A vacant lot where M-32 meets Alpena is home to cedar trees and cool fossil beds abundant with ancient coral. It’s a window into Northern Michigan’s distant past as a prehistoric ocean and it’s about to disappear forever.

The first bulldozer is on site, and the girders which will form the roof of Marshalls department store have been delivered. The last wildland at the corner of M-32 and Bagley Street will soon be another parking lot and retail store.

Alpena’s M-32 corridor has exploded with development since Walmart went up there in the 1990s.

In that time, we lost Ripley Street Station and Western Auto, which still sit empty after two decades. The slow death of Alpena Mall is giving way to a new industrial use but its parking lot–the size of a city block–serves none. The former Peebles store at Bear Pointe Plaza has been empty since the late-2000s. Neiman’s Family Market has been vacant since 2020.

These were fixtures in our community. Now they are scars.

I hate being jaded by progress but it’s hard to not be. The same mentality which left Alpena with a surplus of unused parking lots and empty storefronts in the span of a single generation is now consuming the west end of town. How far are we willing to let it go? How many forests have to fall in the name of momentary economic gain? Are we so naive to think these developments are immune to the same fate? Is this really progress?

I propose a moratorium on new commercial development until a percentage of these vacant properties are occupied. Tax breaks should favor redevelopment. Money talks, and maybe developers will listen, because what’s happening now is neither sustainable or good for Alpena.

CHRIS ENGLE,

Alpena Township