Bob Berg / Lake Superior Magazine
The home of Peter Tropman and Ginny Graves features plenty of wood accents, inside, outside and all around.
On a lovely Sunday afternoon in August, we strolled along the wooded driving lanes and hiking trails within the Brickyard Creek Community between Red Cliff and Bayfield in Wisconsin, joined by a somewhat impromptu neighborhood gathering.
Residents in two of the community’s 69 current cottages had offered to let us visit us their homes. The on-site manager and his wife joined us, as did the founder (who actually has a seasonal home on Madeline Island) and the sales manager, who lives in Sawgrass, a similar community, under the same ownership, down the highway in Cornucopia. Eventually even a canine guide, Ziggy, tagged along.
Bob Berg / Lake Superior Magazine
Ginny and Peter enjoy the three-season porch.
A common theme soon emerged: How much they all loved living in this protected place, either seasonally or year-round. Peter Tropman listed four outstanding attributes succinctly: “An incredible forest with a stream running through it; you have, of course, the Lake; the advantages of a condominium (but in separate small cottages); and you have this incredible community of people.”
“In recent years, we’ve really developed our identity,” adds Jeffery Garrett, the Brickyard Creek manager-slash-trail blazer-slash-ecohistorian.
Basically this is a residential community where maintenance of the land’s ecosystems is a priority. A good thing, Jeffery points out because “we ended up stumbling into a pretty rare pocket of boreal forest.”
The seed of the Brickyard Creek Community really got planted in 1997 when founder Bob Davidson, a Twin Cities attorney, decided to sail his boat here. “I came up here and saw this Lake.”
Right then Bob knew he and his sailboat wanted to visit frequently. Rather than rent, he found land for sale that he believed might work as a marina with a surrounding dense forest traversed by Brickyard Creek.
What Bob did not want was for the land to be clearcut for large homes with trees removed for the best Lake views. He found the perfect co-developer for his notion in David Culberson, a site developer who already had been envisioning a community putting the local ecosystem first while creating comfortable living spaces.
David believes the most contented communities enjoyed three common denominators: a sense of place, a sense of pride and thoughtful rules and guidelines. David felt cottages woven seamlessly as possible among the landscape would meet those criteria. “He came up with the concept and we built a cottage here on spec,” Bob says.
Basically, as Jeffrey interprets the concept, “it looks like the cottage was dropped from a helicopter,” which is to say that construction disturbs as few trees and other flora as possible.
At first, no one seemed interested, then the first cottage sold. “Then before you knew it – another one and another one,” Bob recalls. “It mostly was word of mouth.”
Peter and Ginny Graves, among the longest here at 15 years, have their main home in Madison. They came up to Bayfield to drop their daughter off at a Girl Scout camp. “We got here and just fell in love with it,” Peter says.
They rented for a five-day stay through the Winfield Inn, discovered Brickyard Creek, wrote a down- payment check and “went home with cabin in the woods we never planned to buy. Lucky us!"
They’ve owned three different homes here. Privacy and tranquility are good, Ginny says, “but you also have to have community. We have a ready-made community of people here.”
They weren’t daunted by the fact that homeowners – or condominium owners, by the community’s legal definition – do not own any land surrounding their building.
“You just own the building and the footprint of the building,” Bob explains. “We haven’t allowed people to come in with their own plans.”
Eventually Bob would acquire two adjoining sections of land for a total of 140 acres, creating Brickyard Creek I, II and III.
We visited two of the sections. Buyers choose from five plans, developed in collaboration with architect Steve Mooney of Loon Architects in Minneapolis. The arts-and-craft style plans range from the one-bed, one-bath “Sumac” with 747 square feet of heated space and a 222-square-foot screen porch to the two-level “Meadow” style with 1,169 square feet heated and a 258-square-foot porch.
The comfortable cottages often center on a great room dining-living concept with smaller or larger kitchen spaces. The idea is to maximize useable space in a small area with as many views outside as possible.
Interior alterations are common, but enlarging the footprint is almost never allowed. Often lot space does not accommodate a garage. In this original section, owners of homes just a few dozen feet from the Lake cannot cut down the trees for a better view.
“If you want fence posts, this isn’t for you,” Bob jokes.
“Rather than restrictions, we call them protections,” adds Susan Keachie, who manages Brickyard Creek Realty. “The basic thing is preserving the natural habitat and the natural environment.”
Lake lots in the community have fewer restrictions and the land is owned by the resident, but an architectural review still must approve any structure plan.
Tony Jeannette
Tony Jeannette lives all year in his Brickyard Creek home nestled into the woods, as all the homes are.
Tony Jeannette, one of the few residents who lives here all year, bought an existing Creekside style home, but in place of the usual three-season enclosed porch, this home has an extra room surrounded by windows that he uses as his office.
Tony plies his trade doing graphic design and educational materials for American Family Insurance right from his home. His internet access is faster than service where he used to live in either Duluth or Madison, Wisconsin, he says. Brickyard is covered by high-speed DSL and because of the small number of users, ends up with lightening fast response, Bob explains.
Tony, who rented in the area before, bought his home in 2016. It heats with natural gas, including a gas fireplace in the great room, and has hot water baseboard heat. “Winter has been my favorite season,” he says. “I put on snowshoes, hop on a trail and go to the Lake.”
As a single person, he’s embraced the neighborhood camaraderie here. “I feel more connected to community here than I did living in downtown Duluth,” he admits.
There are many ways to feel connected. Residents work together on projects, like painting the communal gathering spots, and arrange for regular social opportunities – like a nightly social hour at the marina pavilion.
Impromptu meetings also occur almost daily as they pass their neighbors while strolling the 1.5 miles or so of onsite trails that Jeffery has broken, ever so gently, out of the woods. These trails embody what people truly are buying when they come to Brickyard Creek.
Brickyard Creek Community encompasses 120 acres within a boreal forest along the lake shore.
Jeffery, who helped to create a trail map, guided us along the narrow, but well-tended pathways. The main trails are named for Wisconsin environmental heroes – Aldo Leopold, Sigurd Olson and Gaylord Nelson. The main trail is the Brickyard Creek Trail. As co-developer of the community, Bob laughs that one of the trails is named for him, too, but “it’s just a loop.”
Along the path, Jeffrey points out signage with inspirational quotes from the eco-heroes and the benches and bridges he’s created from fallen trees. He has carefully chosen old cedar logs to curve naturally to border the route.
Jeffery also talks about the hydrology, the variety of plants (like the rare stands of Canada yew) and animals in the watershed that makes this such a unique place.
Biological and geological experts from Northland College visit regularly on the site and have helped to expand the knowledge of the forest here. Students also have toured here to learn about the boreal ecosystem.
We ended our tour that Sunday at the marina, hanging out by the marina pavilion. Not surprisingly, we bumped into another resident of the Brickyard Creek Community, walking his dogs and children by the waterfront. When we explained we were here doing a story on the community, he wanted to add a few words. “Just one thing,” he said, pausing between words for emphasis. “Best - place - ever.”