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Local Alpena Industries Prepare For Tourist Season

As the weather warms up, tourism will begin to flourish in Alpena and the northeast Michigan area once again.

There is a lot to see and do in Alpena as a tourist, and for the Downtown Development Authority, it starts with presentation.

“Flower baskets, flowers being planted around the trees, healthy trees downtown, they all make it a place that’s really attractive to be in and that people want to visit,” said Alpena DDA Executive Director Anne Gentry.

Alpena is rich with natural resources, especially maritime life. Over at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, they provide an experience unique to the area.

“We feel the community really embraced what northeast Michigan and what Alpena has to offer, which is truly a sanctuary from day-to-day life and the business of life, but also the marine sanctuary, the 4300 square miles out on Lake Huron that we strive very much to make accessible to almost anyone,” said Stephanie Gandulla of the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

As we are now three years removed from COVID, restrictions caused by the virus feel like a thing of the past. Alpena should once again be a tourist hotbed with nothing holding people back.

“Now that we’ve had the last few years where a lot of our events have been scaled back, we’re really seeing them re–grow and people don’t mind being around so many other people and realized how much they miss these events,” said Gentry.

Alpena is a small, tight–knit community, and there are many people who aren’t from the area who may have never heard of it. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t know about what Alpena has to offer.

“You’ll have one of two camps; you’ll have someone be like, ‘Oh, I’ve never been there,'” said Gandulla. “And then you get to share why it’s so exciting to visit and such a special, really unique place, and then you have the other people who are like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve been to Alpena and I couldn’t believe how wonderful it was, can’t wait to go back.'”

In the next month or so, tourist season will start and run until around October.