Houghton -
A slight update on the big parking deck development - just one week after Veridea Group announced its withdrawal from the project, the City Council met and voted to charge the Planning Commission with making their own recommendation about what to do with the whole thing. Apparently this is something that needed to be voted on. I sense frustration on all sides of this thing.
At the same meeting, Council also voted to approve funds to the tune of ~ $900K to match a MEDC grant for a new boardwalk-style pier project that was originally approved in 2019 and put on hold last year due to COVID-19. MEDC has also recommitted to providing the grant money (the original funds were redirected towards COVID-19 relief efforts). The total project cost is about $3.6 million, with $2.8 million coming from the state and the remainder coming from the city. The pier will be situated in-between the Portage Canal Lift Bridge and Michigan Tech's Lakeshore Center, basically in-line-with the
Huron Street Waterfront Park.
I'm no genius, but I suspect that this pier project is a critical part of Houghton's goal to increase its tourism and an essential piece of infrastructure to accommodate the Great Lakes cruise lines, two of which are currently under construction in Duluth and were mentioned previously. I cannot find great imagery of the design, aside from this apparent photograph of a rendering from 2019 -
Source:
FOX UP WLUC