Placemaking Workshop

The MIplace Partnership Initiative is offering elected officials, appointed officials, city staff and adjoining township officials the opportunity to take part in Placemaking Strategy Development Training. The City of Charlevoix was chosen by the Initiative, because of its status as a significant center of commerce and culture in the region, as one of 15 communities in the state to host these sessions. The overall purpose of the sessions is to train and assist in the development of a placemaking strategy.

What is Placemaking?
Placemaking is the concept of a municipality focusing on offering a high quality of life and amenities as a strategy for attracting investment. Examples of features that are considered in placemaking strategies could be things like: downtown environments, parks, main streets, neighborhoods and shopping opportunities. Many companies place a large amount of value on these features as they are important considerations for the talented workforce that they hope to attract. The community has an extensive amount of resources that could be used in a placemaking effort and learning how to fully utilize them would be extremely beneficial to the economic development of the area.

The training sessions will involve 2 - 3.5 hour meetings at City Hall in March and April and cover 6 modules that have been developed as the MIplace Placemaking Curriculum. Following those courses, the goal is that a placemaking strategy for the Community will be developed that utilizes the information provided in the sessions.