Downtown Petoskey Announces Facade Improvement Plan

We have one of Michigan's best small town downtowns in Petoskey and we want to keep it that way. Downtown Petoskey is filled with friendly stores run by local merchants delivering a variety of interesting, quality products.

Because we are an old (I suppose we prefer to say "historic") downtown some of our storefronts need remodeling or rebuilding. We want to preserve our charm and character without placing complicated restrictions on our property owners that make it harder for them to maintain their buildings. To help solve these problems, The Downtown Management Board and its Downtown Design Committee have worked hard to develop and adopt design guidelines for building facades.

To encourage compliance with these guidelines and to provide financial support to help local property owners and renters improve their buildings, Downtown Petoskey will provide facade improvement grants to support projects that comply with the facade guidelines.

If all this sounds like a great idea, it is! If it all sounds a bit complicated, it is that too so The Downtown Management Board and the Downtown Design Committee
have just announced an informational meeting to introduce the program and help local businesses and property owners find out how they can receive funds for approved renovations to the exterior of their buildings.

The meeting will be held in the Resort Room at Stafford’s Perry Hotel at 5:30 pm on Thursday, April 9, 2009. Building owners and building tenants are invited to attend and should R.S.V.P. prior to April 7, 2009, by calling Downtown Director Becky Goodman at 347-4150 or becky@petoskey.com.

This program grew out of the 2007 Cool Cities Blueprint for Michigan Downtowns study of Downtown Petoskey done by the nationally renowned firm of HyettPalma.

We at the Northern Michigan Artists Market salute these efforts because we love Downtown Petoskey. We urge all who are even remotely interested in making any changes to the facades of their Downtown Petoskey storefronts to attend and find out what they have to do to qualify for a facade improvement grant. And all the rest of you who love downtown Petoskey and enjoy shopping here, please join us in applauding and supporting this effort in any way you can.

By the way, here is a photo by Artist Market artist Bruce Love of our charming Downtown Petoskey facade. We love our facade and we think we have the greatest windows of any storefront in Downtown Petoskey but, who knows?