Kathleen Lavey

Lansing State Journal

MACKINAC ISLAND – The fourth-floor corridor of the Grand Hotel is a scene of well-orchestrated chaos.

Waiters in casual clothes, rather than proper livery, carry milk crates full of bottled drinks to fill mini bars. Stacks of pillows, swapped out for 1,200 brand-new ones, line the plush-carpeted hall.

Somewhere on another corridor, Grand Hotel President R.D. Musser III, known as Dan, is personally inspecting rooms.

“I try to look at it as a guest might look at it,” Musser says. If anything in a room makes him think, “That looks bad,” it’s repaired or replaced.

It’s three days before the official opening of the season at the 390-room, white-painted Victorian-era hotel with its famous, 660-foot front porch. The hotel’s 700 staffers are scurrying to prepare, as they have each season since the hotel opened in 1887.

Designer Brinsley Matthews literally has the sleeves of his striped oxford shirt rolled up, standing among carts filled with lamps and shades of different shapes and sizes. He’s deciding which one will fit with the individual décor of Room 420.

“Everything is custom in this hotel, every carpet, every wallpaper, every lamp,” said Matthews, who works with superstar designer Carleton Varney. Their hotel design credits also include The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida; the Greenbrier in West Virginia and the Plaza in New York City.

“You won’t see it anywhere else,” he says. “It’s better than Disneyland, because this place is real.”

Pecan fudge balls and perfectionism

Some guests already are booked into rooms for the fewer-frills week known as “early opening,” but the Grand Hotel season – along with other Mackinac Island hotels – officially opens Friday.

Regular season lodging rates, including three meals a day, start at $304 per person on a weekday in a double room. After 6:30 p.m., the hotel’s dress code is suits or sport coats with ties for men, dresses or upscale pants suits for the ladies.

During early opening, there aren’t regular nightly meals in the 1,000-seat hotel dining room. Still, the hotel’s vast kitchen was hopping Tuesday. The Grand Hotel has its own butcher shop, and workers were preparing cuts of beef for a Wednesday banquet.

Guests eat from the Grand’s signature china, gold-trimmed with a deep green edge and a pink rose at its center; stacks of it stand ready for the coming days.

Kitchen workers already have begun making the hotels’ best-known dessert, the Pecan Fudge Ball, served since 1947. It’s a sphere of ice cream rolled in pecans and served in a pool of chocolate fudge sauce. They’ll likely serve 50,000 or more such desserts before the season ends.

They’re falling into the well-timed routines that will get them through the high season.

So are the housekeepers, dressed in white-trimmed, gray uniforms, expertly spreading sheets, folding corners under neatly and plumping pillows after putting them in their cases.

“The housekeeper’s last look at a room is the guest’s first,” said Becky Belonga, assistant housekeeping manager.

Ice-cream scooping lessons

Larry Schipper leans into the ice cream freezer Sadie’s Ice Cream Parlor, which opened on the hotel’s ground floor in 2013.

With a smooth wrist motion, he demonstrates proper scooping techniques. In the C-curve, the server guides the scoop around the edge of the container. The S-curve, which goes back and forth across the surface of the ice cream. The resulting scoops look nice and contain an even distribution of the candy, swirl or nuts the ice cream contains.

Schipper also has taught new workers to “rake” the top of fresh ice cream tubs, turning over a few scoops and transforming the plain, flat surface into a display of what the ice cream will look like in a guest’s cone or cup.

“People buy things with their eyes,” he says. “You want them to see what’s in it.”

But Schipper also points to a clear cup filled with tiny tasting spoons.

“This is probably the number one ice cream-selling tool in here,” he says.

Generations of ownership

W. Stewart Woodfill started as a desk clerk at the Grand Hotel in 1919, working his way up to manager. In 1925, he bought the hotel with partners, then sold his interest. Then he bought back in, becoming sole owner in 1933. He hired his nephew, R.D. Musser Jr., in 1951.

Dan Musser grew up playing in the hotel’s pool and on its golf course, dressing for dinner and watching his father and great-uncle run the family business. He served an internship with the Chicago Board of Trade one summer while at Albion College.

“After one week of that, I said, “What am I doing?’” he said.

Other family members involved in the hotel include Dan Musser’s wife, artist Marlee Brown; his mom, Amelia Musser, and sister Mimi Cunningham.

Brown’s paintings grace walls in some guest rooms of the hotel.

The fourth generation is at it now, too. Musser and Brown’s 17-year-old daughter, Amelia, will work the front desk this summer. R.D. Musser IV – 16 years old and known as “Quattro” – is likely to spend time in the pastry kitchen, while 13-year-old Matilda, a horse enthusiast, may be in the stables. You may even find 10-year-old Maverick selling mini bottles of Coca-Cola on the porch from a bike equipped with a cooler.

“The others are still too young,” Musser said of his two youngest kids.

Tuesday afternoon Musser addresses the entire staff, from groundskeepers in their signature dark-green hoodies to bellhops in their livery and desk staff in red blazers.

He reports the year’s improvements, including the revamp of the hotel’s front entrance, where red carpet is being laid as he speaks. He emphasizes that their roles are crucial to guests.

“We must do everything we can to make sure they have a good stay while they’re with us,” he says. “We must be hospitable to the very first guest and the very last guest.”

History, atmosphere and detail

Relaxing on couches inside the main entrance, Sharlyn Huyck and Connie Thornton of Ovid are among those first guests, at the hotel to attend a rural librarians’ conference. Jackie Spillner of Wilmington, North Carolina, and Laura Moore of St. Louis came along with them.

From their seats, they can look past the white porch pillars and planter boxes of red geraniums to the silvery waters of Lake Huron.

The appeal of the hotel?

“The ambience,” Huyck says.

“The history,” Moore says.

For Spillner, it’s the niceties that daily life often lacks.

“High tea is excellent, and their meals are very, very classy,” she said.

Down the hill, Matthews, the designer, gazes through the window of the hotel's newest restaurant, Sushi Grand, slated to open later this month.

The restaurant is locked, but Matthews beckons others to look with him. A quick peek that reveals red-lacquered wooden barstools and iridescent tiles, sort of the Grand Hotel-style elegance with an Asian flair.

“Just look at that,” he said. “It’s coming together.”

Contact Kathleen Lavey at 377-1251 or klavey@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @kathleenlavey.

Just want to visit?

You can swim, golf, hang out or eat at the Grand Hotel if you aren’t a hotel guest. Here are ways for non-guests to enjoy the hotel:

Porch it: There’s a $10 fee to enter the hotel, explore the grounds, and take in the view from a rocking chair.

Book a meal: Breakfast is $30, lunch buffet is $45 and dinner is $80. The Grand Hotel also operates several restaurants: The Gate House, The Jockey Club, Cawthorne’s Village Inn, Woods, Carleton’s Tea Store and the soon-to-open Sushi Grand.

Play golf: The Grand Hotel’s golf course, The Jewel, is open to the public. High-season rates are $70 for nine holes or $130 for 18.

Swim and sun: The hotel pool – named for 1940s swimmer-turned-movie-star Esther Williams, who made a movie there – is open to the public for a fee of $15 adults and $7.50 for kids ages 5-11.

Have a cone: Sadie’s Ice Cream Parlor, outside the hotel’s east entrance, is open to all visitors without a hotel admission fee.