“Community Columnist” Michael Schrader

(About stagnation)

Written 01 August 2015

The news is discouraging. Trinity Health is selling Mercy Hospital, due to a shrinking market for healthcare in Saint Clair County. This should be a wake-up call for our local officials, although I am afraid it will fall on deaf ears.

As a transplant from another state, I chose to live here in Saint Clair County; it is a unique place. We have three international border crossings, one by land, two by water. We have the entire frontage of the Saint Clair River, from beginning to end. We front not one, but two, significant freshwater lakes, Huron and Saint Clair. Unlike Detroit, ten minutes from the waterfront is the country. We have a diverse economic base, from agriculture to paper mills and power plants. Yet we are stagnating. Why?

Planned homogeneity. Each community has an identity, but only one particular attribute to that identity. Fort Gratiot – big box stores and chain restaurants. Downtown Port Huron – overpriced bars and non-family friendly restaurants. Marysville – suburban residential lacking a real sense of place; after all, where is downtown Marysville? Saint Clair – old, with a very dated shopping center that even with some new landscaping still looks like something out of the 1960s. The problem with this sameness is that it doesn’t draw new people into these communities, and without new people with their new ideas and new energy a community stagnates.

Compounding the problem is a tendency for blandness. I have eaten at most of the restaurants in Port Huron, and they all pretty much taste the same; there is nothing really spectacular that either makes me want to come back or recommend them. Typical food, typical service, typical décor. When looking for housing, I did not find the typical suburban house of Marysville to be any better than the typical suburban house of Fort Gratiot or Port Huron. How many antique stores does Saint Clair need? Are antique stores and a bunch of old houses really enough to get people to detour off the beaten path?

Finally, the best assets that the county has to attract people is inaccessible to all but a select few. How much of the waterfront is accessible to all? Very little, and those small pieces, such as Lakeside Park, are overwhelmed. From the Sanilac County line to the Macomb County line, private houses block access to the water, with the result that people go elsewhere. It isn’t just Saint Clair County that has this; Wayne County does as well. Compare the waterfronts of Detroit and Chicago, for example. In Detroit, the waterfront is, for the most part, inaccessible. In Chicago, Lake Shore Drive, and the lakefront, is iconic, and is a reason why people go to Chicago. Niagara Falls, Ontario, a city more our size, has no obstructions to the view of the water falling over the rocks, as that vista is why people come to Niagara Falls. Imagine what it would be liked if access to the falls were blocked?

I know I am sounding rather harsh. I am sure there are those who are saying, “If Schrader doesn’t like it, he should just leave.” Is that really the solution? Is that not part of the reason we are in the situation we are in? We are stagnating, and that hurts all of us. We will be a worse community if one of our hospitals has to close. We will be a worse community if our schools continue to lose enrollment. We will be a worse community if restaurants continue to close in less than a year. To get a perspective of the problem, one only need to drive down the interstate and observe the lack of development until one crosses 26 Mile Road, across the county line. The outward growth of the Detroit Metro pretty much stops at the county line.

How do we “right the ship”? Leadership and open minds. Be willing to try new and different things. I am bullish on the county; are you?

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