Silver Bay will be experiencing a shakeup in resources for residents at the end of this month. The Silver Bay Service Center, located in the Mary MacDonald Business Center, will be closing its doors effective June 30, 2026. The center, operated by Lake County Health and Human Services, has for many years offered easy access to resources to help local residents, including but not limited to information on food support programs, cash and emergency assistance, child care assistance, County job openings, a drop box, and therapy programs.
Although the full-time Center is shutting down, County officials and Veterans’ Services are working together to ensure residents will still have access to all of these services within various locations around Silver Bay. The county will be leasing an office at North Shore Area Partners, located at 36 Shopping Center Road, in the shopping center, offering appointments related to Health and Human Services and Veterans’ Services. This location will also have a drop box outside for Lake County-related correspondence, checked regularly. Other locations around Silver Bay, such as William Kelley Schools, assisted living, and private homes, will also be used to meet with clients for services such as therapy and supervised visitation to ensure residents continue to receive help from the County. Monthly WIC clinics, which moved to the Silver Bay Library in May 2025, will proceed as usual.
The County’s move out of the building colloquially known as the Mary Mac is the result of several different factors. As many of the County’s basic services are now easily accessible online, foot traffic to the Center has radically decreased in modern times, hence the move towards in-person services becoming more limited to the more specialized appointment-only variety. Another reason for the trimming down of a full-time center is a tighter budget for Lake County, especially Health and Human Services programs, due to recent federal and state legislation.
The Mary Mac itself is also an ongoing issue, not only for the City of Silver Bay but for the County. Lake County stated the building’s “poor condition” and “uncertainty about future plans for the building” as reasons to move out and end their lease of the space. The Mary Mac has been a concern for some time now due to its current aged state, with Silver Bay’s City Council weighing the options of fixing the current building versus tearing it down and building new on the site. Either way, funding for the building has been hard to come by in current times. The Council recently approved conceptual planning and assessment for a new facility, partially with the hope of getting a better grip on costs should they go the route of demolishing and starting fresh. Regardless, it seems apparent that the current state of the Mary Mac will not be for long, whether from undergoing extensive renovations, being torn down and replaced with something else, or, in the worst case, continuing to degrade past the point of use.
Lake County’s move out of the facility preempts these scenarios. Although services will be far more spread out than the current situation, they will at least continue to exist in some capacity for the people of Silver Bay.
“This change will allow Lake County to maintain a presence in Silver Bay while saving taxpayers more than $120,000,” said Matt Huddleston, County Administrator. “We appreciate everyone’s patience during the transition.”
