If there’s anything Dowagiac has in boundless supply, it’s pent-up demand.
It’s been a tough few years, but there are gathering signs like budded trees of better times to come.
Usually January is a bleak blank canvas of snow to track up with events, not sunny shirtsleeve weather teased with breeze and dry streets to induce spring fever.
This odd winter is expected to correct itself momentarily, but spring 2012 could be one to anticipate no matter what groundhogs forecast.
Downtown Dowagiac will get a shot in the arm with the opening of its anchor, Cass County Council on Aging’s senior center, which will bring people to the central business district who might not be coming now.
A fifth dance studio, or one for every thousand residents, proves how the arts are rooted in the home of the Dogwood Fine Arts Festival.
Southwestern Michigan College’s annual State of the College Monday acknowledged its recognition as one of the fastest-growing community colleges in the nation in a recent analysis of U.S. Department of Education data by Community College Week magazine.
Ameriwood has been chugging along since restoring manufacturing in September 2008, doubling production and increasing employment by half, from 100 to 150, in those three years.
Empty Dowagiac Nursing Home was rescued from the scrap heap to become the gorgeous The Timbers of Cass County.
Fryman Recycling’s expansion plans move 43 jobs into the city from Pokagon Township for a plastics facility in the building remaining from Jessup Door.
A few blocks away, in the cavernous shell of Rudy, Sundstrand, Modine and National Copper Products, The Business Center of Southwestern Michigan is incubating jobs.
On the other side of town, Premier is breathing life into ICG/Du-Wel’s old factory.
And next month, as the year anniversary of “Disney Way” author Bill Capodagli’s storyboarding with the schools, City Hall, Borgess-Lee Memorial Hospital and SMC approaches, it will be time to step up from Dream, Believe and Dare to Do.
The Dowagiac Education Dream unveiled Aug. 31 by Superintendent Dr. Mark Daniel was shaped by input from an unprecedented swath of the community.
A “guest” mindset in education means student-centered promotion of a learning culture and, more specifically, restructuring the entire district into three buildings housing five separate schools.
Some believe the Maya calendar predicts the world’s end Dec. 21, but we think Dowagiac will not only be here next Christmas, we’re anxiously waiting to see what spring brings poking through the melting snow even with plenty of winter remaining.