Scottville Area Pride 2025

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On a weekend in Ludington celebrating pride, let's take a few minutes to look at civic pride for the two cities in Mason County.  While one may not condone the celebration of taking pride in one's lifestyle choice, one cannot deny that the Ludington event ended at 5 PM in Rotary Park and a couple of hours later, Rotary Park was pristine, looking as well-tended as it normally was.  Stearn's Park, while still packed with beachgoers, was similarly well-kept, as was the Waterfront Park prepared for hosting one of its summertime concerts.  Downtown's Legacy Park was also seeing a lot of traffic as a city center is supposed to with its new facilities looking spectacular.  

As one of the City of Ludington's foremost critics when it does things wrong, this reporter is admittedly impressed by the overall 'pride' they have that makes our parks and city centers look great even after a weekend of bacchanals and heavy use, and the knowledge that the city's DPW will step up on the following Monday to do whatever is necessary to make the city look good during the week, ready for another busy weekend.  Last weekend I went to Scottville and noticed what could only be called a contrasting philosophy by their city leaders and the DPW.  

There was not a lot of activity going on downtown, the businesses remaining on south Main Street are struggling, their heroic attempts to keep their business and Downtown Scottville alive and relevant involves most of their attention and sacrifices of time and expenses.  One would expect that the DPW or the city's DDA would also take an active role to upkeep the common areas where visitors will often form their first impressions of Scottville, especially when they see a historic placard bringing attention to its history.  

But no, the picture below gives the impression that Scottville is a city past its prime, a ghost town perhaps, in the way that the area is upkept after others in the past have made the place stand out with elaborate brick work on the pavement and what looks to once may have been more pleasant surprises further in, once you get past weeds growing unchecked in those bricks and concrete junctures and what looks to be some overgrown planters featuring even more weeds.

The grandeur that once was Scottville seems more obvious once you go further in a fountain featuring a cascade of milkweed and invasive plants, but absolutely no water flow and no water, with disjoint plumbing parts visible.  A wreath of Christmas lights surrounds the whole mess, indicating that nobody from the DPW or DDA has been around in 7 months to do anything constructive in this centralized area.

But that is readily apparent when one goes to the parking lot side of the city center, with another brick circle showing a lot of neglect, where what was probably a couple of planters having been removed in order to create two squares of natural weed growth, plenty more coming up through the cracks.  The whole area seems forsaken, and what should be a source of community pride has morphed into community shame because certain people have been derelict in their duties.

But we can go every direction from the center of Scottville and find faults that could be so easily corrected by city leaders who took more pride in their community.  On East State Street, a block from the crossroads, a building was taken down last year that used to house a barber shop and a dentist office (among other things).  This year, you still have the demolition area with a cheesy fence overcame by leftover rubble on one corner, and some giant weeds in what is otherwise an area with no grass growth and a landfill pallor.  

On North Main, a little over a block from the crossroads, you have the Old Scottville School building, looking quite ruggedly ramshackle, overgrown with weeds, bushes and trees.  The building is not only almost totally open to the elements above much of its footprint to the west, but also totally open with a subterranean entrance on the south side, offering an attractive nuisance to the children of Scottville using the adjacent play areas of the Lower Elementary School to enter and hurt themselves in.

Wes of the crossroads, less than a block up State Street, one can see the back of city hall where someone from the city has tended some of the lawn recently but has left gigantic weeds at the entrance, which is what you would see in passing, that is, if this part of the street wasn't being worked on to address some of the city's water and sewer infrastructure.  The construction blocked the street all the way up to the bypass.

And once again, we can see during this time that city leaders have little care for their businesses, walking up this street further.  The 'Ville, formerly the Dairy Barn, has been turned into an island, with blockades set up to the east of their business, extending west to blockade at the bypass, and even another at the high school entrance.  At best, you can come from the north and park at the high school and walk about a block just to get inside the business during what we would have to believe is its busiest time of the year.  While this may have just been bad planning on behalf of the construction team, we must wonder why city leaders let this happen when Reinberg Street was usable.

Then there's the other city concern down this way, McPhail's Field.  We have already taken the city to task before for their many-decades-long negligence of their tennis courts, but other facilities there are also found wanting.  While most of the open areas have their grass cut, we see a couple of baseball diamonds-in-the-rough with sizable weeds on the infield, and that utility shed in the background is effectively less than useless in that the restroom entrances are barred up and the remaining part is unused.  Worse, on the day I took this picture a spigot on the side of the building was dripping significantly, upping the city's water bills paid over to Ludington.

 

We would like to trust that the neglect and dereliction noted in this article wasn't solely due to the city's DPW, for surely if they are not living up to standards, city management must take some of the blame and the shame also for not cracking down.  But we can't fault them for not having the equipment, they have two top-of-the-line brand new riding lawnmowers purchased during a time just after Scottville revealed a half million deficit due to mistakes made by Scottville's prior city manager.

You can also see they have quite a bit of their apparatus outside, I counted about eight different vehicles/trailers around the perimeter of the DPW Building and have heard reports from reliable sources that they will have their own vehicles inside the building for them to work on.  I would rather not believe those sources, but when you see so many public places in Scottville (not all have been chronicled here) that deserve to have some TLC performed on them so that citizens and visitors can verify that their civic leaders have some pride left in their town, it's very easy to believe them.   Demand that city workers bring the pride back to Scottville, it will make quite a difference in how we all perceive the town as it struggles to become solvent and relevant again.