“Community Columnist” Michael H. Schrader

(About municipal dualism)

Written 26 September 2015

If I were to describe the personality of Port Huron, Batman comes to mind. As we know, Batman has two personalities - the soft-spoken multimillionaire Bruce Wayne, and the hardened, darker, crime fighter Batman. Of course, part of the dilemma for Bruce is how to accommodate both sides of his personality, especially when they collide, as they inevitably do. Port Huron is the Batman (or Spiderman, whichever you prefer), and the epitome of the collision of the conflicting personalities is the fiasco called Harker and Stone.

One personality of Port Huron is that of a traditional Midwestern Mayberry, with a quaint downtown that is the focus of the community. Up through the 1940s, that is exactly what Port Huron was - a friendly little community where everyone knew everyone and the focus of the community life was the downtown, where the local citizenry shopped at locally owned merchants, who knew each and every customer, and downtown, as the song points out, was the ultimate place to be. Back in those days, the riverfront was a bustling industrial zone with great access to the water transportation network. The street network was designed and signed to maximize access to the downtown core, and minimize access to the waterfront industrial area. The river was merely a transportation artery. However, things changed.

With the construction of a good highway link from Port Huron to Detroit, residents suddenly had many choices. A trip to the activities of Detroit and its northern suburbs was no longer a day long adventure, but a mere hour to the heart of the metropolitan area, and even less to the northern suburbs. Shopping and entertainment options became plentiful, and downtown Port Huron began its slow and steady decline. With the construction of the freeway system, industries discovered that they didn't have to be confined to water and rail corridors, as trucks and highway transport of their goods became a cost effective option. This provided the incentive for industries to abandon their huge, costly, and inefficient facilities stuck in the rail and water corridors for smaller, newer, and more efficient facilities along the highway corridors. The result was vast industrial wastelands along prime water corridors that are highly prized by water recreationists.

Insightfully, some of the leadership of our community recognized this trend and the value of these properties and invested tens of millions of dollars to promote the development of what is now the outstanding Parkway from the paper mill north of the bridge to Pine Grove Park. With this redevelopment has come a first class hotel, a new convention center, a culinary school, and new residential development. The Parkway has become the social gathering place for fishermen (and fisherwomen), joggers, bicyclists, and those who enjoy watching the river. The Parkway is the future of Port Huron - if it thrives, so will the city. Unfortunately, that is where the split personality comes in.

When the Parkway was build, so were some access roads. McPherson bisects the Parkway in two, providing excellent access to all points along the Parkway. McPherson also provides direct access to the Black River. However, in the eight blocks that is McPherson, traffic is forced to stop and yield at the Parkway, Stone, Pine Grove, Tenth, and Twelfth. Five stops in eight blocks. This is not conducive to waterfront development. Harker, which is an extension of the freeway off-ramp, after having a protected crossing at Pine Grove, must stop for Tenth and Stone. Which brings us back to Harker and Stone.

Since the Harker connection was established, the city has had to cut down a tree, ban parking, and now install huge stop signs with pretty flashing lights, costing thousands of dollars due to the number of accidents. The solution is a $600 one - make the intersection an all-way stop. That would be an acknowledgement that the future of the city is no longer downtown, but the Parkway, and that access to the waterfront is as important as access to downtown.

Apparently, city leaders refuse to embrace the future, and cling to the past. The waterfront experiment will ultimately fail. What a tragedy.

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