ST. JOHNS — Sherri Mulligan was making wreaths for holiday sales at the Country Store in November when one of her regular customers tipped her off.
The Michigan Department of Transportation planned to build a roundabout at the intersection of M-21 and Scott Road on the eastern edge of St. Johns. Her stores, which include a convenience market and a garden shop, occupy one corner of the intersection, across from a dentist office and adjacent to a Speedway gas station.
MDOT spokesman Aaron Jenkins confirmed the plan, which is part of a $15 million reconstruction of M-21 through the city of St. Johns to begin in 2029. He said the intersection of M-21 and Scott Road was identified as “a location in need of operational and safety enhancements due to the s-curve and reported excessive speeds of drivers as they enter the city.”
The intersection currently has stop signs on Scott Road, and none on M-21. It has no traffic signals.
Mulligan’s stores, which she said welcome up to 200 people a day, see a lot of traffic, including big rigs and farm equipment moving between the city, which is west of Scott Road, and more rural Bingham Township to the east.
Both St. Johns and Bingham Township had already approved resolutions asking MDOT to reconsider its roundabout plans by the time the 55-year-old Mulligan, whose stores are just inside the city, knew it was a sure deal.
Working at the stores for nearly four decades, most of them as the owner, Mulligan had a tough 2025, the kind that made it easy to stay out of the loop. She was coping with the hospitalization of her mother, the death of her father and the passing of a best friend who also was an employee.
“I was the last one to know, and the one that it’s going to affect the most is me,” Mulligan said on Feb. 24. “All of a sudden I felt my whole life start to crumble.”
Can MDOT be stopped
She’s incensed with those she calls the “Educated Idiots Making The Decisions” at MDOT, who she said both disrespected and disheartened her by not making her aware of their plans.
“I find it disgusting,” she said in a text message. “They all can go home and carry on because this does NOT impact their livelihood. Shame on those in charge, to simply not give a damn on whose lives they harm. These people have no courage or integrity. Their jobs are just that – jobs, no heart.”
She has hopes that the project can be delayed – even stopped – through informal efforts. That includes calls and letters, gathering petition signatures and some 18-wheel drivers – many regular customers – who have promised to wrap around her store to head off construction workers if locally-generated dissent doesn’t work.
“This is my blood, my sweat and my tears and they’re going to really affect me… in a bad way not in a good way,” said Mulligan. She said she is worried about both the construction that would stall her business and then the aftermath of the roundabout, which may drive commuters who now drive by her store to other routes not near the store. “For one thing, you’ve got to do the construction on it. How are people going to get in and out?
“I’m a small business. I don’t have a big corporate that’s going to pay my light bill, my taxes, my payroll, all my girls that work here, my vendors … How are we going to pay when I don’t have people that are able to get into my store? How am I going to sell the product?”
Loving St. Johns
Mulligan is a slim, smiling woman whose employees are her sister and mother-in-law. She met her husband, a construction worker, when he started to come in for goodies and a morning chitchat at the stores that sells groceries, soda, beer and wine, fishing bait, garden supplies, plants, Michigan-made products, and more. She’s on her business property much of the day and takes pride in being known as “the little girl on the block.”
Her matter-of-fact, energetic demeanor slips as she keeps talking about the roundabout.
“We’ve got the support of this community. I love St. Johns,” she said, slowing down and pausing before her voice broke and she tried speaking again. “I love this store. I love the people. The people are amazing. This community is just amazing. It breaks my heart. If something happens to this store, I will be devastated. I will be devastated and the state will never give me what I put into it.”
The Country Store strikes a special blend of hominess and necessities retail. There’s Mulligan’s dog Reggie greeting customers staff knows by their first names, shelves stocked with grocery items that range from snacks to real meals, beer and milk among other beverages in the coolers and lottery tickets at the cash register.
During the gardening season, her garden shop and its greenhouse sells everything from flowers, perennials, trees, shrubs, bedding plants, vegetables, garden seed, bulk seed and soil. There’s also lawn ornaments and other items.
“Are they going to buy you out?” asked Marlene Walling, a regular customer who stopped in the store with some winning scratch-off lottery tickets as Mulligan spoke with a reporter. “Everybody hates roundabouts.”
Gregory Petrick, another regular, stopped in the store and joined in a conversation with Mulligan and a reporter.
“There are gravel trains going through here. There are milk trucks going through here,” Petrick said. “I’ve never seen a milk truck on a roundabout. There’s no way. That is the stupidest idea I have ever heard.”
Petrick argued there are other options for MDOT.
“I avoid this corner,” he said. “It should be a four-way stop. A roundabout is about the most idiotic idea I’ve ever heard.”
Mulligan suggests a traffic signal. Which, she points out, would save the state money.
“This is how our community feels,” she added. “We want to keep it small.”
Part of a bigger plan
The proposed roundabout is part of a $15 million reconstruction of the state highway through St. Johns, between Morton Street and Scott Road, MDOT’s Jenkins said.
Jenkins said the work is part of a five-year plan. Once MDOT has a consultant under contract, which should happen within the next few months, MDOT plans to meet with city and township officials, he said.
Roundabouts, he said, have been proven to reduce congestion, improve safety, and reduce excessive speeding.
“An operational and safety analysis was conducted of the intersection, evaluating various intersection alternatives, and through a competitive project selection process, MDOT acquired funding to construct a roundabout at this intersection,” Jenkins said. “We are currently in the process of hiring a design consultant to develop the plans and assist MDOT in working through the details of the project.”
Local officials, who frequently are Mulligan’s customers, already have tried to intervene. In August, the St. Johns Commission voted 3-2 on a resolution that asked MDOT to “reconsider the proposed roundabout at Scott Road and M-21 to install a traffic signal and to conduct a traffic study to extend traffic control further east on M-21.”
That same month, Bingham Township trustees approved an “MDOT resolution letter…stating the Township would prefer a traffic light over a roundabout if something must happen in that intersection.”
“It’s busy and it does need to slow down, because you’re coming off a 55 limit right into a 35 limit,” Weber, the township’s supervisor, said. “And there is a little bit of a curve there. We do need to get the traffic slowed down, but the problem is that is a major truck thoroughfare for east to west from Grand Rapids to Flint, so all the semis run that because they don’t want to run 96. That puts them way out of their way.
“They’re going to have to do two lanes in my opinion. There’s just not enough real estate there without causing hardship with a couple of businesses and we can’t afford to lose local businesses in the community. If the spot is right and it makes sense, then let’s do this. But it doesn’t make sense to put it there.”
Mulligan said she hopes everyone remembers to keep the Country Store alive.
“We’re not ready to retire, and we’re certainly not ready to leave our community. We love it. This is our baby,” she said.
She said she may start a petition later in the year and plans to post MDOT’s blueprints for the project throughout her business property once they’re available.
Jenkins said protestors have been known to delay projects and that people can let MDOT know how they feel by calling its Lansing transportation service center at 517-335-3754.
“We take their input seriously,” he said. “What they have to say does matter.”
Contact editor Susan Vela at svela@lsj.com or 248-873-7044. Follow her on Twitter @susanvela.
“
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Business owner, officials protest MDOT plan for roundabout in St. Johns
Reporting by Susan Vela, Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
