Several years ago, Publisher Bill Speer and I were giving a tour of the area to a future employee from out of state we had in for a second interview. It essentially was a formality but we wanted to spend time with her to make sure the chemistry was right since she would have an important role in the newsroom.

As part of the tour we parked on the west side of the Thunder Bay River across from the old Fletcher Paper Company property. At the time the entire property was still in the cleanup stage and the plans for it still pie-in-the-sky and appealing. I told her it was a sign of Alpena’s past and its future.

Fast forward all these years later, and the site is not what was envisioned all those years ago. However, while reality has collided with aspirations the site does having thriving entities and the future is what the future is for everything — open ended.

To call it a disappointment would be wrong, even if it doesn’t have the luster of what was hoped for in the early stages. No one would or should call what has been developed on the site a failure, and what happens with the rest of the site in the future might still shine brightly some day.

I wish I could have the same optimism about the old Thunder Bay Manufacturing building on 11th Avenue (it’s kind of strange how we associate certain places as something even though there have been other names more recently). Sold to ATI, the building was going to be part of the new wind energy movement, producing parts for wind turbines.

Then the economy tanked and the plant closed before it got off the ground and now it’s a big brown eyesore. I think most people who drive down 11th Avenue on a regular basis, or even walk or bicycle past it, don’t even give it a second look anymore. It’s become part of the background and no one pays any attention to it.

But should it come to that? Clearly it is a manufacturing plant and zoned as such, so its options are limited. Just retooling it for a different manufacturing company would be costly, which may play a role in why it still sits empty.

It would be cost prohibitive to tear it down and start from scratch if someone wanted to try and build something other than a plant. Plus the options are probably limited, though someone might be able to figure out what could go there and be successful.

A couple of months ago after coming home from another late night at the office, I watched an episode of Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel as I spent the time unwinding before going to bed. In it, host Andrew Zimmern was in New York and the whole show took place after dark.

One of the places he went was an old industrial section of town. One of the buildings housed a renovated food processing hub. All the tenants were small business owners who made edibles that they then turned around an either sold on their own or sold to other business to sell. Each business only rented the space for as long as they needed, whether a day, week, month, or permanent.

Might something like this work in the big brown eyesore on 11th Avenue?

Imagine a small ice cream plant using products from local dairies, or a pie maker that specializes in Michigan fruit products. Perhaps some other food-related business that could capture its corner of the market.

Maybe it’s too big of an investment to clean up the site and then develop it for food processing, but maybe there could be another way to divide and conquer. Since it’s already a manufacturing facility, maybe two or three small companies could fill in a part of the building. Think handcrafted products that might not need an assembly line or something large scale but could be produced in a big enough quantity to be successful (and yes I have ideas for both food and manufacturing, just not the talent).

Heck, maybe even something like that could happen in the former Fletcher building. Either way, maybe Alpena could reinvent itself again. There are businesses locally that already create products, maybe this could take it to the next level and the city could be known as much for its large number of quality products as its natural resources.

Steve Murch can be reached via email at smurch@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5686. Follow Steve on Twitter @sm_alpenanews.