A community garden sits near a Macasu, Inc. Tower Vacation Home unit for everyone to enjoy. (Journal file photo)

By Journal Staff

MARQUETTE — With the closing of the K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base, 1,600 housing units became vacant. In June of 1997, three business partners saw this as an opportunity to help the little community of Sawyer grow.

Macasu, Inc. offers tower vacation homes, single family homes, efficiency units, townhouses and duplexes to rent or buy at affordable prices.

“We wanted to offer quality carefree living,” said Scott Bammert, corporate manager of Macasu. “We know young families that could not afford to buy a home, we knew families that wanted living where the maintenance was taken care of, the grass cutting, snowplowing.”

The infrastructure was already there for Macasu to use, but residents had to move in and that took the combined efforts of the community.

“It was a learning curve not only for Macasu but for the townships, the county, you had the local agencies, the churches, the residents, all working together,” Bammert said. “You had that sense of pride that sense of community where you learned that you needed help from everybody. It wasn’t just one person or one company that was going to make this work. It was a coordinated effort from everyone.”

And with that help Sawyer has grown in to a community where everyone has a voice.

“The positive for moving out to Sawyer as a renter or a homeowner is that it’s a beautiful growing community,” Bammert said. “You have a school system that is outstanding, you have churches, the local agencies, you have the businesses, as this happens it’s still continuing to grow.”

Since its start of mostly rental homes, Sawyer has become an almost even split of renters and homeowners, he added.

All the units offer an abundance of recreation right outside one’s front door with ATV and snowmobile trails

The U.S. Air Force left all the infrastructure and Macasu and the community worked together to make it what it is today. At the start of the business, almost all the units were rental properties now Sawyer is split almost 50/50 renters and homeowners, Bammert said.

Macasu even bought some of the vacant untis just to demolish them and add greenspace to the area.

“We want the community to enjoy every part of it,” Bammert said. “It’s not trying to fill every single unit, to have greenspace, the curb appeal. It’s not just row after row of houses.”