Marquette Baking is Back, Third Street Marketplace is Delayed, a New Coffee Shop in Town, Apartments Filling up on the Lakeshore, and Medicaid Patients Face a Deadline

The Latest From Marquette, MI by Brian Cabell

SOFT LAUNCH YESTERDAY (THURSDAY) for the reborn Marquette Baking Company, now owned by the Marquette Food Co-op…Fresh breads, rolls, cookies, tarts, etc, much like the old store that closed down over a year ago. But get this: a good cup of coffee is 99 cents…the fancy breadsticks, 99 cents…plump chocolate macaroons (coconut), 99 cents (and de-fricking-licious)….Throwback prices, quality foods…They’ve also got a limited selection of packaged “foodie” foods…Welcome back.

SLOWER THAN HOPED for. That’s how to characterize development of the much anticipated Third Street Marketplace (the former Valle’s)…Developer Joe Constance had been hoping to watch this year’s Super Bowl at a newly opened Cognition brewery….Didn’t quite happen…The pandemic, construction delays, and other assorted problems left the brewery far behind schedule…Maybe it opens by mid-summer?

That’s also when the takeout restaurant Boulangere will open up there. Peace Pies (which recently was awarded a $25,000 grant) is also scheduled to open this year…And a second, smaller Marquette Food Co-op? A handshake agreement to occupy the streetside space is still in place, but the construction schedule is uncertain…Problems? Waiting for answers.

WHO SAYS WE need another coffee shop in town? Jesse Renfors, that’s who. And he’s got big plans….He’s a local guy who went away for several years to Wyoming and Oregon, made some money, and now has come back to open Provisions in that huge, brand new space on the ground floor of One Marquette Place…Should be open next month…Coffee, bakery goods from Huron Mountain Bakery, maybe live music, space for special events, regular meetings….Eventually, maybe gelato.

And once the two piers are constructed outside on the Lake, he’ll be renting kayaks and standup paddle boards. Ambitious. And a big, grateful smile from Renfors who’s returned home: “This is where my family is,” he says. “It’s a great place to raise kids, and I’ll be doing something I know how to do, and I think I do it well.”

SOME HAVE CALLED it “tipping fatigue.” Everywhere you go these days, it seems, you’re presented with that little touch screen asking you to add a tip of 15-25% or more…And frequently you have the server standing there watching you…Good rule of thumb: If you can afford it, add a tip for good service—most employees at such establishments are underpaid…If you really can’t afford it (because you’re underpaid), then don’t. No shame, no guilt….No excuse, though, for not generously tipping the conventional waitresses and waiters, as we’ve always done.

RESIDENTS START MOVING into Two Marquette Place next month. Twenty-two apartments. Three commercial spaces on the first floor, one of which is spoken for, the two others still open…This is an interesting new neighborhood with all the lakeshore development…A lot of money there, plenty of consumers with discretionary income.

SPEAKING OF WHICH…Nineteen of the 26 units at the Gaines Rock Townhomes, just down the block, are now under contract… “If they were all built and ready to go, we’d have contracts on all of them,” says RE/MAX realtor Fran Sevegney…He doesn’t buy the conventional wisdom from national analysts that the real estate boom is at its peak, and that higher mortgage rates will lead to a decline this summer…We shall see…The first of the residents at Gaines Rock are moving in over the next month even as construction continues and the landscaping is…uhhh…mostly dirt.

THE PUBLIC WILL have a say in what’ll be done with the approximately 10 acres of lakeshore land that the BLP no longer needs now that it’s torn down its Shiras Hills plant… “If residents or organizations have ideas, we’ll listen to them,” says Tom Carpenter, BLP’s executive director…He’s planning a public meeting in the next few weeks to explain what’s been done at the site, and what might lie ahead.

The BLP owns plenty of other land in Marquette that it’s opened up to ball fields, bike trails and other recreation. Seems likely that something similar will happen at this lakeshore site…But someone else, not BLP, will have to pay for the improvements.

MICHIGAN MEDICAID RECIPIENTS are on notice…There are three million of them, and they may soon have to prove that they are still eligible for the health insurance program, or they could lose benefits…During the pandemic, states were not allowed to remove anyone from the program, but that ban ends in July…600,000 Michiganders were added to the Medicaid rolls during the pandemic, according to Bridge Michigan.

PROGRESS AT TRILLIUM HOUSE…The hospice, which was shut down after a massive malfunctioning of the sprinkler system last November, is nearing completion of its repairs…They should be able to again take in residents by mid June…Also in the works: Choosing a new executive director… “We have a couple of good candidates and we should have someone in place very soon,” says Trillium House Board member Roger Bentlage.

SHOCKING NEWS FROM Netflix…Subscriptions are down for the first time in their history, shareholders are bailing on the company, and the stock price is plummeting…Maybe there are just too many streaming service options out there for us…Do we really want to spend ten hours a day watching our big and little screens?

NEWS FROM CNN+ is even worse. The $300 million streaming news service is being aborted after just one month…A shocking development after all the hype…Plenty of possible reasons for the sudden collapse, but maybe, just maybe, we already have enough hard and soft news options out there….And maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to be staring at yet another program on a video screen while ignoring the real life and real people all around us.

OH, AND THIS!!! Four more months of football, compliments of the new USFL and a couple of TV networks…Just what we need, eight teams of minor league players begging you to watch them in a mostly empty stadium…All of the games to be played in Birmingham, Alabama…TV programmers are hoping we can never get enough football. They’re wrong…A cynic might say they’re trotting out these no-name teams and no-name players because they’re hoping we’re going to spend our money betting on them. The cynic is probably right.

(A reminder: Man About Town is a newsletter, not a blog. It arrives by email, free of charge. You can tap the Subscribe button below to sign up. Know someone who would like to subscribe? Let them know they can go to www.SubscribeToMAT.com and they can sign up there.)