Take a look at our enhanced Articles page to see some thinking that defies the conventional wisdom about the Plaza and economic opportunity in the County.

Like to think for yourself? Positive Plaza Alternatives Challenge to see what you haven't been being told!

	Home	The Narrow Window	Taking Action	Developments & Feedback	Articles & Op-Eds
	One of the great underutilized industries in our area is tourism. Though there's been grumbling about not becoming a "fudgie town", there's no reason we can't do a better job of promoting ourselves as a tourist destination. After all, if Frankenmuth can turn itself into a destination based on nothing more than their ethnic heritage, chicken dinners, and year-round Christmas shopping, then why can't we take advantage of our position right on a beautiful lake? No reason except a border crossing that works against it. Traffic coming up I-94 and I-69 doesn't see anything inviting along the expressways. The final exit before the Bridge doesn't even say "Port Huron", it says "Lexington". Traffic coming from Canada can see the beautiful waterfront, but the current Plaza design makes it next to impossible to get off and find it. But what if we had an approach that was designed to make it easy for both eastbound and westbound traffic to get off in Port Huron? What if we were able to direct visitors to Port Huron's downtown, or further down the St. Clair River to Marysville, St. Clair, and Marine City? Or up the lake coast toward Lakeport, Lexington, and Port Sanilac? If you look carefully at other successful tourist towns in Michigan such as Grand Haven, Harbor Springs, and Manistee, you see that their downtown areas don't have anything more than Port Huron has – and some of them have much less. With some innovation, we could do as well as they could – especially if we could net some of the flow of traffic that's currently rolling by over our heads. Besides, what's wrong with fudge?