Community leaders from Marquette, Escanaba to discuss regional issues

Unique, tight-knit communities are a hallmark of Upper Peninsula life.

Each town has a particular point of pride, sometimes dating back more than a century to the time logging and mining reigned and small towns prospered, or sometimes stemming from more recent events.

However, that individuality, based on small towns and townships, can sometimes get in the way when dealing with those outside the region.

When state leaders in Lansing see the Upper Peninsula as a list of lightly-populated places, rather than a region stocked with natural resources and intellectual talent just waiting to be given the chance to prosper, valuable opportunities can be missed.

Stop waiting, says one local elected official. It's time to make something happen and to make Lansing see the U.P. in a new light.

Marquette city commissioner Jason Schneider is leading a push to get community leaders in the U.P. to forge closer ties and to work together as a region to bring opportunities to the U.P.

A meeting between the elected officials of Marquette and Escanaba has been set for Oct. 15 to discuss how two of the U.P.'s larger cities--located just an hour's drive apart--can work together.

One project that might come up for discussion is creating a shipping corridor between the cities.

With two freshwater ports--Marquette's is already recognized as an international port--highways, an east-west railway and a former Air Force base beginning the process of becoming a recognized international airport, Marquette and Escanaba already have plenty of resources to be successful.

Now, they just need to find a way to work together, and to gain help from the state and federal governments, to make it happen.

"Whether it's a shipping corridor, whether it's getting recognition from Lansing, as long as we can make the first steps (to operating regionally and not as different entities)," Schneider says.

"I'm afraid a lot of policy leaders wait for projects to come to them that they can approve instead of providing leadership," Schneider adds. "Something like this would require a lot of leadership by elected officials."

The problem, as presented by a senior city official in Marquette, is that the state government has not viewed portions of the Upper Peninsula through the right prisms.

Within an hour's drive of Marquette, you can find more than 185,000 residents. Go a little further than 100 miles to include the Iron Mountain-Kingsford area as well as Houghton and Hancock, and suddenly you're talking about most of the U.P.'s population.

National corporations recognize that fact, and that is one reason "box stores" such as Lowe's, Best Buy and T.J. Maxx have decided to invest millions in recent years to make Marquette Township their home. Even Chocolay Township, with ordinances in place that attempt to limit growth, has seen its corridor along U.S. 41 rapidly change as new buildings went up and businesses moved in.

Economic development has occurred from the ground up.

"It's inevitable," the city official says. "The only thing government can do is to speed it up or slow it down."

Unfortunately for the central U.P., the state government may be slowing it down through policies that were intended to make Michigan more competitive economically.

Public Act 275 of 2010, the Next Michigan Development Act, allowed for the creation of five preferred economic regions in the state. In doing so, just one region north of Bay City was able to receive these favorable government incentives.

That region was Traverse City, which has long shown the benefits of operating regionally. The Upper Peninsula was left out.

The state's own policies, due to "no-poaching" language meant to keep regions in the state from competing with each other, the senior official argues, make it that much harder for the U.P. to prosper.

Living in the U.P. and being so far from Lansing is a mixed blessing, Schneider says.

"Half the time I like that they leave us alone," he says. "But when I look at where economic development funding is going and how much we're being left out, it gets frustrating."

That's where the "micropolitan" vision comes into play.

If elected and appointed government officials in Lansing saw the U.P. in a different light--neither rural nor metropolitan, but micropolitan, with a sizeable, thriving population center--more opportunities and government incentives might be made available, Schneider says.

"The goal is not to create a new government entity at all," Schneider emphasizes, "but to foster a stronger relationship with the municipalities involved. Historically, each municipality has taken on its own strategy for development. The micropolitan concept aims at getting these municipalities to work together for shared regional strategies.

"It's a partnership in ideas, not a merger of entities."

Economic development will happen. But working together might help all the regions get a bigger piece of the pie.

Kurt Mensching is an editor at SBNation.com and a graduate of Michigan State University with a degree in political science.