Word on the Street

A Packed Weekend

THE WINTERTIME BLAHS in Marquette? Naah.

If your interests run more artsy than outdoorsy, you’ve got a helluva weekend ahead of you.

First, the Medieval Dinner Theatre at the Masonic Center downtown, brought to you by the Forest Roberts Theatre and NMU. Both Friday and Saturday nights.

A return to the mean ol’ days at the Masonic Center.

Dinner, drinking, dancing, singing, sword fighting, a hilarious play, an immersive medieval experience.

“It’s a way to engage the community in something that’s fun,” says Bill Digneit, NMU’s director of theatre, “and it’s also a way to raise funds for the arts community at NMU.”

The Winter Roots Festival will bring the music indoors Saturday.

Then Saturday, all day, is the Winter Roots Festival. A brand new happening, presented by a consortium of organizations. Seven hours of music downtown, at Peter White Public Library, the Marquette Commons, and the Ore Dock.

Workshops for music instruments and voice, folk dancing, folk rock, bluegrass and blues music, and singer-songwriters. Several of them.

A busy, diverse, and entertaining day. The ticket price for all the daytime activities? Ten bucks for everything, all the shows, all the dances, all the workshops.

Saturday night at Kaufman Auditorium, there’s more. The Marquette Symphony Orchestra, with their dynamic new conductor, Octavio Mas-Arocas. Three pieces–a romantic symphony, a tuba concerto, and intriguingly, a collaboration with an Ann Arbor bluegrass band, Westbound Situation.

The Marquette Symphony Orchestra plays three pieces Saturday.

“What we’ll have is an American concert,” says concertmaster Janis Peterson. “All the pieces are different but they’re all American. And the tuba player is unbelievable. You might think, “Oh, a tuba…But wait until you hear him!”

The tuba player is Evan Zegeil, who won a Marquette Symphony competition last year.

So a tuba, bluegrass, blues, Mas-Arocas, folk dancing, sword-fighting, and a medieval dinner? All in one wintry weekend?

Holy crap! What a town.

You got news? Email me at briancabell@gmail.com

Marquette Mountain Prepares for Massive Crowd

Photo: Kristian Saile

ANDREW FARRON, THE brand new general manager at Marquette Mountain, is facing his first major challenge this weekend.

Young skiers from all over the Midwest–400 to 500 of them–are descending on the Mountain for the Bob Hosking Memorial races from Friday through Sunday. It’ll be one of the biggest race weekends here in the last several years.

In addition, the junior skiers are bringing their families, so expect 1200-1500 people to pack the mountain, and of course, Marquette, as well.

“The lodge is going to be overloaded, we’re going to run out of parking spaces, and we’ll be closing down some of the runs for the races,” Farron says. “But I hope our local skiers and snowboarders show some patience with us.”

Farron expresses ambivalence about it because he, himself, identifies with the local skiers and snowboarders who may feel squeezed out.

“But we have to understand, this event is important to the Mountain,” he says. “The money it brings in helps keep our ticket prices low and helps maintain the Mountain year round.”

And then there’s the bigger picture: Marquette’s hotels, restaurants, and shops will benefit from the massive influx of tourists for the three days, at a time when it’s otherwise slow and sleepy.

Fortunately, there’s plenty of snow on the mountain but that’s presented a problem for Kristian Saile, the mountain operations manager.

“The challenge is getting the snow hard enough,” he says. The groomers pack down the snow, but then fresh new snow keeps arriving. “It’s been a strange winter. We’ve been praying for snow and cursing it.”

Still, it’s better to have too much snow than not enough.

And it’s better to have the mountain packed rather than empty.

One more thing–a suggestion from Saile for the local skiers and snowboarders this weekend: Come to the Mountain after 4:30. The racers and their families will be gone by then, the parking lots will open up, and the mountain will have quieted down, ready to welcome the locals back.

You got news? Email me at briancabell@gmail.com

A Winter to Remember

BLIZZARDS. ICE STORMS. Frigid temperatures. Plow trucks frantically working from dawn ’til dusk.

“We haven’t had this much snow cover since the winter of ’96-97,” says WLUC meteorologist Karl Bohnak.

He’s referring to the nearly four feet of snow on the ground at the National Weather Service station in Negaunee. We’ve had plenty of snow this winter–more than 30 inches above normal in February alone–but what’s remarkable is that because it’s been so cold, the snow is sticking. Not much melt.

Talk to old-timers here, and they’ll tell you this is the way it used to be 40-50 years ago, with drifts ten feet high, cars and homes being enveloped by snow, and residents traversing the neighborhoods on skis and snowshoes.

The surprising thing is, this was supposed to be a winter of slightly below normal snowfall in the U.P. That’s what the meteorological models told us.

“The weather pattern did not develop like we expected it to,” Bohnak explains. “We expected a northwest flow to dominate, and that usually means cold and dry weather. But the pattern shifted, the flow came in from the southwest, and that brought up moisture with it and all this snow.”

