Carpenter Lake reopens with new improvements

SOUTHFIELD — On the hot and sunny morning of Aug. 1, officials gathered at Carpenter Lake Nature Preserve, 27225 10 Mile Road, for the park’s grand reopening.

Thanks to a $600,000 Michigan Economic Development Corp. grant secured by state Sen. Jeremy Moss, the park closed July 31, 2023, for improvements.

Work began with the removal of the existing parking lot and entry road. The expansion was laid out, and paving began in the late fall of 2023. The nature shelter was placed in December 2023, and the restroom facilities were completed by mid-spring 2024. The new improvements include the renovation and expansion of the parking lot and entry road. The new layout includes seven parking spaces, including three accessible spaces, and parking for two school buses, with Americans with Disabilities Act-accessible curb ramps and a marked crosswalk from the Boulder Garden to the restroom/shelter area.

A 256-square-foot, all-season restroom with three unisex stalls and a drinking fountain on the outside of the building is also new.

The work includes the addition of a 16-by-20-foot open-air shelter, eight picnic tables and one accessible picnic table and bike racks, though bikes are not allowed on the trails. The project includes 100 tons of small stones placed throughout the Boulder Garden paths. The motorized gate at the park entrance was repaired, and additional trees and signage will be added soon.

“If you would have told me that my legacy was going to be the Jeremy Moss bathrooms at Carpenter Lake … ” Moss joked at the reopening ceremony. “My very first City Council meeting when I was elected in 2011 had to do with Carpenter Lake. There were plans at the time to create what was an intrusive and overburdensome facility here that some people championed as ‘the vision for an educational opportunity.’ But we had a debate on council, and including members of the community who came out and told us, ‘Let Carpenter Lake be Carpenter Lake.’”

Moss said he and Mayor Ken Siver voted against those plans, but it passed through the council. However, the Southfield mayor at the time, Brenda Lawrence, vetoed the plans, leaving the question, “How can Carpenter Lake draw more people while remaining a nature preserve?”

“When Ken called me years later, I guess 2016, and said, ‘I met this guy named Marshall Lasser,’ I said, ‘Buckle up, because I’ve known Marshall most of my life. His daughter’s my closest friend,’” Moss said. “And it’s true. I mean, Marshall is a visionary and took all of us on this journey with him, but it really kind of was this perfect marriage between Ken and Marshall being unrelenting in trying to make this work. So here we are, all these years later, and what a journey we’ve come from, you know, kind of just a benign facility to really what stays true to the character of what should be a preserve and is also a very exciting opportunity to draw in people here to Carpenter Lake.”

Siver shared some history of the 42-acre nature preserve at the reopening ceremony, explaining that the site used to be a dairy farm, and the farmer impounded the Ravines Branch of the Rouge River with a dam. When the dairy farm left, various other people owned the property, and at one time, a church owned it.

“Through lots of work and grants, we were able to get 30 acres, and it had a long, narrow driveway to come to the back here,” Silver said. “There were 10 acres up here. That was a horse farm, and that property became available in about 2004. The city bought it. We jumped right on it, and that completed this acquisition. So then we have a dam that’s failing. We have an overrun property. It was pretty much wilderness.”

Siver explained that with various grants from the state and the help of former city employee Mary Carlock, the city dredged Carpenter Lake, rebuilt the dam and reopened the park in 2009. He added that despite these major efforts, more improvements were needed.

In the fall of 2016, Siver was approached by attorney Marshall Lasser, from Bingham Farms, with a proposal to donate a rock garden with various stones from the Great Lakes region to a Southfield park. The work was initially supposed to be installed at Lahser Woods Park, 27577 Lahser Road, but when residents who lived near the park objected to the project, it was dropped, revised and moved to Carpenter Lake. In the fall of 2017, the installation of the Boulder Garden at Carpenter Lake began with boulders and rocks sourced from bedrock of Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula, Wisconsin, southeast Ontario and local glacial deposits near Oxford ranging in age from 1 billion to 2.7 billion years old, with QR codes and interpretive signage.

The installation was a labor of love and was made possible thanks to the donation of $1 million worth of boulders by Lasser. The Boulder Garden was constructed by Ray Rogers, of Rockworks LLC. John Zawiskie, of the Cranbrook Institute of Science, was the primary science content resource, and additional scientific editing and input was done by Dr. Andrew Gangidine, of Cranbrook. After traveling all over the Great Lakes Region, Lasser remarked that the biggest source of rocks was right in Oakland County.

“Interestingly, the biggest source of rocks is Oakland County. Who would have known, Oakland County? That’s because 12,000 years ago, and more than that, the glaciers, the Ice Age glaciers, which are 1- to 2-miles thick, some of them stopped in northern Oakland County, melted, and they deposited their burden of rocks,” he said.

Silver explained that the installation of the Boulder Garden at Carpenter Lake has created a draw to the nature preserve.

“Marshall’s vision was to bring different minerals here, different substances, and so we partnered with Cranbrook,” Silver said. “This isn’t just a walk and a boulder garden. It’s also a science lesson about minerals and where the rocks come from, and how they were formed.”

Lasser added that he hopes people become inspired by geology and that the reason for his donation was “the joy of philanthropy, the joy of giving. And then it’s also the love for rocks and the love for nature. I love rocks. Anybody who’s been to my house knows that I love rocks. A lot of rocks there, and I love nature. And this combines the both. There is also an educational purpose.”

For more information on Carpenter Lake Nature Preserve, visit www.cityofsouthfield.com. To learn more about the Boulder Garden, visit science.cranbrook.edu/discover/glacial-boulder-project.