WELL, IT’S FINALLY begun.
Take a drive down Lakeshore Boulevard near the Hampton Inn, and you’ll see that, at long last, construction of One Marquette Place is underway on the shore of Lake Superior.
Actually, crews are moving dirt right now to fortify the ground in preparation for the installation of massive concrete footings. This site at one time was Lake Superior bottomland so it’s understandable that you’d want to be extremely careful before building on it.
One Marquette Place will consist of a 170 space, two level parking garage, a cafe, offices and 64 higher end apartments.
Serious investment. A serious belief that there’s a market in this town of 21,000 people for dozens of upscale apartments.
And this is just the start of it. Two Marquette Place and Three Marquette Place are to follow on this same lakeside site, although financing for those developments has not been finalized yet.
Inevitably there will be some protests–“We’re losing our shoreline!” “What about housing for lower income people?!” “We’re becoming another Traverse City!”–but we’ll have to get used to it.
The deal is done. It’ll bring more money into Marquette. More tax revenue. The development looks reasonably attractive.
And it’s certainly gotta be an improvement over the hole that’s been sitting there forlornly, full of mud, weeds, and junk, for the last few years.
The foundation for One Marquette Place goes in before a hard freeze hits. Then construction will resume next spring. If things go as planned, it’ll be open for occupancy in 2018.
Marquette’s lakeshore is changing. Marquette is changing.
AND, FOR BETTER worse, the world is finding out about us. The Travel Channel comes to town twice. Delta Sky magazine is about to write about us. Out-of-town newspaper and magazine reporters roam our streets and trails, marveling at the sights.
Lonely Planet just called the U.P. one of the world’s 10 best value destinations in the world.
And the same site recently posted another, much longer piece on the U.P–“Michigan’s Upper Peninsula: Spectacular in All Seasons.”
The first line of the article: “The frenetic nature of modern times seems to have been kept at bay in this gorgeous part of the world…”
And then follows several rhapsodic descriptions of the U.P.–its waterfalls, its lighthouses, its snowfalls, its glorious autumn colors.
Also mentioned specifically: The Marq, Steinhaus Grill, Blackrocks Brewery, Lagniappe, and the Hiawatha Traditional Music Festival.
All in all, the Upper Peninsula sounds wonderful, especially Marquette.
It’s the kind of place you might want to move to…say, in 2018, when those high-rise, high dollar apartments open up at One Marquette Place.
You got news? Email briancabell@gmail.com.