News Photo by Mike Gonzalez Renee Sheppler, a Blue Horizon board member, looks out at Thunder Bay River from the residential space for developmentally disabled adults called Blue Horizon on Thursday. After 50 years, Blue Horizon will be closing its doors.

ALPENA — After 50 years of providing a living space for the developmentally disabled population of Northeast Michigan, Blue Horizons in Alpena is closing down with current residents moving out within the next month.

Blue Horizons was started by a group of parents who wanted a safe space for their adult children to live as citizens of the Alpena community, building the home in 1973 on Thunder Bay River and began services in 1974.

Over the past 50 years, about 175 individuals lived at Blue Horizons, with one of the longest residents living in the residential area for 38 years.

Blue Horizons board members Janet Tolan and Renee Sheppler have worked with the residential group for many years and shared sadness about the closure.

“Our goal for Blue Horizons from day one – when I stepped into the doors – was to teach independent living skills to allow individuals to be as independent and do whatever they could for themselves, to gain that self-esteem, self-respect, and just flourish and grow,” Sheppler said. “We saw immediate independence and growth. Sometimes it came with behaviors because they didn’t have that at home and they didn’t have to do laundry or cook for themselves, so when they stepped into Blue Horizons, we told them to grab their laundry and we would help them do it.”

Sheppler and Tolan talked about how things began to shift for Blue Horizons’ annual budget in 2014 when the number of residents living at the home went from 16 to 12.

Things grew weaker and weaker, then both board members said that in early 2020, the flow of money from the state government began dwindling until it reached a point in which management could no longer keep the doors open for residents.

“At one time we had individuals here who were all employed, and they worked at Northeastern Michigan Rehabilitation And Opportunity Center (NEMROC),” Sheppler said. “Well, all of a sudden, money stopped flowing through that sheltered workshop because they were considered institutional and they wanted those individuals working in the community. Then, we saw that you can no longer have 16 people within the home since it’s considered institutional.”

Blue Horizons is on the corner of North 8th Avenue and River Street, and Tolan and Sheppler said that, while they are selling the home, they hope to sell it to another group or nonprofit organization that might appropriately utilize the space.

Until then, the staff of Blue Horizons, along with the Northeast Michigan Community Mental Health Authority, are helping home residents move to different living situations.

Both board members, while sad to see the home close down, also shared pride in closing after half a century.

“What a blessing for 50 years,” Sheppler said. “Now, 175 people got an opportunity to be treated as adults and have opportunities to work and to even carry a wallet. Sometimes people didn’t know how to carry a wallet. One lady wouldn’t and when we asked where she left her money, she had put it back in her chest of drawers and she wasn’t used to the idea.”