News Photo by Steve Schulwitz Artist Aaron Goldeck, left, and his assistant, Alexxis Burroughs, observe the initial work on a new mural they are painting in downtown Alpena. The new mural will have a hockey theme.

ALPENA — A popular mural in downtown Alpena is now covered up and a new painting is underway and will be revealed to the public in the next week or so.

The mural on the former Family Enterprise building at the entrance to downtown, near the intersection of 3rd Avenue and Washington Avenue, featured a lady and a mechanical owl.

The mural had begun to show some wear and needed to be replaced, officials said.

So the artist who created that mural, Aaron Golbeck, went back to work to put up a new piece of art.

Golbeck said his new mural will have a hockey theme and feature a child daydreaming about playing for the Detroit Red Wings in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

“I was looking through photos and I found this cool photo of the Red Wings and Penguins from the playoffs,” he said. “I went out to my buddy’s house and his kid was playing hockey and I took some photos. The mural will be of a dreamlike scene of the boy playing in the NHL.”

The mural was commissioned by the Alpena Downtown Development Authority through its Fresh Waves program.

That program has commissioned more than 20 murals in the downtown area, including many large enough to cover the side of a building.

DDA Executive Director Anne Gentry said people who drove by the old Family Enterprise mural, which was painted in 2019, may not have noticed how much the mural had faded and began to chip, but, when you got close to it, it was clear work needed to be done.

She said replacing old murals with new ones keeps the downtown fresh and offers more of a variety of public art.

“I don’t think the murals were ever really meant to be permanent, and that is part of the purpose of the project,” Gentry said. “New murals allow people to see downtown in a new way and keep things interesting. There are other murals that we are already looking at refreshing. These things are in the sun, exposed to the elements, and they do begin to deteriorate.”

Not long ago, there were only a couple old and faded murals downtown.

That changed in 2016, when a large fish mural was painted on the side of a building adjacent to a pocket park downtown.

Since then, murals have sprung up regularly. Now, it is hard to take a short walk through downtown and not see any.

“Now, we have so many that we have become a destination because of them,” Gentry said. “People stop and look at them, pose for photos with them, and we are becoming known for our murals, and that helps bring people to town. Residents have also become really attached to them ”

Gentry said four new murals will be added to downtown in August, but she didn’t share where they will be located or what the designs will be.

“We’re working with the artists to get the finalized designs now, so there are more coming our way,” she said.

Late last year, Alpena lost one of its most colorful murals when fire ravaged a large portion of the Thunder Bay Theatre on 2nd Avenue, which had a mural on it.

Gentry said a plan is already in place to have the artist who designed and painted that mural, Britt Flood, to do another one somewhere in the downtown area.

“It is kind of cool that we have two artists that have painted here before coming back to replace their work they had done before.” she said.