a commercial area here, and there’s nothing to take care of that expansion. This is going to be able to.”

And that means building on what they already do well.

Midday Tuesday, Patty Bain was behind the Island Grind counter, making coffee and joyfully socializing with new regulars.

Later, when asked if they were doing better this summer than last, she nodded, adding, “I think that it’s the Airbnbs that are out here. And we’re getting people from all over. (We’ll) ask, ‘Oh, do you have an island connection?’ They’re like, ‘I’m from California, I’m from Ohio.’”

There were even visitors from Iceland, a staffer said.

For others, getting off septic was vital for business that had yet to open.

The Sans Souci Bar closed amid the pandemic. Kathie Schweikart is part of one of three families that picked it up to be redeveloped.

Much of it was gutted and refinished. A sign out front indicates an opening sometime this year, and Schweikart told other community members Tuesday that they hoped to open within a couple of months.

Of a new wastewater plant, Schweikart said, “We are really needing to educate everybody on what’s going on, and it’ll be a positive for the whole (area). So, this is maybe, I call it, phase one of getting the town so we don’t have our Porta-John.”

Partnerships at the state and local levels help push Sans Souci forward

State Rep. Jay DeBoyer, R-Clay Township, said he thought there were plenty of grant opportunities in the latest state budget that’d also “perfectly fit” Sans Souci’s plans.

DeBoyer touted the access and working well across partisan aisles with Hertel was “highly beneficial to Harsens Island.” He credited the Democratic senator with “really good work pushing this on your side with the governor.”

“I’m native to this area, so I understood these problems. But Kathie (Schweikart) and I were talking about it. We kind of got used to it, right? It kind of was what it was,” DeBoyer said. “Because nobody paid attention to it.”

He pointed to Hertel and added, “The two of us, even though we’re from opposite sides of the aisle, we have the same focus about this place. Exactly the same. Whether it be the environment, whether it be navigating through EGLE.”

Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: How algae tech may help grow Sans Souci