Coco's Property Bought

Coco's, the local real estate market, Campfire CoWorks, the City Manager, and more of the latest news and commentary from Marquette.

FINALLY!! IT’S BEEN almost five years since Coco’s on Lakeshore Boulevard closed. The restaurant on an attractive property across the street from the Lake and the bike path has drawn interest over the years, but no buyers, until now….A local person has bought it, with no immediate plans to develop it…A new restaurant? Unlikely. More likely, it’ll be torn down and become residential.

Everybody wants to live downtown. Let’s make sure, though, that we don’t eliminate too much of the retail and restaurants in town while making room for more residents.

RE/MAX realtor Gina Feltner Bouws says she’s never seen anything like the current real estate market. “You list a house for sale,” she tells us, “and three days later, you have 45 showings, 15 offers, and two or three of them are all cash.” And many are well over the list price.

So how about moving to Negaunee or Ishpeming, instead? Almost as tight a market there, she says.

Three marijuana stores open in town now, another getting close. So that would make four in the city. Too many, right? Well, Eugene, Oregon and Pueblo, Colorado each have about 16 pot stores per 50,000 residents, and Missoula, Montana has 18….Marquette, with four for 21,000 residents—that ‘ll come to only 10 per 50,000. Sure, there’s a few more on the outskirts, but it looks like there’s still room for the market to grow.

A tough year for Campfire CoWorks, the coworking site that entrepreneur Keith Glendon bought before the pandemic hit. Social distancing doesn’t work well at a business that encourages people to work together…But things are looking up finally, people are coming back and working together. Safely….Glendon, one of Marquette’s savviest tech guys and one of the city’s biggest boosters, says his startup tech company, Lucid Coast, had a good year. It helped keep Campfire alive and open.

An even tougher year for theater folks. Few live performances, no crowds, no revenue. “I have to admit, it messed me up emotionally,” says Jamie Weeder, the artistic director for the UP Shakespeare Theater Festival and the Wolf’s Head Theater Company....Ah, but the light at the end of the tunnel! Weeder’s just been given the okay to put on “The Thanksgiving Play” by Larissa FastHorse at the Rosza Center in Houghton next year. With hopes and plans to bring it to Marquette afterwards.

Barring any last minute changes, the OutBack Art Fair is coming back in July, after a one year absence. Same with the Fresh Coast Film Festival this fall. Yay and Yay. Other events have been cancelled because of pandemic uncertainty, but slowly, slowly…a return to normality.

So far, so good for the new residential facility at Room at the Inn’s Warming Center. It’s handling a near capacity of 30 homeless every night, according to Nick Emmendorfer, the executive director….Fewer problems with merchants, pedestrians, and police. And meantime, a warm bed for those who don’t have a home….A few years ago, it was little more than a pie-in-the-sky hope. Now it’s a reality.

City Manager Mike Angeli is ending 45 years of skilled, dedicated service to the city at the end of the month—as a cop, police chief, and city manager….Biggest change he’s seen in those 45 years? “It’s the intentional transition we made from being an industrial town to becoming a tourist and recreation town,” he says.

Proudest accomplishments during his six year tenure as city manager: completing development of Founders Landing and the Heartwood property, and finally getting Lakeshore Boulevard moved inland away from the yearly onshore surge of Lake Superior.

Okay, how about this for Angeli’s still-to-be-named successor? A year-round dog park! Other smaller towns have one, but we don’t. We’ve got a sensational dog park six months a year at Tourist Park, but then the canines are kicked out from May til November….Can’t the city, which requires them on a leash everywhere else, find an acre or two where the mutts can run free and make friends?

A prediction: If the city donated the property, dog-lovers would immediately start a gofundme site to build a fence, benches, poop bag dispensers, and any needed landscaping.

Easy peasy. Get it done.

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