Cassopolis celebrates inaugural Beach Bash

Published 2:10 pm Monday, June 7, 2021

By Sarah Culton

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CASSOPOLIS — Over the weekend, Cassopolis residents celebrated a project years and millions of dollars in the making in style.

The village of Cassopolis hosted its inaugural Beach Bash celebration to officially open Stone Lake Beach. The two-day event featured live music, food, fireworks and more.

The beachfront features a new pier, performance pavilion, seating, Wi-Fi and speaker-enabled lampposts, space for food trucks, a chalk wall, and an area for kayaking and paddle boating.

The new developments come as the result of a beach project more than three years in the making. The beach project is part of the downtown development projects identified by 2018’s Imagine Cass Project. The changes represent millions in investments, paid for both with grants and capital improvement funds.

Saturday morning, the village hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new beach. The event was host to speeches from village officials, project designers and contractors, as well as appearances from State Sen. Kim LaSata, Rep. Steve Carra and a representative from U.S. Sen. Gary Peters’ office.

“It seems like just yesterday we asked this community to imagine what we could be, what we could look like, where we are going,” said Village Manager Emilie Sarratore addressing a large crowd Saturday morning. “Today, as we look around at this gorgeous new streetscape, fantastic community beach and beautiful connector, there is really nothing left to say other than ‘vision embraced.’”

Sarratore thanked all those who worked on the project and the organizations that awarded the project grants.

Going forward, Sarratore said she hopes the community will enjoy the new beach and that the project will draw even more developments and new businesses to the village.

“If we invest in ourselves, others will invest in us,” she said. “Just because we are small and rural does not mean we cannot be exceptional. It is our job to create a community our residents can be proud of, that our graduates want to come home to, that our businesses want to stay in and new businesses want to locate to. It is our responsibility to be more. It is our responsibility to imagine more. This community deserves so much more than what they had. … The pride is coming back to this community, and it is a beautiful thing to watch. Cassopolis, you deserve everything that is here and every great thing that is coming your way.”

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