Bureaucracy and personal attacks stymie plan for houses; ‘No way are we going to live in Egg Harbor’
Matthew Sagorac is ready to walk away from what some claim is the soul of Egg Harbor.
Sagorac is the owner of a lovely piece of property right on Green Bay, upon which sits the husk of what once was one of the finest lodges in Door County.
At one time, Sagorac wanted to tear down what a local fire inspector and engineer say is now an unredeemable firetrap to make way for homes, one of them for him and his family. His request awaits a hearing before the Egg Harbor Zoning Board of Appeals.
Now, he says, he’d rather not. Whipsawed by a public outcry that has included verbal attacks on his wife and on his children, who attend school in the Gibraltar Area School District, Sagorac says he has no intention of having the people of Egg Harbor for neighbors.
“If I would have known what was going to happen, we never would have done it,” Sagorac told the Badger Institute this week. “We never expected the severity, the extremism directed at us personally and me, professionally. It’s just not worth it.”
The Sagoracs got a hint of what was coming when he made a formal request with the Architectural Review and Historic Preservation Board in March to raze the lodge, which was gutted and vacant for a few years.
“Word of this will reverberate through all of Door County in a very big way,” board member Jim Vander Heiden, said at the March 31 meeting, the Door County Pulse reported.
It isn’t hyperbole to say that the Alpine Resort, which includes a golf course, restaurant and 100-year-old cottages, is at the cultural heart of Egg Harbor, 25 miles south of the very tip of the Door Peninsula.
The village does its business in the Paul J. Bertschinger Community Center, named for one of the brothers who opened the resort in 1922 and built with the help of a $75,000 donation in his honor from the family.
With the Alpine Lodge and cottages, the Bertschinger brothers practically invented tourism in Egg Harbor. When the family decided to sell to Randy Abrahams in 2021, 92-year-old Bill Bertschinger, Paul’s son, was still running the place.
In Abrahams, the Alpine Resort appeared to be in good hands. By all accounts, he spent millions of dollars on renovation of the marina, a restaurant, a golf course and clubhouse, and 29 cottages.
Abrahams, who reportedly spent $12 million to buy the resort, even had a name for it, “Alpine Reimagined.” This reimagination included a full restoration of the lodge to its status as the jewel of the resort, he told a Door County Pulse reporter in 2023.In January, Abrahams sold 8.7 acres of the property, with 1,100 feet of shorefront and the gutted lodge, to Sagorac for $6.75 million while continuing to pour money into every other part of Alpine. Abrahams has not said publicly why he no longer wanted to restore the lodge. Sagorac says Abrahams did not tell him why he was willing to sell.
When contacted for comment, an Abrahams staff member said he would consider it but did not respond before this story was published.
Sagorac says he retired young and bought a home a decade ago on tony Cottage Row in Fish Creek, just north of Egg Harbor. He has since invested in real estate all over Door County and is the owner of the popular Wild Tomato pizza restaurants in Fish Creek and Sister Bay. This summer, he opened an upscale restaurant, Cut, on Wisconsin Highway 42 in the heart of Fish Creek.
Sagorac learned the Alpine property might be for sale while he and his family were vacationing in Mexico. He had never walked inside the lodge. “It was waterfront property,” he says, “and I’m always looking for waterfront property.”
Before signing off, Sagorac got assurances from the village that the zoning would allow for development of five single family homes, one of them for the Sagorac family.
In May he asked Ashley Staats, an Egg Harbor Fire Department inspector, and Michael Till, a licensed engineer from Sturgeon Bay, to do separate assessments of the lodge.
The results (see here and here) are damning.
“It is further my professional opinion that whomever denies razing this non-recoverable building should also be held responsible for any injury, death or property damages caused by this building’s very unsafe conditions,” Till wrote in his report.
Neither Staats nor Till responded to Badger Institute emails requesting comment.
No matter: People in Egg Harbor mobilized. Sagorac paid for an engineer but there are other engineers and more positive outcomes, the rumor mill churned. Then there are the “Save Alpine Lodge” signs.
“Those god-damned signs are everywhere,” Sagorac says.
A Preserve Egg Harbor Facebook site helped circulate a call to boycott Sagorac’s pizza places. The message was clear.
“A development proposal seeks to demolish one of Egg Harbor’s most cherished icons. But this isn’t just about a building — it’s about history, heritage, shoreline preservation, and community values.”
A report by Village Attorney James Kalny agrees. Sagorac’s raze proposal “is not consistent with the comprehensive plan,” he wrote. The Architectural Review and Historic Design Committee recommended Sagorac not be granted a permit to “preserve the quaint character of the village,” “preserve public views of the waterfront,” and “preserve public environments,” as Kalny suggested.
It’s impossible for the public to know what the members of the village’s pertinent boards think about razing the Alpine Lodge and replacing it with homes because those boards have met exclusively in closed or private sessions when discussing it.
A Zoning Board of Appeals meeting earlier this month to discuss the raze request publicly for the first time was postponed and has so far not been rescheduled.
The Badger Institute emailed Village President John Heller, Zoning Board of Appeals chair Jim Spolarich, Plan Commission chair Scott Rasmussen, and Architectural Review Board chair Chris Roedl, requesting comment.
No one responded.
Sagorac’s lawyer, Andrew Rossmeissl, said the village’s own zoning ordinances undermine Kalny’s opinion. Those ordinances would legally allow Sagorac to put up condos or a small hotel on the property, robbing residents of the bay views they’ve had for decades, but Sagorac said it was never his intention to do that.
Still, it infuriates him that people with no monetary stake are telling him what he can do with his property. Sagorac says he’s already gotten one serious offer to buy his property, although he won’t discuss details.
“No way are we going to live in Egg Harbor, not now after everything,” he says. “After all the investments in Door County, in the minds of the locals, we’re really still outsiders.”
Mark Lisheron is the Managing Editor of the Badger Institute.
Any use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written permission. To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute Marketing Director Matt Erdman at matt@badgerinstitute.org.
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