Connecting Houghton

Project Description

After more than 50 years of developing our waterfront for the public, Houghton made an investment in three major projects supported by countless smaller efforts to connect our downtown and the waterfront. Between them were aging, disconnected infrastructure, a blighted parking deck, and the legacy of cars and pavement placed ahead of people.
Our Pier Placemaking Project has been transformative. We have created a large space where we gather and celebrate in the heart of downtown. There are clear, walkable, and inviting ways for people to move about. We’ve replaced asphalt with planted areas and rain gardens. Children of all ages can make music, enjoy public art and eat a takeout meal. People can move about between the water and our main street.
Connecting Houghton is a work in progress. The last major project is complete, but we are at a new beginning now that the hard work is done.

Is your project easy to replicate in other communities (clear in its impact and execution for other communities)?

Houghton’s Master Plan has always emphasized the importance of our waterfront as an asset to our community, with its parks, walking trails, and access to the water. However, we knew those connections were lacking in certain places, especially downtown, where the main business corridor was separated from the waterfront by aged infrastructure, some of it becoming dangerous. Our busiest area had minimal connection for people to move back and forth. We knew we needed placemaking even before we knew the term. We knew we needed our waterfront to grow into a place that people wanted to be. The result — the Pier Placemaking Project — has been a huge success.

Although every community is different, the following elements can be applied to any that wish to replicate our success:
Find that asset that is uniquely yours and build around it. For Houghton, that asset was our waterfront—we just had to build on the bones that were already there. Other communities may have a railroad corridor, a large park, or a historic building. Every community has one element that sets them apart and is part of who they are.

Take stock of existing assets. We started with a vision of where we wanted to go—a waterfront teeming with people in all seasons, moving back and forth to downtown, supporting our businesses. We had some assets: a paved trail right next to the water, public ownership of basically all the waterfront property, picnic tables and DNR-funded fishing piers from 30 years ago, and some trees. What we lacked were the elements and details that made it a place where people wanted to spend time.

Start small. We began by covering a blank concrete wall overlooking the water with a colorful mural by a local artist. Suddenly color started to appear and more ideas began flowing. A small, but active, group of gardeners volunteered to start a Beautification Committee that planted over 80 gardens, mostly all perennials that return each spring. Many of those volunteers are now certified as Master Gardeners. For years the city used asphalt to cover erosion, we removed it in many areas and planted trees instead. We made sure there were ample places to sit down and relax.

Do something unique. For us, that started with a huge Lake Superior-shaped table made by a local machine shop. We repurposed old light pole decorations into large “trees” and lit them on the waterfront for the holidays and we added a tunnel of Edison lights. Much of what we did took homegrown creativity and didn’t cost a lot of money. We added custom banners to our trail lighting that showed our community’s personality and featured fun things to do in Houghton. Everything we did was far from perfect, but we found that things don’t have to be perfect for people to enjoy them.

Pay attention to details. Whether repainting a bollard that protects the fire hydrant or making sure your trash cans match, details can make a difference. The average person may not notice, but when it all comes together the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Leverage volunteers who love your community. From schoolchildren to service organizations, people want to be involved in something good and will give their time. Ideas come from everywhere. Try something and see if it works. Then improve it the next time and the next.

Leverage your resources. Water, sewer, and street funds can be bundled to match grant funds in a lot of cases. For each major project we considered how to combine the mundane utility work with surface environment improvements. Partnering with utility companies that can participate in the cost of restoration helps too.

What is the Community Wealth Impact (based on one or more of the categories you selected) of your project?

Public Health – Houghton is a small town on a hill in one of the snowiest regions of Michigan. Steep sidewalks are even more daunting in winter months. People need outdoor space they can enjoy in every season. Over the projects we worked to create more spaces focused on people instead of driving and parking cars. We created ways that people of all mobilities could move between our main street and the waterfront. Our Waterfront Walk provides three ways, up or down, with a sidewalk, stairs, or a universally designed ramp system. Now entire families walk and bike our waterfront, stopping to picnic and enjoy being outside surrounded by art and gardens. We have created new venues where residents and visitors can engage outdoors socially and physically. A new running store opened, and those shoes are on our trail. Our farmers market has a home now with locally sourced produce and goods.

Arts and Culture – Our waterfront is now a place to tell our story and show everyone who we are. Murals depict pieces of our history and the splendor of our area. Beautiful gardens invite people to keep walking to see what might be just down the path, while bringing together community volunteers to tend them. Music fills the air several nights each week in the summer and fall with local artists drawing people on foot, on bikes, and by boat to listen, shop, and eat. We come together for events on the Pier like Fall Fest to celebrate our beautiful autumn colors, Winter Wonderland to kick off the holidays, and a chook drop on New Year’s Eve (see below). In February we close down one of our steep streets for the Jibba Jabba snowboarding event that brings in professional athletes to compete in a very nontraditional venue.

