By: Anne Moore, Crain’s

After a few summers owning a Door County condo, John and Suzanne Leonard of Lincoln Park bought the ugliest house on the prettiest stretch of Fish Creek, Wisconsin, in 2004. The plain-vanilla box of a house was part garage, part cottage, patched together after a 1940s fire: Wartime curbs on materials had made it impossible to rebuild.

The Leonards, too, faced restrictions building new. Because the house was 30 feet from Green Bay’s waters, they were limited to the home’s original 1,500-square-foot footprint. They envisioned a two-story, year-round, view-filled cottage that could stand up to the area’s harsh winters.

By Gary Jones, Peninsula Pulse

Technically, Tom Birmingham is not native to northern Door County, as he was a month old when his parents moved to Fish Creek from Janesville. But the networking that resulted from a lifetime on the peninsula, especially as he married a local girl, proved valuable when he pursued a career in building.

Those connections are only one of the reasons that Great Northern Construction continues a viable company despite the challenging economic conditions throughout the country.