If you've walked Hawthorn Park more than a few times, you know the exact spot where the trail stops making sense as a destination and turns into an out-and-back. The pavement curves along the pond, drifts toward the tree line, and then just ends. You turn around. You've always turned around.
This summer that stopping point disappeared.
Ottawa County Parks and the ODC Network finished the Middle Macatawa Connector, a 2.1-mile natural surface trail that closes the gap between Hawthorn Park, which used to be called Hawthorn Pond Natural Area, and the much larger Upper Macatawa Natural Area to the east. The land for the new stretch spans property held by Holland Charter Township, Ottawa County Parks, and the ODC Network, the kind of multi-agency assembly that takes years to finish quietly and then shows up on a trail map all at once.
What actually changed at the park
The headline is the new mileage, but the more useful change is what that mileage connects to. Hawthorn Park by itself has always been a nice, contained loop around a pond. Upper Macatawa Natural Area, a few miles east, is a different scale of place entirely: 612 acres split by the Macatawa River, with roughly 6.5 miles of trail already built out for hikers, birders, and cross-country skiers, plus a paved 2.8-mile stretch that ties into the Fred Meijer Kenowa Trail, which continues another 9.8 miles toward Grandville.
Before this summer, getting from one network to the other meant driving between trailheads. Now the walk continues.
"The Macatawa Greenway is an excellent example of what can be accomplished through strong partnerships," said Ottawa County Parks Director Jason Shamblin.
That partnership framing matters here in a practical way. The Macatawa River Greenway isn't one park, it's a chain of protected parcels the ODC Network, Ottawa County Parks and Recreation, the City of Holland, the City of Zeeland, and several townships have been assembling piece by piece since Ottawa County bought the first parcel of what became Upper Macatawa Natural Area back in 2000. The Middle Macatawa Connector is the piece that finally makes the chain walkable end to end instead of a series of separate destinations you'd need a car to string together.
Hawthorn Park got easier to use, too
Alongside the new trail, Hawthorn Park picked up a modern restroom facility, expanded parking, and enhanced security. None of that shows up in a trail-mileage headline, but if you've ever cut a Hawthorn Park visit short because there was nowhere to park or nowhere to go, those upgrades change the calculation more than the extra two miles do. A longer trail is only useful if you can actually get to the trailhead and stay a while, and this round of work addressed both.
For anyone plotting routes: the new connector runs natural surface rather than paved, so it rides and walks differently than the pond loop itself. If you're pushing a jogging stroller or riding a road bike, the pond loop remains your best bet. If you're on a mountain bike, a gravel bike, or just want the option to keep walking past where the old trail used to end, the connector is the piece that finally makes that possible.
The other end of your range got bigger, too
Trails aren't the only thing that stretched this year. Downtown Holland's food scene filled in noticeably since February, and if your Hawthorn Park walk is part of a bigger Saturday that ends downtown, there's more waiting for you than there was last summer.
Shore by deBoer opened where Jackie's Place used to sit, run by the same deBoer family that has been baking in Holland since 1956. Four generations deep now, with a classically trained baker handling creative direction and a Florida Culinary Institute graduate running the kitchen, it's currently a breakfast and lunch spot only, open Tuesday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., with alcohol service expected to follow.
A few blocks over, Tulip City Bar & Grill finally opened its doors on February 20, 2026, after nearly two years and more than $850,000 in renovations to the former Tulip City Brewstillery space on West 17th Street. The new owners, a father-and-son team, expanded the building from roughly 5,500 to 8,500 square feet and shifted the concept from in-house brewing to a full-service Mexican-American fusion menu, serving breakfast daily from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.
And on West 9th Street, Playa Bowls brought its açaí and pitaya bowl concept to Holland this spring, joining locations the chain has already opened in Grand Rapids, Grandville, and Kalamazoo. It's open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., which makes it one of the few downtown spots with a genuinely late close for a quick bite after an evening walk.
None of these replace the anchors that have carried downtown for years, Waverly Stone is still doing its globally inspired plates on 8th Street, and the twice-weekly Farmers Market keeps running from mid-May through early December beside the Civic Center. But three new kitchens opening within a few blocks of each other in the first half of the year is a real shift in what a downtown loop looks like, not just a list of openings.
Two ranges, one summer
Put the trail and the restaurant openings side by side and the pattern is the same in both places. Something that used to be fixed, a trail that dead-ended, a downtown food scene with a familiar, stable set of options, got measurably larger this year. The Hawthorn Park connector took decades of land assembly to finish. The restaurant openings took less time but still represent real capital, that $850,000 renovation on West 17th Street didn't happen overnight either. Both are the kind of change that's easy to miss if you're not the one walking the trail or driving past the construction, and easy to take for granted once it's finished.
If you live near Hawthorn Park, near downtown, or somewhere in between, this is the summer your regular routine has more room in it than it did last year. Worth using while the weather holds.
If you're weighing what a home near this stretch of the Macatawa River Greenway is actually worth, or thinking ahead to a move that would put you closer to this kind of daily routine, Tammy Kerr knows this corridor block by block. Schedule a personalized consultation to talk through what you're seeing on the ground.