Thank you for coming out on this beautiful day.  Thank you Governor Milliken for being here and for supporting this project by your association with it.  On behalf of the City, I want to acknowledge our friends at DTE Energy. I also want to acknowledge my colleagues on the parks and recreation commission, planning commission, city commission, and the city staffers who worked so hard to make this project a reality. I also want to thank the National Cherry Festival for welcoming us into the festival, I see members of the board and staff here.

 For as long as humans have occupied this area, we have focused our attention and our lives’ activities on this bay. 

 The native Anishnaabek people first came here at the end of the last Ice Age. They camped in the woods along the ancient shoreline and drew sustenance from the water.  We know from a nearby archaeological site that they did this more or less continuously for 11,000 years.  Their political descendants, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, are actively engaged in the use and stewardship of the bay today.

In the 1700s, French Voyageurs named the bay La Grande Traverse – the long crossing – and plied the waters for fur bearing animals and traded with the native people here. The name was a good one, because it stuck.

In 1847, Captain Boardman purchased land at the mouth of the river that now bears his name. He built a lumber mill that Perry Hannah soon purchased and built a company town focused on sawing logs along the waterfront and shipping them out over the lakes.  After the great Chicago fire of 1871, the mills expanded and our waterfront was busy for years supplying material to rebuild that city.

Once the trees were gone the mills gave way to fruit processing and manufacturing. Decades later, as those factories began to phase out, something extraordinary happened. 

Community leaders began to to look upon that industrial waterfront and to see not what it was but what it could be decades hence.  They began acquiring lands along the shore as they became available.  They envisioned a waterfront that was cleaned up, and open once again to the people.  More than once they went to the residents for financial support, and each time the people voted in favor of the acquistions. 

The last piece fell into place in 2004, when the residents of Traverse City and Garfield Township voted to tax themselves to acquire the old Smith Barney property. The office building came down soon after, and the waterfront was open to the people in an unbroken stretch from the mouth of the river where Captain Boardman built his sawmill all the way to the Leelanau County border.

Two years later, the city closed the Clinch Park zoo.  The property where we are now standing became under-utilized and its future was unknown.  Into that gap stepped Rotary Charities.  Working in partnership with the city, they convened the Your Bay, Your Say process.  They brought in landscape architecture students from UM and MSU to chalkboard some ideas.  They held public forums and considered all manner of possible designs and uses.  They used hundreds of participants to plan the future of the waterfront as something befitting Traverse City. Mike Jackson was the chair of the bayfront planning committee and is now the chairman of our Downtown Development Authority, and he and the other volunteers worked hundreds of hours on the process.

 We took the Your Bay, Your Say report off the shelf in November 2009 and decided we were going to get something done. We started with $100,000 from the DDA to do the preliminary engineering sufficient to apply for grants.  That idea came from the chairman of our Parks and Recreation Commission, Nate Elkins, and we put the parks commission in charge of the project, with help from Mike, city commissioner Jim Carruthers, and planning commissioner Jennifer Jaffe. They worked with the consultants to design the project and took the designs out to the public and the neighborhoods.

 Once we had the engineered designs we went out to the funders for Phase I of the project.  Phase I was for the old zoo property and for Clinch Park beach – the center of our waterfront and one of our most widely enjoyed beaches.  Plans included a children’s natural play area, a rebuilt beach house, canoe and kayak launch, universal access to the beach and boat ramps, a wider trail, ice skating, splash pad, concessions, and the re-routing of an artesian spring that currently empties out of a pipe into the marina as a water feature that would meander through the site. 

 The DDA committed $450,000 to support a Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund grant. For those who don’t know, the trust fund was established using oil and gas revenues from state land to help local governments purchase recreational property and improve parks. That great idea was  signed into law by Governor William G. Milliken, who his first year in office called the preservation of our environment the critical issue of the 1970s, and who called for creation of the trust fund in his 1976 State of the State address. 

 With $900,000 in hand from the DDA and the Trust Fund, Rotary Charities and the Oleson Foundation went out to local funders proposing a collaborative process in which each foundation would make a contribution to Phase I of the Bayfront Project.  The local funders rose to the occasion, creating a partnership effort that was the first of its kind in Michigan.  With their contributions the total raised reached up over $1.2 million.

 One funder we had not heard from yet was the DTE Energy Foundation.  I guess that is because they were saving the best for last.  Recently they contacted the city and said they would donate $150,000 to the children’s stream and they wanted to name it after Governor Milliken. I just about fell out of my chair.

 Every setting needs a center piece, every crown needs a crown jewel, and this stream is going to be ours.  It received the top reviews from the public during the preliminary engineering public process.  It will provide a place for kids to play as part of the natural area and a pleasant environment for their parents to watch them.  In the winter we can use it for ice skating. 

 My friend Gary Howe, who serves on parks and rec, articulated the goal better than I ever could – he said:

 Design a place neat enough to provide comfortable access and messy enough to provide for adventure and dragon habitat.

I had the opportunity to discuss with Governor Milliken the naming of this feature after him. I told him that – having been a part of this project – I was proud to think that our efforts would be associated with him.  I think it helps fulfill the vision our leaders had decades ago when they began obtaining these properties for the people, and I think it will be a source of pride, education, and fun for decades to come.

Advertisement