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New year in downtown Alpena

The end of the year and the turn to a new one always provides a chance to reflect on the previous year and look forward to the new one.

What goals were accomplished and progress made?

What opportunities and priorities will shape the new year moving forward?

For our downtown, 2019 was another exciting year filled with growth, changes, and new opportunities. Approximately 15 new businesses opened or relocated downtown, ranging from an arcade to a leather goods store, from an insurance office to a vintage company. The Blues Festival moved downtown as a new collaboration between the Fresh Palate and the Blues Coalition. The community fish mural was reinstalled and re-celebrated, and downtown gained a new mural at Family Enterprise as part of a new, DDA-led initiative to invest in vibrant, public art in downtown.

The first Pride Week in Alpena was held downtown. Live greens were hung for the holiday season in Culligan Plaza, flower baskets hung in the summer. The DDA hired new employees in collaboration with North Eastern Michigan Rehabilitation and Opportunity Center Inc. to keep our downtown beautiful. We worked with and heard from our high school students about ways to improve our downtown.

Much of the work we do carries over year to year and changes as new opportunities arise.

What will 2020 bring for our downtown?

There has been much discussion about the vacancies that have come up in downtown. Large buildings that have become available in the last year, such as the previous Royal Knight cinema and the Antique Mall, are crucial buildings to be filled and restored. With large square footage spanning nearly entire blocks, those buildings are vital to our downtown’s overall health. When buildings become vacant, or when businesses leave the district, how do we work to fill them with vibrant businesses that will be successful in our community?

That question underlies the work that we do and is a top priority for the upcoming year.

Businesses are at the heart of what makes our downtown a vibrant center of our community: a place that people want to come to work, to visit, to shop, to eat, to play. How can we encourage new businesses to start and existing businesses to thrive in our downtown? Some of the projects already in the works are launching a series of networking and educational events for potential new business owners, ranging from those who have an idea and don’t know where to start to those who are more well-established.

Business attraction and retainment is one aspect of our organization’s mission. Much of the other work we do strives to create an attractive environment for businesses and individuals to want to be in — to promote downtown Alpena as a viable location for their investment, their dream.

Creating an attractive and welcoming physical environment: improving pedestrian safety, investing in seasonal decorations, adding greenspace, creating new public art. Nurturing a positive and passionate community around the downtown: promoting a sense of pride around what the downtown is and the direction it’s going.

We will continue many of those efforts in 2020, continuing our role in promotional events and marketing and working on new beautification projects, such as replacing downtown trees, updating bike racks, and improving alleyways.

Where our downtown has come is the result of the time, work, and enthusiasm of many businesses, individuals, and organizations.

Whether you own a business, work downtown, volunteer downtown, shop downtown, eat downtown, or follow our social media from afar, it takes a community that sees the value of our downtown to ensure that it continues growing and adapting.

I’m excited for all that 2020 has in store, and I hope you are too.

Anne Gentry graduated from Brown University with a degree in comparative literature and has studied in Italy and South Australia. She is currently executive director of the Alpena Downtown Development Authority.

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