Bottom line: longterm weather projections, especially in the U.P., are not always reliable, even when made by our most skilled meteorologists like Bohnak.

A wall of snow around Contrast Coffee on Friday.

So what about the rest of this winter? More snow? More cold? More giant snowdrifts and walls of snow lining our roads?

“Well, the future looks like average to below average temperatures at the end of February to early March,” says Bohnak. “Snow? There could be a couple more systems out there but at this point, there’s no indication of anything really big.”

At this point. That’s the qualifier.

Interesting, Bohnak, himself, was a victim of last week’s storm. Tuesday night, he finished up at WLUC at midnight, went out to his pickup, started it up, but couldn’t get any traction. Stuck in the snow.

In the dark, in a snow storm, in his work clothes. Lovely.

He retrieved a shovel and some sand from the station, no doubt mumbling curses under his breath.

“Fortunately, a guy in a pickup was driving by and saw me,” Karl says. “He stopped, hitched me up to his towing strap, and pulled me out.”

Life in the U.P–cursing the weather one minute, then thanking the friendly, always-willing-to-help people the next.

You got news? Email me at briancabell@gmail.com

Westwood Mall Buyer: a Few Red Flags

OKAY, WE’RE ALL excited. Finally someone has bought the dying Westwood Mall!

Well, we might want to take a moment to tap the brakes. Just a bit.

Kohan Retail Investment Group, which just bought the main part of the mall–not the Kohl’s property–has been on a buying frenzy nationwide in recent years. The group, out of Great Neck, New York, now owns 30 malls, according to owner Michael Kohan. Mostly low rent, distressed properties.

The Westwood Mall is just the latest. “I believe in the potential of that mall,” Kohan says. “It has great potential. We’re going to make some improvements. I’m already getting calls from stores about the mall.”

Sounds good. But then you check with newspapers around the nation over the last few years, and you find that the Kohan Group has a…umm…checkered history.

A few examples:

Village Square Mall, Effingham, Illinois...”The city council…was forced to apply legal pressure to the Kohan Group to take the necessary steps to fix leaky roofs and and damaged ceiling tiles…”

The Southbridge Mall, Mason City, Iowa…”The Kohan Group spent more than $46 million in 2018 acquiring new properties in other cities while repeatedly failing to pay taxes for its north Iowa property.”

Northland Mall, Worthington, Minnesota…”The local CBS television affiliate reported…that the mall looked more like a construction site than a shopping center with a leaky roof, buckets lined up on the floor and caution tape blocking off some areas.”

Lincoln Mall, Matteson, Illinois…”Officials have tried to get (the mall) boarded up over safety violations, then put the property into receivership, with an order that the owner pay for repairs.”

Woodville Mall, Northwood, Ohio…”Northwood officials and county inspectors found numerous problems, including large holes and collapsed areas in the roof, water leaking into public and nonpublic areas of the mall, a partially nonfunctioning fire suppression system and alarm system, no heat because of unpaid gas bills, and pervasive mold and mildew…”

Just a sampling. There have been other problems at the Kohan malls but to be fair, there apparently have been successes, as well.

“Everybody’s critical,” Kohan says when asked about the problems and the bad press. “I’m not perfect but I’m doing my best.”

Why might he succeed at Westwood Mall when the previous owner failed? Kohan says he can get things done more quickly and efficiently because he is one person making the important decisions; he doesn’t need a group of people to sign off on those decisions.

You wanna believe him. You wanna believe he’s going to truly invest in the mall and revive it. You wanna believe this wasn’t just a bargain basement sale of a distressed property by an owner eager to make a buck.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Recycling Changes?

THE WHEELS OF government turn slowly. But they generally do turn.

Case in point: Recycling in Marquette. Several months back, we learned that glass had not been recycled here in years even though most residents thought it had been. It was just being dumped.

Critics cried out in protest. City leaders listened. Waste management officials presented options to the 22 municipalities in the county

So now, several months later, it looks like a major overhaul of recycling is in the works. If funding can be found–$5-6 million, to be exact–we will switch to single stream recycling (cardboard, plastic, and metal all together) instead of double stream.

And glass would also be picked up, but separately.

“We’ve still got a few more hurdles, but we’re excited,” says Brad Austin, the director of the Marquette County Solid Waste Management Authority.

He’s hopeful that modifications at the recycling plant can begin this year, and actual pickup can start next year. In 2020. Again, slower than we would like, but Austin is confident that, with a grant, or an investment, or even a small millage, it will happen.

Now, about recycling glass, which started the whole controversy. We’d heard there’s just not much of a market for it these days. But there’s another problem and that’s safety for the recycling workers. When glass is collected, it’s compacted and it breaks. So workers are dealing with shards of glass, hour after hour. It can be dangerous

Therefore, it has to be collected and recycled separately. Different equipment, extra cost.

Glass recycling would be part of the major overhaul that Austin envisions. He believes the county is committed to it, and he says even municipalities outside Marquette County would likely take part.

Now there’s just that teensy-weensy matter of finding funding for it.

You got news? Email me at briancabell@gmail.com