MUSKEGON, Mich. — We continue our 13 On Your Side of Town series with a view of Muskegon as it might appear five years into the future.
The past often informs the present.
If you left city limits between five and ten years ago and just pulled back into town, you’d be in for a dramatic homecoming.
Not only does downtown look and feel like a very different place, but many of the city’s former industrial areas along the lakeshore now also have newfound curb appeal.
Looking ahead to the next five years, city leaders would love history to repeat itself.
“Muskegon has really leapfrogged into the future. During the past five to 10 years… people can see the changes that are taking place here,” Cindy Larsen, president of the Muskegon Lakeshore Chamber of Commerce related.
“The beautification of our community is really second to none,” Larsen asserted.
“It's really helpful to create a vision in your head. What do you want your city to look like?” one-time deputy, now Interim City Manager LeighAnn Mikesell questioned, relaying the details of a recent formal goal-setting exercise.
The work will serve as a yardstick to measure and evaluate the progress of the next five years, defining what success looks like, what the priorities are and how any strategy might bear-out in the long-term.
“If you could look at a snapshot of our downtown five years ago and look at it today, it’s dramatic,” Mikesell explained. “We've had significant progress and I think it's made a really nice foundation for us to continue forward.”
“We’ve started by really getting the attention of the tourist. But now it seems that we're getting attention from people who want to live here,” Larsen relayed. “That's what I see happening in the future, is people are going to want to move to Muskegon, which is exciting for us.”
After all, Muskegon counted itself among the modest number of Michigan communities not to actively shrink in the 2020 Census.
Demand for housing is still near record-highs, while housing supply steeps near rock bottom.
It’s why Cindy Larsen sees the big-picture, economic focus down the road pivoting from tourism to livability.
You could say that boils down to just one key question:
”What is your passion? Can you find it in Muskegon?” Larsen asked.
As the saying goes, if you build it, they will come, and some projects in the pipeline could serve as that draw.
“We've got a number of projects that are going right now,” Mikesell explained. “There are developments that have occurred… and now we've got these developers that are ready to take the second phase and go to that next step.”
Places for newcomers to live and play, like the planned Harbor 31 development or the 30-acre Adelaide Pointe, with its massive lakefront footprint, 400 condos and 270 slip marina.
Then there’s the city-operated infill housing program, which got its start with pandemic relief dollars.
“We've committed funds to doing even more housing developments in the neighborhoods, and it's not just going to be in Nelson,” Mikesell said. “A lot of it started there, but now we've got developers that are really interested in going out beyond the adjacent to downtown neighborhoods.
Neighborhoods that at one point had easy access to the downtown corridor and the lakeshore beyond. Restoring that access, Mikesell said, would be a priority.
“We have this lovely trail that goes along Muskegon Lake and that's fantastic,” she related. “We also need connections.”
“There's not many places where you can get kind of that urban and rural scenic experience in literally five minutes,” Larsen related. “We're really going to focus on things that make us a great place to live… being able to just be in Muskegon. That's where we want to focus our energy now.”
Pouring energy into the effort to mesh, reconnect Shoreline City with this famous, pristine stretch of lakeshore.
Engagement’s another piece of the puzzle.
Ensuring locals and would-be locals are dialed into the plans and the process, Mikesell said, would be another priority.
“We really want to have a staff that reflects our community… we really want to have a diverse… commerce,” she explained. “We want everybody to feel like they're welcome.”
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