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DOWNTOWN CHANGES: Bay City Times Back on Water Street After 104 Years

Uptown Rises As Effect of New Marriott Hotel-Conference Center Eyed

April 17, 2014       1 Comments
By: Dave Rogers

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The new Mill End Lofts is the new home of The Bay City Times.
 
Uptown Bay City is rising on a 43-acre riverfront site.

The face of downtown Bay City has been relatively the same for about a century, but now, with time and business developments, the buildings are shifting like Boardwalk pieces of the Monopoly game.

Word on the street is the old Bay City Bank Building, now Chemical Bank, may come down when the bank moves to Uptown. What will replace the historic structure at Center and Washington has not been revealed.

Entrepreneur extraordinaire' Art Dore bought the old PNC Bank for a $100,000 bargain and rumors are part of the half-block of structures may be demolished. Again, the potential use is questionable.

The Bay Area Chamber of Commerce is pushing for a four-year college or university downtown, and a likely site might be Dore's building kitty-corner from the Chemical Bank.

Or perhaps a higher ed center might be attracted to the Times building, with a $675,000 price tag that includes 95 parking spaces, a precious commodity downtown.

As an aside, a Chinese university brought in by Dr. Robert Yien, former business dean at Saginaw Valley State University, reportedly is considering a move into downtown Saginaw, where luxury apartments in the Bancroft and Eddy buildings have just opened. New life is appearing there under impetus from the Central Michigan University School of Medicine.

Dr. Yien is now administrative vice president of Ming Chuan University, of Taipei, Taiwan. Established in 1957, Ming Chuan University is the first and only U.S.-accredited institution in Asia. It became the first Asian institution with a branch in Michigan after American Ming Chuan University was established in SVSU's Regional Education Center last October.

Delta College has just announced it will move to downtown Saginaw and is seeking a site. Delta already is in downtown Bay City in the planetarium building.

The Bancroft & Eddy luxury apartments in Downtown Saginaw with support from the Michigan Community Revitalization Program in cooperation with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC). Bancroft Project Saginaw LLC has invested $6 million to renovate the historic buildings located at the key intersection of Washington and East Genesee avenues. A $1 million MEDC grant will support the completion of the project.

Longtime downtown observers are wondering about the fate of the DoubleTree once the competing Marriott opens in Uptown. "Can the community support two hotel-conference centers?" they ask with skepticism. The tentative answer: yes, IF Uptown proves attractive to visitors and IF a new development like a college/university brings new life, and new customers, downtown.

The Uptown project is managed by SSP Associates, established by the late Dr. Samuel H. Shaheen Sr., Saginaw physician and builder, who was behind the Horizons Conference Center and the Temple Theater renovation, plus a medical complex that transformed part of downtown Saginaw. Shaheen reportedly had sought to be involved in hotel and conference center developments in Bay City for years. Now his sons Dr. Samuel J. Shaheen, and Peter Shaheen are at the helm of SSP Associates, poised to transform Bay City's economy with developments beyond imagination even as recently as a decade ago.

Newspapers have been published in Bay City for 158 years, since Perry Joslin's weekly The Press, but for the past century the field has been dominated by one paper -- The Bay City Times.

The last time The Bay City Times offices were located on Water Street it was 1910.

For 104 years the newspaper has owned one of the most imposing buildings downtown, the Albert Kahn designed 38,000 square foot, two story monolith at Fifth Avenue and Adams Street.

When The Times-Tribune made its move, the new Wenonah Hotel had just opened and city fathers planned a grand Wenonah Park across the street, so the row of buildings at the foot of Water had to come down. One of them housed the Times-Tribune.

The Wenonah Hotel, which had been converted to apartments and called the Wenonah Park Building, was replaced (after a no downtown hotel hiatus for a quarter century), by the DoubleTree Hotel-Bay City Riverfront -- top performing part of the Hilton chain.

Local historian Marv Kusmierz points out in his newly-redesigned bay-journal.com website:


Former site of the Bay City Times
Photo by Dave Rogers
© MyBayCity.com


"The Bay City Times dates its history to 1873, and the Bay City Tribune, which was founded by an investment group comprised of John Culbert, Edmund Kroencke, Griffin Lewis and Thomas K. Harding. However, the initial edition of a newspaper published as The Bay City Times wasn't on the scene until 1906, which is when Wilbert H. Gustin founded his newspaper business.

"The Times competed with the Bay City Daily Tribune for a number of years before Gustin purchased the Tribune in 1916. He consolidated the two into one business. In 1927, the newspaper change its name to the Bay City Daily Times, then in 1935, that name was dropped in favor of its original name as The Bay City Times.

In 1873, when the Tribune began publishing its newspaper, they were up against some stiff competition from the Bay City Chronicle which dominated the publishing business at that time. That newpaper was owned by Henry S. Dow, a distant relative of Herbert Dow who founded the Dow Chemical Company. The Chronicle offices were located in the Birney block on Water Street, between Fourth Street and Fifth Avenue. Mr. Dow was also a partner with Mr. Swizer in publishing the Lumberman's Gazette trade newspaper located at 109 Center Avenue."

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"The BUZZ" - Read Feedback From Readers!

sunbeamf Says:       On April 25, 2014 at 12:21 PM
I too share people's skepticism that we can support two high end hotels. Whoever owns the former Holiday Inn should be looking for a buyer--the powers that be seem to be determined to put him out of business. Bay City seems always to put the cart before the horse--as you say "IF Uptown proves attractive to visitors and IF a new development like a college/university brings new life, and new customers, downtown." Seems like we should wait to see if the "ifs" come true. Look how long it took the condos downtown to fill up.
Agree? or Disagree?


Dave Rogers

Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read,
respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City.
(Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com)

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