The Pentwater Service Club selected Steve Bass as Citizen of the Year. This is the 53rd year the Service Club has awarded the community’s highest civic recognition. In that role Bass will serve as grand marshal in the Homecoming Parade on August 15, and a dinner will be held in his honor at the Yacht Club this October.
Though he was not born or raised in Pentwater, Bass first came to Pentwater in 2007 at the invitation of a Pentwater resident. He felt an immediate bond with the village. “I grew up in Irvine, California, in a planned community that was inspired by the same values that are important to the Pentwater community. The difference was that those values were not artificially imposed or structured in Pentwater. I arrived here and thought, ‘This is an authentic community – the real deal,' and I wanted to be a part of it. I bought a home here in 2013 and have had no regrets.”
Bass has a second home in Los Angeles, where he works as a set designer in Hollywood. He graduated with a degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkley, but preferred design work for theater. After working at Disney for a few years, he and a colleague formed their own design consultation company in 1998. This has enabled him to work for a variety of television shows, live theater, award programs, and commercial and residential building programs. His work entails extensive international travel as well, underscored by the fact that he conducted the interview for this article while he was in Finland.
His immensely broad design experience and his love for Pentwater formed a solid basis for his multiple contributions that have so enriched this community, many done out of the spotlight and unknown to residents. Bass was involved with the gazebo entrances at the north and south entrances of town, the new village hall, a new website for the Pentwater Arts Council and the Hancock Street beautification design. Better known are the large-scale projects he shaped, such as Park Place, the rebuilt Yacht Club and the museum expansion. He is also working with the Oceana Community Foundation on their refurbished future home in Hart. His impact is both current and long-lasting.
Did he have a favorite project? “Oh, that’s hard to say,” he confesses. “There was something special about each of them. One aspect I can appreciate about projects here is that they last longer than one night or a day, which cannot be said about many of my set design projects. It takes extensive energy to create the setting for a scene or an awards program, and then it all needs to be disassembled. It is very satisfying to me right now to be working on the museum interior design for displays and activities. I want to see the museum be used as much as Park Place, to be a real community hub for all age groups, a place where people don’t just look – but ‘do.’”
Was there a particular challenge? “Getting all parties focused on one vision.”
Bass is grateful for the balance he has found in his life by spending May through November in Pentwater and November through May in Los Angeles. Michigan life is his antidote for the intensity and traffic of his life in LA. He even calls his home here “Hollyhaven.”
