Part of Highland Township's vision
is a historic downtown area that can accommodate horses and riders
from adjacent state land. For Keego Harbor, it's a boardwalk and
pavilion along Dollar Lake. Both communities will get a boost to
their plans. They are the newest municipalities selected to join the
Oakland County Main Street program, a national nonprofit effort
aimed at historic preservation and downtown redevelopment.
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There are now 12 county
communities involved in the program, and it will take a number of
years to get all the county's 32 downtowns involved.
"It'll be 15 to 18 years before it's fully implemented," Oakland
County Executive L. Brooks Patterson said Wednesday, while making
the announcement at an economic development conference at Indian
Springs Metropark in Springfi eld Township.
Plans in Highland Township and Keego Harbor are on a faster track
than that and will make use of services through the county involving
organization, design, promotion and economic restructuring.
Oakland County serves as an umbrella for the Main Street program,
which is a privately funded national effort through the National
Trust for Historic Preservation. Nationwide, Oakland County
participates along with 2,200 cities. The county joined the program
in 2000 and has added communities to participate each year.
Since then, the Main Street program has provided or directed $275
million in investment and 1,800 new jobs in 10 participating
communities.
Keego Harbor, which became a city in 1955, is small at
three-quarters of a square mile, but it wants to develop a
"traditional walkable downtown" that includes a new city hall.
Community Development Director John Baczinski said the planning
commission will soon be approving the additions to the streetscapes,
the building of a pavilion by the water and a boardwalk.
Other plans are in the works, though he declined to talk about
them until they're fi nalized.
"The community is changing," Baczinski said. "There's new homes
and homes being remodeled and added onto. We're in the stage of
rebuilding. Every day, it's changing."
For 36-square-mile Highland Township, restoring a downtown that
existed more than 100 years ago in the rural township is a priority.
The township is focusing on the Highland Station area at the
intersection of Milford and Livingston roads, which has Victorian
homes and had a grain elevator, depot and mill.
The township's goal is to restore it in a way that it is
user-friendly to horses and their riders from the state recreation
area to the east.
"We have an equestrian community that's hot to trot," said
Township Supervisor Patricia Pilchowski.
