Courtesy Photo On screen, from left, are Alpena Community College State and Local Government students Amanda Boughner and Bryan Farley. Standing, from left, are John Kurowski, Grant Jarema, Rodney Ayotte, Bridget Hollinshead, Silas Finn, and Instructor Tim Kuehnlein.

ALPENA — What does Northeast Michigan want?

An Alpena Community College class has teamed up with The Sunset Project to bring the Northeast Michigan Community Enhancement Survey to residents to find out just that.

The survey, which opened March 11, is available to take online now through March 29. It takes about 20 minutes to complete, and all results are anonymous.

ACC Political Science and History Instructor Tim Kuehnlein’s PLS 222 State and Local Government course partnered with The Sunset Project’s Gavin MacDonald, executive director, and Nick Poli, creative director, to create the questions, many of which are open-ended to allow participants to give honest feedback.

“I’ve been hearing feedback already, from the people who have taken the survey, saying that they really appreciate the fact that the survey pushes them beyond these simple statements,” Kuehnlein said. “It forces you to think.”

The purpose of the survey is to find out what residents want for the future of Northeast Michigan as far as programming, development, and more. Once compiled, the results will be shared publicly in April to help local governments, organizations, and businesses better understand the community’s wants and needs.

“It was awesome to be able to work with Tim’s class — they helped develop questions for The Sunset Project — it was an incredible joint effort, and everybody was very involved in the process,” MacDonald said.

The Sunset Project is a nonprofit organization focused on investing in creative communities and changing how Northeast Michigan views mental health.

“This survey is a community outreach project led by students which seeks to enhance dialogue around issues of overall community development at the local level,” Kuehnlein said. “As a class and a collaborative, we look forward to gathering input from the survey, organizing it, analyzing it, and sharing it with the larger community, including local government agencies and nonprofits, come April.”

Kuehnlein said the students have already learned a lot from the project, especially in collaborating with The Sunset Project leaders.

“Working with The Sunset Project team is an engaging hands-on practical experience for students with real life impact for the communities in which we all live, work and recreate,” he said. “This project is a great way for younger generations to be a part of the conversation and to gather ideas to help make a difference in their futures and that of their communities.”

He said the survey will help local governments and agencies understand what residents are looking for, now and into the future.

“There is no question that creating a better ‘sense of place’ makes a difference in where people want to live, work, and play,” Kuehnlein said. “Understanding what different groups of people would like to see happen with overall community development helps to shape public dialogue, inform officials, and enable any one person or organization to help make a difference in the spaces they care about most.”

ACC student Bridget Hollinshead is one of 10 students in Kuehnlein’s government class.

“In doing this, we quickly realized that no matter what age you are, change is inevitable,” she said. “We can make it a good thing. With this survey, we want to get the community’s perspective, so that way, they’re involved as much as possible, to better the community.”

She said positive change is worth collaborating for.

“Big changes can happen in a small community when we work together,” Hollinshead added.

The Sunset Project has recently begun exploring unique approaches to community placemaking and will utilize the survey results to inform better the development of its programs, projects, and events across the region.

Also collaborating with this effort is Mary Ellen Jones, a Rural Regenerator Fellow with Springboard for the Arts. Springboard for the Arts is a not-for-profit arts service organization based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, committed to advancing the role of art, culture, and creativity in rural development and community building.

Take the survey here: www.thesunsetproject.org/post/survey.

The survey is open to everyone, but Kuehnlein hopes many different age groups participate.

“Particularly, young people,” he said. “This is their future. What do they want this town to look like? Or this region to look like, in their lifetime?”

He said many local agencies have been talking about how the region is looking to grow and what residents want it to be known for.

“All these conversations are coming together, and it just feels like we’re ripe for a survey to get a sense of ‘What do people want?’ Because you can be opposed to the change, you can not want to be like Traverse City, but the reality is that change is going to happen, and if you don’t plan to try to manage it constructively, it will end up looking like what you might not want it to look like,” Kuehnlein said.

Several main differences between Traverse City and Alpena include the proximity to the freeway –­ I-75 heads straight into T.C.; the population — Alpena has a little over 10,000 inside the city limits and 28,893 in Alpena County, and T.C. is home to more than 15,500 in the city and 95,860 in Grand Traverse County; and the layout — T.C. has a host of large hotels lining Grand Traverse Bay, while the majority of Alpena’s Thunder Bay waterfront property is residential.

He said it’s less about the technical side of things, and more about “What do we want our community to feel like?”

Kuehnlein expects many community conversations to surround the results of the survey.

“People can take what they want from it,” he said. “The knowledge of what people want, what they envision, can be really powerful. I think the beauty of this is that it’s not really focused on any particular agenda.”

MacDonald explain how The Sunset Project fits in.

“We’re looking to get community input to fuel The Sunset Project’s next projects,” MacDonald said. “The Sunset Project is looking at getting into placemaking, so making the community a more vibrant, better place to live … We wanted to make sure that we were properly informed in what the community thinks that they would like to help make the area a more vibrant place.”

He added that Alpena is a unique place with many special things to offer both residents and visitors.

“Being a rural community that has 10,000 people in the town makes it this, kind of, interesting environment,” MacDonald said. “You have a little bit of urbanization in the downtown area and in the community. It’s nowhere near a Traverse City or a Grand Rapids, but it’s still an important hub for the region. Alpena, especially, is the spot in Northeast Michigan, where people go and experience arts, culture, vibrance, and then, pairing that with the beauty of the region, and the solitude that people seek, is a really interesting combination.”

He added, “We really want to make the region a better place to live, and starting with asking the community what would make it a better place to live is a great first step.”