Business View Civil and Municipal | Volume 2, Issue 7

106 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 2, ISSUE 7 downtown. The tribe purchased several buildings at the head of the historic area and is working with the city to redevelop and transform the entrance to make it more enticing and attractive. The city is also actively partnering with the Chamber of Commerce to fill some of the empty shops along River Street. Developers are planning to demolish some old buildings that are no longer viable and use the property to build mixed-use housing downtown. Miller notes, “We are taking advantage of our high walkability scores that will put units right on the edge of our downtown. We do have a number of other things also moving forward, but they are in the beginning stages of investment.” In another exciting project, the city is currently working with Suburban Inns, a developer who owns and operates hotels in West Michigan. The plan is to build a five-story hotel right across from a public beach, essentially creating a one-of-a-kind beach resort on the lake that caters to families. Taylor says that the hotel will be strategically located close to parks with playgrounds, sports fields, tennis courts, and gazebos to add to its amenities. Because of Manistee’s strong manufacturing heritage (with more than 30 mills operating at one time in the past), the entire city is considered brownfield under the State of Michigan’s guidelines, but that opens the door for many funding and grant opportunities to spur development. There is already a huge number of seasonal homes in the area which causes the population to swell in the warmer months. Bradford jokes that the city was outfitted with a “state-of-the- art” sewer system in 1900. They’ve spent decades upgrading that system because it was designed with a mixed flow, which allowed diluted wastewater to discharge during wet weather. Since the mid 1980s, the city has invested $40 million to separate the pipes underground and