Perspective delivered by

Christopher Germain, AICP, EDFP

CEO, LSCP.

Sit around any public gathering spot in Marquette County or attend a public meeting to hear strong opinions on changes in Marquette County over the past few decades. Statements such as “I love that it’s so remote up here; I don’t want additional people to come” or “We need to go back to the way it was before all these new apartments popped up everywhere” are increasingly common. They are also increasingly hindering our ability to support the way of life that we all love up here.

The truth is, we need to help more people make Marquette County their home. The businesses and institutions which make our place so special depend on it.

From filling open jobs and bringing in sufficient local tax revenue for critical services to paying for infrastructure, empowering local nonprofits, and capturing more federal dollars, our decades-long population decline is now at a crisis level which presents a barrier to future growth. Unless we turn the tide, we’ll continue to pay more per capita to maintain the status quo, putting us at a further disadvantage.

We’re not alone. Michigan was 49th in the nation for population growth from 1990 to 2020. To put that in perspective, if we had grown at the same rate as Wisconsin (which was also below the national average for growth, coming in at 30th), the state would have an additional 1.1 million residents. Not only are we not retaining and attracting enough residents, but we are also ageing. As senior citizens transition into well-deserved retirement, the demand for services increases while simultaneously creating unoccupied positions that remain unfilled. These trends are amplified in the U.P. In 1970, the largest population cohort in our age pyramid was ages 30 - 39. In 2020, the largest was 55 – 65. To put that in perspective, that’s 33,955 fewer K-12 students in our schools across the U.P., which equates to a loss of $310 million in annual state funding.

Growing our local and regional population won’t be easy, especially retaining and attracting younger workers and families. To do so, everyone needs collectively pursue creative solutions to some of our most pressing issues like housing, childcare, and air service. We’ll also need to leverage our best assets, including our unparalleled access to outdoor recreation. If this all feels familiar, that’s because the LSCP has been actively working in all these topic areas. From supporting our trails organizations through collaborative planning and working with Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport, to the first-of-its-kind Childcare SPARK in-home business incubator and our efforts to work with developers on new housing projects, we’ve been joining other partners such as InvestUP to focus on population growth because, quite frankly, it’s necessary and good for business.

There’s much left to do as we all work to turn the tide on our population trends. I hope many of you will join us in welcoming new residents, including the development necessary to support them. No matter where you live in the county, we can all help by keeping an open mind and being positive ambassadors for life in the U.P. In the end, we’ll all be stronger because of a collective effort to growth our ranks.