Infrastructure – The first of our large projects was to connect dead-end water lines and replace aging downtown sewers to assure the safety and reliability of those utilities, and to replace sidewalks and roads to be ready for the future. With every project we invited other utilities in to improve their infrastructure as well so we won’t have to contend with them digging up our streets and sidewalks anytime soon.
The Pier Placemaking Project created a dedicated, permanent space for our community to gather instead of just closing a parking lot to host celebrations. The removal of the 1978 parking deck eliminated a blight in our downtown, the eventual danger such a structure poses to the public and business ecosystem should some part of it fail, and the growing legacy cost of maintenance. We now have right-sized parking areas and more areas for people to move about on wide, even sidewalks interspersed with life in the gardens and green strips. These elements can be more easily maintained by a small community.

Sustainability – Engineered rain gardens, designed and planted with hardy species, can withstand our extreme winters and filter stormwater pollutants. Our rebuilt parking areas were designed efficiently, with paved areas reduced in favor of plantings to take up runoff. Trees provide shade and reduce the heat island effect. We designed things to be usable in four seasons, able to withstand our climate, and mindful of how we manage snow in the winter.

Financial Security – The removal of the parking deck, which required expensive annual maintenance, will allow our parking fund and DDA to concentrate on improving our downtown for residents, visitors, and businesses. Past maintenance costs had to be placed on the taxpayers’ backs as well, so that burden is now gone. Many of our downtown buildings have new opportunities for second storefronts where the deck once was, with the backs now becoming more fronts. The value of their buildings will increase with the new opportunities and a view of the waterway. Now we can move forward.

Describe the creativity and originality of your project.

We’re a small community with a limited budget, so we knew we needed to be creative. Here are a few small changes that have had a big impact:
We wanted to add some whimsical crosswalk designs, but our winter is hard on traffic paint. We turned to stencils, but found that custom walkway stencils were expensive, so we decided to make our own. All it took was an idea, some poly sheet, a Sharpie and a Stanley knife. Now our DPW just lays the stencils and refreshes them each spring. We have received many complimentary calls about them and have instructed other communities on how to do it.

Adding umbrellas to our picnic tables encouraged people to pause and enjoy take-out on the waterfront. But pizza boxes would clog the trash cans. So we devised a special receptacle just for pizza boxes which keeps them out of the cans and away from the seagulls.

Instead of ordering off-the-rack banners with our name printed on them, the office staff came together to create a theme and we were able to get custom ones made economically. We repurposed old holiday decorations to create features that go beyond just something hung on a light pole.

We splurged on a ridiculously large Christmas tree ornament for display during the holidays. People loved it, but what about the rest of the year? We made “costumes” for it and now it becomes a snowman for the rest of our winter, planet Earth for Earth Day, a beach ball for the summer, and a jack-o’-lantern for Halloween. It’s now the centerpiece of many families’ holiday card pictures and shareable photo-ops year round. This year it’ll probably morph into a fishing bobber or a tomato to advertise our farmers market.

People have wanted to do some sort of ball drop on New Year’s Eve for years, but we didn’t have a place for it. Now we do. In an effort to do something uniquely Houghton, we decided on a chook drop— a local term for a winter stocking cap. Using the flagpole on the Pier, we drop a homemade, six-foot tall, light-up chook at midnight. Several hundred people of all ages leave their homes and downtown taverns to come out into the cold and count down the new year.

Preinstalled tie-down points allow farmers market tents to be installed anywhere on the Pier. With the return of Great Lakes cruise ships, we built in large removable tie-offs which can be placed in a matter of a few hours and removed quickly so people have an open space to enjoy most of the time. The space has public wi-fi and we placed electricity for events wherever we could.

We’ve drawn on students from elementary school to our university who painted rocks in a growing line of personalized stones in our gardens. We have talented artists in our area who would love to give back. Most of our murals have been done for the cost of the paint and a little time for DPW to prep a wall or hang a panel.

In addition to our community volunteers, our DPW, through the City office, provide support. Whether preparing an area for planting, dropping off soil or mulch, or picking up waste piles, the DPW crew and their heavy equipment make it much easier for the volunteers to do more with the time they donate. Our DPW also used rain days and downtime to build trash receptacles, tables, and swing benches at a fraction of the cost of the park catalogs.

With the removal of the failing parking deck and all the rusty, dark, gloomy space it represented, the street is now open to the sky. Trees stand where the pilings were and green areas replace asphalt. The rain gardens help filter runoff so it’s not piped straight to the Keweenaw Waterway. People now move between the downtown and the waterfront through the Waterfront Walk, a space built specifically for them.

By Connecting Houghton we’re making our community happier, healthier, more colorful, and a lot more fun.