It’s getting downright gorgeous out here.

We’re six holes and a gratis sleeve of balls into our round on The Legend at Shanty Creek Resort, and the light rain greeting our stay here has now given way to warm, welcome sunshine. It’s hard to miss the metaphor in the moment, being as we were at a Northern Michigan getaway that for far too long has had a dark cloud hanging over its figurative head.

But the skies are now clearing, so we’ve come to the beautiful burg of Bellaire, Michigan, a fabulously fertile haven of hills, woods and water, to see the resort in a whole new light.

In short, Shanty Creek is looking brighter and better than ever.

The weather, at least, was no surprise. Sitting in the newly renovated Lakeview Restaurant in the Lakeview Hotel & Conference Center during lunch, the cloud cover clearly gave way to blue skies a few miles away, out past the sweeping vista of Lake Bellaire below. The limitless view is the newest addition to the restaurant’s mouth-watering menu, ensuring that eyes (and bellies) get their fill. Thanks to an extensive $10 million renovation of the lodge’s 175 rooms, welcome center and restaurant, the place now features windows of the wall-to-wall variety, making Shanty Creek easier on the eyes than ever before.

“When [Trinidad Resorts] came in, the place was failing,” Shanty Creek’s vice president of sales & marketing Jon Stultz matter-of-factly explains. “This place needed a major capital infusion. Most of the [golf equipment] was on lease. The first thing they did was buy those carts and mowers. That was the easy part. Then they gave a lot more thought to the renovation that needed to take place.”
The obviousness of the answer doesn’t detract from the brilliance of the results. The main hotel, which sits high at the crest of Summit Hill, was built in the 1960s by original owner Roy Deskin, who overlooked the lofty location and viewed it more as a ski lodge than a showpiece. Deskin built the hotel with a second-floor conference facility above the closed-off entranceway, giving it a decidedly claustrophobic feel by comparison.

Not anymore.

Cresting the stairs at the hotel’s entrance, nothing but the wild blue yonder fills your view, with floor-to-ceiling windows everywhere. The entire second floor is gone, a brilliant addition by subtraction, leaving in its place a wide-open, two-story testament to Northern Michigan’s beauty.

“There are a lot of beautiful places in Michigan,” Stultz says, waving his arms out, “but you can’t get this anywhere else in the state.”

It’s certainly a tough point to argue, and even socked in by a steel-gray sky, it’s a spectacular can’t-take-my-eyes-off-of-you kind of view. Yet there are other points to be made about the renovation. The hotel’s 175 guest rooms also received a welcome floor-to-ceiling updating, complete with flat-screen TVs, wireless Internet, even pillowtop mattresses. As Stultz points out, other prominent Northern Michigan resorts have spent much less renovating much more space.

“A hundred-seventy-five rooms, and $10 million in renovation?” Stultz marvels, as if he’d never said it aloud before. “That’s massive.”

Yes, Shanty Creek is changing in big ways, ways — as those pillows certainly prove — you can literally feel.

Admittedly, good news for the place has been a long time coming. Since Deskin built the resort as a ski and golf getaway, it’s been flirting with fortune and fame, yet the sweet embrace of profitability has for the most part eluded the place. After Deskin’s death in the late 1960s, his estate ran the place until the Hilton Hotel chain purchased it in 1978, which ultimately sold out to Club Resorts, Inc. in 1984. A year later, Club Resorts also purchased the beloved Schuss Village, the nearby ski and golf competitor built by Chicago-based stockbroker Daniel Ionnotti. The company then merged the two resorts in 1986, effectively doubling the Shanty Creek empire.

Yet Club Resorts’ greater contribution to the property might have been the 6,700-plus-yards of The Legend Golf Course, which opened to great fanfare in 1985. The Arnold Palmer-designed gem joined the original Summit course and the Schuss Mountain Golf Course, which was completed in 1977. The Legend also helped Shanty keep pace with Grand Traverse Resort down the road, which cut the ribbons on The Bear, a Jack Nicklaus design, the very same year.

Yet after the addition of The Legend, Shanty Creek entered more than a decade of complacency, until a group of private investors negotiated a buyout bid in 1997. The new ownership energized the resort, and promptly embarked on the Cedar River Village expansion, consisting of an 85 upscale-suite hotel, condominiums, and the Tom Weiskopf-designed Cedar River Golf Course, which opened in 1999.

Cedar River gave the resort its fourth course and earned almost universal acclaim. Yet acclaim alone couldn’t pay the bills, specifically the hefty $20 million mortgage. As a result, Comerica Bank foreclosed on the resort and its 4,500 sprawling acres in 2004.

Comerica then pumped more than $2 million into the place, hoping to attract a suitable buyer, which it found in 2006 in Trinidad Resort & Club, LLC, a subsidiary of Apex Oil, once the second largest privately held oil company in the world. Thus it began: the saving of Shanty Creek.

Early on, it’s clear there’s no saving this round of golf, but we’re having far too much fun to notice. Our new best friend and playing partner Brian Kautz, Shanty Creek’s affable director of golf, counters the sad display of skills with an impressive display of his own, and he’s clearly enjoying himself. How could he not? But it’s the setting, not his score, that has Kautz smiling.

“Most people say Cedar River is their favorite course here,” he explains. “And the back nine at Schuss is probably the most enjoyable. But really, The Legend has always been my favorite. I love the challenge of it. It’s really a shotmaker’s course.”

Present company most certainly excluded. Yet Kautz, a Midwestern native of Columbus, Indiana, is right on the mark (again). The Legend is a beautifully demanding challenge, part prom queen, part schoolyard bully, and while many prefer the gentler, newer Cedar River, The Legend is a thrill ride from start to finish.

The course kicks off with a bang on the aggressively downhill, 469-yard par-5 first hole, which shows off just how leggy Mother Nature can be up here. The course is pretty leggy, too, stretching out over 600 acres, and rarely will you lay eyes on any hole but the one at hand. Beautiful Lake Bellaire, on the other hand, provides plenty of distraction early and often throughout the front nine.

The resort’s eponymous stream makes a grand entrance on the spectacular seventh hole, a 501-yard stunner that crosses the legendary Shanty Creek not once, but twice. The second creek crossing fronts the elevated green, which is shored up by large boulders, in pure Palmerian fashion. It’s no wonder GOLF Magazine named it one of the top 50 public golf holes in the country.

The rest of the course is no slouch, either, and keeps the pedal firmly planted to the metal. The best of the back nine is the pretty, 173-yard par-3 12th, and the closing stretch will get your heart racing for more, from the grip-it-and-rip-it tee shot at the 442-yard 16th to the final putt on the no-guts-no-glory, reachable par-5 finishing hole. It’s a great finish, and a fitting final test.

The round may be finished, but Shanty Creek most certainly is not. The resort has many more changes on the way, from repainting the building exteriors, to removing the decidedly outdated fountain out front. Some of the changes are style, some are substance, but all are designed with one goal in mind: returning the resort to its rightful place among the Midwest’s elite. It’s still a work in progress, but there’s an undeniable excitement surrounding Shanty Creek these days. The skies are clearing, and the sunlight has returned.

It won’t be long before the limelight returns, as well.