Gladstone is on the rise. The Delta County city of 5,237 is growing, bucking the trend among small towns in the U.P.
People are moving in, and visitors are flocking to its streets. While other small U.P. communities fight an uphill economic battle, Gladstone’s downtown is buzzing with energy, as new businesses spring up and old ones expand.
This didn’t just happen. It took the concerted effort of a lot of people, from local government to business owners, people willing to take a chance on Gladstone, located about 10 miles northeast of Escanaba.
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Patricia West"The revitalization and growth we’re experiencing today stems from several efforts coming to fruition at once,” says Patricia West, who is executive director of the
Gladstone Downtown Development Authority (DDA).
“Following the pandemic, a wave of local entrepreneurs and visionaries began investing in downtown, breathing new life into familiar places,” she says. “Our community has craved this kind of revitalization for a long time, and watching it come together has created a sense of excitement and pride.”
In 2024, Gladstone amended its master plan, and the city and the DDA strengthened their partnership to better align their economic development efforts.
Together, they reinstated the downtown façade grant program, made substantial downtown infrastructure improvements and launched a new social district designation to support small businesses and enhance the visitor experience.
The DDA has also helped the city acquire undeveloped waterfront land within the city limits for future development. Most of the DDA’s work is funded by TIF (Tax Increment Financing)
. TIF is the annual capture of the year-to-year growth in property values in a defined district.
The city received a $4,000 grant from the
Department of Natural Resources Urban and Community Forestry Program to plant trees and vegetation at three intersections along Delta Avenue and $2,000 to help build permanent outdoor pavilions -- called pergolas -- at Farmers Market Square.
West says Gladstone’s businesses have sourced much of their funding on their own, working with the
Michigan Economic Development Corporation, the
Michigan Small Business Development Center and
Small Business Support Hubs.
Adding state impetus, the
Michigan Downtown Association proclaimed the fourth Saturday of September “Downtown Day.” Each year, the association encourages community members to visit a Michigan downtown and enjoy its shops, restaurants, recreational and cultural offerings. This year, that day will be on September 27.
Gladstone is an enthusiastic participant in the program. The city will close Delta Avenue between 9
th and 10
th streets to vehicles, replacing traffic with a street fair featuring farmers’ market vendors, live music and a historic building walking tour.
The Gladstone Historical Committee created the tour, highlighting old homes and businesses that have historical significance for Gladstone, particularly those that were erected when the town was developing in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Among the stops will be Goldstein’s Dry Goods, built 1889 by Samuel Goldstein, a Russian immigrant, and the O’Connell Building, built in 1895 by Thomas O’Connell, an Irish immigrant.
Expansion
Other Gladstone businesses are expanding.
Peninsula Pharmacy is building a new branch near Pat’s Foods. Gladstone Eye Care received a façade grant from the DDA.
Race-Driven, a Polaris powersports dealership, is adding the Hewitt Roll-a-Docks line, offering sales, delivery and setup of these portable docks. The company is also remodeling the dealership to create a showroom for the docks.
And AMI Industries, which produces fluid-handling components for heavy industry, is acquiring a building at 103 N. 12th St., where the company plans to install two new manufacturing processes, creating 40-55 jobs.
New businesses
New businesses have also been cropping up downtown.
Among them are the Superbloom Coffee House, Saunders Point Brewing, Gladstone Savers and Sip 906 Nutrition.
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Teenage sisters Emma Bowden and Maycee Kuhlman own Gladstone Savers at 3205 Danforth Road. The store sells new and used items at 50-70 percent below retail prices.
Nineteen-year-old Bowden and her 16-year-old sister buy pallets of unclaimed mail and merchandise. They sort the items, find retail prices online, mark everything down and stock the shelves. Their mother started the store, “but then, we kind of took over,” Bowden says.
Saunders Point Brewing opened in December after 18 months of remodeling a historic movie theater, the Rialto. Owner Jake Mills is new to business ownership and fairly new to the craft of brewing.
“The business owner thing is all new to me,” he says. “ I had no experience, but I was not afraid to reach out to some of the local breweries near Gladstone for help and local businesses when I had questions.”
It all began seven years ago, when a friend talked Mills into taking Brewing 101 at Bay College. He’d been home brewing, and the brewing class inspired him to open his own brewery. First, he worked as a part-time bartender at Upper Hand Brewery in Escanaba to get a feel for the business and interact with customers. While there, he developed a couple of his own brewing recipes.
A Gladstone resident for more than 40 years, Mills chose Gladstone to open his brewery.
“I believed that there were enough people in the area to support a brewery,” he explains. “And Gladstone has always been overlooked when it comes to having businesses start here because we are so close to Escanaba.”
The city of Gladstone has been working hard to reinvigorate the downtown, and Mills found them very helpful in locating a place suitable for his brewery and answering his many questions.
Mills looked to Gladstone history for his brewery’s name. Before Gladstone was known as Gladstone, a fisherman named Nate Saunders used to travel from Green Bay to fish off the point at the end of what is now Gladstone. It was called Saunders Point until the property got developed, and to this day, the area by the Gladstone campground is known as Saunders Point. So, Mills chose to name his brewery Saunders Point Brewing.
Superbloom opened just over a year ago. Owner Whitney Maloney, who also operates a B&B above her coffee shop, moved to Gladstone from Madison, Wisconsin nine years ago. She finds the local business owners very supportive.
”We all know each other, support each other,” she says. “We’re not competitive.”
Maloney thinks the COVID pandemic generated an awareness of the need to grow the local business base.
"We realized how important it is to have local businesses, owned by local folks who are supporting local sports teams and organizations,” she says. “All of our kids go to the local schools, and we're just so ingrained in this small community that it's something really special. And if we don't nurture that, then it's going to go away. If we don't have our local mom and pop shops and support them, they're going to go away, and our community isn’t going to be as vibrant as it could be.”
She’s gotten a lot of positive feedback from people staying at her B&B.
“We have this amazing public access to the lake, within walking distance to restaurants and bars, grocery store, a gas station, and now, a coffee shop, a brewery, other little shops. So it's just a really awesome lakefront community that's affordable, and it has, you know, these really unique, homegrown businesses.”
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Maloney believes that the positive energy created by these new local businesses will probably generate even more new businesses.
Local government support has been a big factor in the growth of downtown Gladstone.
“The DDA has made incredible strides in moving forward our downtown, with the focus on bringing more foot traffic there,” she says. They've done really good things with our farmers' market. It's huge, so much bigger than it used to be, and they really put a lot of effort into that.”
The city’s scenic location on the shores of Little Bay de Noc makes it not
only an attraction for tourists, but a fishing mecca for visitors and residents
alike. Its many outdoor recreational opportunities have attracted businesses
that cater to the needs of residents and visitors who love the out of doors.
Gladstone now can take care of itself.
"There's no longer a need for people to go to Escanaba for anything,” Maloney says. “They can just stay in Gladstone and get everything they need. And it’s all walkable.”
Jennifer Donovan is a reporter with more than 40 years of experience on daily newspapers, magazines and university writing and editing. She is retired as director of news and media relations at Michigan Technological University and lives in Houghton.