Communities in the Copper Country are growing in popularity. More people have been visiting the region over the past decade. And some have even stuck in roots to set up a life for themselves. With growth comes some challenges. But two communities along the Portage Canal are taking steps to grow responsibly and engage with the city’s residents.
There’s a lot of planning that goes into communities before growth really begins. 2021, Houghton was officially named a redevelopment ready community by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. Soon after, Hancock joined their neighbor.
Basically, it’s a series of best practices that cities and communities should follow to literally be redevelopment ready. Which ah that’s everything from public engagement, ah certain things within your zoning, ah the processes that you may follow if someone wants to locate a business or build a building. – Erica Waara, City Manager, City of Houghton
City Manager Mary Babcock adds the city joined Redevelopment Ready Communities so the city’s residents had a larger say in how redevelopment happens. Prior to joining the program, Hancock had less language to guide developers and residents. In 2023 MEDC helped Hancock engage with citizens when it began work on its master plan and work on zoning.
And for all of these city organizations and groups, we created new bylaws in this process. So, for the city of Hancock, it came at a great opportune time for us to really develop and grow and taught us the correct way to go about some of these processes and a structure to really follow. – Mary Babcock, City Manager, City of Hancock
Houghton used its status as a redevelopment ready community for initiating work to revision the waterfront, building a new pier, and demolishing an old parking deck. Greatly changing the view of the Portage Canal and cityscape.
You’ve got your master plan, you’ve got your regular public engagement at whether it’s at a meeting or an open house or just people you talk to on the street or in the grocery store. And keeping that balance for a slow, steady, repeatable growth in your community, so you just can be that better version of yourself and be that little bit better every year. – Erica Waara, City Manager, City of Houghton
Babcock says Hancock plans to use its tools when looking at the future of the former Finlandia University campus.
So we don’t have any public infrastructure things that you’ve seen, but ours have been more in the behind-the-scenes documents that will help us move forward with projects at Finlandia. That’s a big one. And then also we had in the downtown, had an old hardware store that just got torn down. So, we did some development on that with technical assistance funding. – Mary Babcock, City Manager, City of Hancock
Babcock and Waara express becoming a redevelopment ready community has helped open doors and introduce each city to new tools.
In the Upper Peninsula, Houghton and Hancock are not the only towns working toward redevelopment. Marquette, Bessemer, Ngani, and Ironwood have also joined MEDC’s redevelopment ready community program. Those interested in learning more about RRC can find more information online.
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