They celebrate fruit, cheese, beer, wine, music, the arts, holidays, seasons, cultures, industries, hobbies, geography, history and … well, pretty much all things Michigan. They go by all sorts of names — fairs, festivals, events — but the roughly 4,000-5,000 such gatherings annually share an important attribute: the generation of millions of dollars for the […]
Traverse City
Posted inQuality of Life
Young professional groups sprout to grow Mich. connections
Traveling around Michigan is one of the pleasures of running the Center for Michigan. You get a sense of the rhythm of communities and what trends are developing. One such positive development made the front page of the Battle Creek Enquirer this week: Young professionals banding together to find ways to build strong communities. In […]
Posted inLand O Links
Land O Links
“Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise” — Samuel Johnson, 18th century English author. * The hospital in Cheboygan has filed for bankruptcy — part of a process of being sold and […]
Posted inSuccess
Coffee is million-dollar enterprise
Pricey coffees were among the first casualties of the Great Recession as people cut $4 lattes from their strained household budgets. Even mighty Starbucks was humbled, closing hundreds of stores across the country as the economy tanked. But one small Traverse City gourmet coffee company prospered during Michigan’s “lost decade” by adhering to an ideal: […]
Posted inQuality of Life
Undiscovered Traverse City
(Originally published June 2, 2011) If you’re among the hundreds of thousands of people who get an opportunity to spend a little time each summer in Traverse City, you have probably recognized the impact of Michigan’s decade-long recession along East Grand Traverse Bay. For many years, the little community of Acme included a bustling community of […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Tax breaks saved mental hospital site, developer says
“Blight” and “Traverse City” aren’t often used in the same sentence. But one large, historically significant property in the picturesque northern Michigan community was so blighted that local officials who wanted to redevelop the site were unable to make much progress — until it was approved as a tax-free Renaissance Zone. The Traverse City Regional […]