Seeking a resolution
Laurium wants annexation issue settled
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LAURIUM - In June, Laurium Village Manager Ian Lewis submitted an email to Houghton County Clerk Jennifer Kelly requesting the county board place the village's request for the Final Order for the annexation of the property of the George Gipp Recreational Arena.
Lewis began pursuing the annex earlier this year and has been met with no response from county officials.
At the regular April meeting of the Laurium Village Council, Lewis said the Gipp property was properly annexed in 1970 and 1975, but not properly recorded. Lewis has gone to the County and was told it was properly recorded. He will not have to petition to have it annexed but will bring proof to the Township that it was done and recorded properly.
Before the Village of Laurium occupied the property, the land functioned primarily as the Laurium Airport. When the airport closed in 1968, the land sat vacant within the township’s geographic borders. Because the township did not have a municipal use for the abandoned airfield, Laurium moved to acquire the property in 1970 and 1974 to repurpose it.
The township allowed the village to convert the airport’s hangar into the Laurium Department of Public Works (DPW) maintenance garage around 1968.
Lewis said the discrepancy was discovered when the village applied to Houghton County for a building permit. One of the requirements of the application is to include the parcel identification number of the construction site. During the process it was shown that the property was listed under under a Calumet Township parcel ID number.
"I was searching through old village files for an unrelated project when I found the official documents from 1970 through 1975," Lewis told the Daily Mining Gazette in April. "They showed the property had been annexed, but it wasn't properly recorded by the county or the township. The paperwork didn’t get from the village to the township."
Lewis said at the time with the recently discovered documents showing the annexation of two properties, one in 1970 and the other in 1975, the next step was to file the change of the parcel ID with at the County Courthouse, and then the Township Office. He told the council that the issue should be resolved before the regular May meeting of the Laurium Village Council. It wasn't.
At the May meeting, Lewis said another issue regarding the annex had come up. The Houghton County Clerk's Office is helping to look for the Final Order that should've been issued to include the 1975 property, he said. It will take some time to locate. They are looking for the official letter.
“That’s what caused the issue,” said Lewis. “Laurium approved our permit, then we had to go through the township and that’s when we realized the property was not zoned for governmental building, though everything has been there for quite some time.”
Lewis said the DPW had been located at the back of the Village Hall until that facility burned down sometime in 1980s. It was at that time the DPW relocated to the former Laurium airport hangar. After the airport was closed in 1968, it was used as an ice rink until the village constructed the Bicentennial Arena, which is now the George Gipp Memorial Arena. The hangar was destroyed by fire in February, 2025.
“The annexation was completed prior to the village moving onto the property,” Lewis said, “so this is something that just gone unnoticed by Laurium, Calumet Township and Houghton County until the fire, and then we had to go through the building permit process.”
On July 27, Houghton County Administrator Chelsea Rheault sent a letter to the board regarding Lewis' request.
"At the direction of the board, I requested a legal opinion from the county's legal counsel regarding this matter," Rheault wrote. "Legal counsel provided the requested opinion on June 24, 2026. On June 25, I distributed the legal opinion of the full board of commissioners and requested direction regarding how the board wished to proceed."
Rheault said she did not receive a response, and sent a follow-up email on July 7, where she asked if the matter should be placed on the agenda for the upcoming board meeting.
"To date, I have not received direction from the board," she wrote,” and no response has been been provided to Mr. Lewis on behalf of the county.