Great Lakes Cities

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Midland is basically this small town in flat MI farmland, in a hyper right-wing corner of the state. Very odd to have this dominant global firm HQ in Midland.

I bet they have a hard time getting higher-level employees to HQ. Imagine pitching the role to someone working out of Paris or Sydney. Where do the kids go to school? What does the spouse do? Two hour drive to a real airport or serious shopping, restaurants or cultural attractions.

You make it sound super-isolated, like it's in the UP or something.

The college town of Mt. Pleasant is the next county over, and even Bay City has a little bit of life in its downtown.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by eschaton

You make it sound super-isolated, like it's in the UP or something.

The college town of Mt. Pleasant is the next county over, and even Bay City has a little bit of life in its downtown.

It would be much more appealing if in the UP, which has scenery and outdoors pursuits. Much of the Western UP is quite beautiful, and Marquette is a healthy, booming college town. Marquette's airport is as good as the Tri-Cities airport serving the Thumb.

Mt. Pleasant has a college, but isn't a college town. Midland is actually much better. Bay City is pretty terrible. The Thumb is easily the least scenic and most right-wing corner of MI.

[subterranean]

Originally Posted by Crawford

It would be much more appealing if in the UP, which has scenery and outdoors pursuits. Much of the Western UP is quite beautiful, and Marquette is a healthy, booming college town. Marquette's airport is as good as the Tri-Cities airport serving the Thumb.

Mt. Pleasant has a college, but isn't a college town. Midland is actually much better. Bay City is pretty terrible. The Thumb is easily the least scenic and most right-wing corner of MI.

So is the entire center of the country, from Texas up to North Dakota, with the exception of a few places like the Black Hills. At least Mid-Michigan has Lake Huron and is within a 2-hour drive in almost any direction to something interesting. Hell, we used to go to the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor (1.5 hours) when I was in high school. I’ve had commutes here in PDX that took almost that long.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by subterranean

It’s podunk, but there’s a AAA baseball team,

That shocked me, so I checked.....

And no, Midland does not have a AAA baseball team.

The city does have a High-A team, the Great Lakes Loons, but that's a pretty different level of minor league baseball compared to AAA.

AAA teams in the Midwest are found in cities like Indy, Columbus, Toledo, Louisville, St. Paul, Des Moines, and Omaha. That is a different class of "city" than Midland, MI.

[subterranean]

Apologies, I just meant minor league. I’m not a big sports guy.

[galleyfox]

There’s a new tallship coming to the lakes.

Schooner Alliance moving to Traverse City.


https://www.mlive.com/news/2023/01/t...outputType=amp

https://www.sailyorktown.com/schooner-alliance.html

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

It would be much more appealing if in the UP, which has scenery and outdoors pursuits. Much of the Western UP is quite beautiful, and Marquette is a healthy, booming college town. Marquette's airport is as good as the Tri-Cities airport serving the Thumb.

Mt. Pleasant has a college, but isn't a college town. Midland is actually much better. Bay City is pretty terrible. The Thumb is easily the least scenic and most right-wing corner of MI.

I always thought The Thumb referred pretty exclusively to the counties of Huron/Sanilac/Tuscola/Lapeer/Saint Clair, and wasn't inclusive of the Tri-Cities region

I mean, if you consider Midland part of The Thumb, does that mean Flint is as well?

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I always thought The Thumb referred pretty exclusively to the counties of Huron/Sanilac/Tuscola/Lapeer/Saint Clair, and wasn't inclusive of the Tri-Cities region

I mean, if you consider Midland part of The Thumb, does that mean Flint is as well?

Yeah, technically Midland isn't the Thumb. But that's the general area. I think the tri-cities area now markets itself as the Great Lakes Bay region or something, but it's essentially the Thumb. Flat, farmland, reddest part of the state, and the nearby water is useless for recreation due to agricultural runoff.

It is true that Midland is pretty close to "Up North" Michigan. So there's that. Not too far from real woods and nice lakes. And Midland is definitely a more cosmopolitan place than Saginaw or Bay City, due to Dow. And there's no decay. Saginaw has epic decay, and Bay City has some. But I think it's very tough to get high level employees there. I'd definitely rather live in Saginaw though, bc it's many times bigger and has more amenities.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by benp

In the "woulda coulda shoulda" category, Buffalo was the first location Henry Ford considered for a major assembly plant before settling on Detroit. At the time, Buffalo was the larger city, was already home to several auto manufacturers, was closer to major customers and suppliers, and had a better existing transportation system.

Buffalo Auto Industry History



Among the early car companies started in Buffalo were the Kensington, Babcock, Conrad, Willet Motor Trucks, Lippard-Stewart, Atterbury, and Parenti. Better known companies were the Thomas Flyer (which won the Great Race for NY to Paris in 1908), the Pierce-Arrow (most successful, and car of Presidents until bought by Studebaker and closed in 1938), and the Playboy (last car company founded in Buffalo) in 1947.

Buffalo still has multiple operations producing components and parts for auto manufacturers, including Ford, several GM plants, Tesla, Sumitomo Rubber (formerly Dunlop), Moog, and many others.

cleveland has pretty much the exact same same auto developers history early on with winton, baker, white, etc., so its interesting how that parallels buffalo auto history; plus cle has a lot more major auto and auto related manufacturing later on and of course there is akron aka the rubber city.

https://case.edu/ech/articles/a/automotive-industry

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Midland is basically this small town in flat MI farmland, in a hyper right-wing corner of the state. Very odd to have this dominant global firm HQ in Midland.

I bet they have a hard time getting higher-level employees to HQ. Imagine pitching the role to someone working out of Paris or Sydney. Where do the kids go to school? What does the spouse do? Two hour drive to a real airport or serious shopping, restaurants or cultural attractions.

Isn't that true of most chemical companies? I'd imagine that it's almost as hard recruiting someone from Paris to go to Wilmington, Delaware.

A few years ago I was at a Brazilian friend's wedding, and one of the guests was a Brazilian woman that worked for Dow in São Paulo. She considered the annual free trip to Midland to be a job perk lol.

[subterranean]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Isn't that true of most chemical companies? I'd imagine that it's almost as hard recruiting someone from Paris to go to Wilmington, Delaware.

A few years ago I was at a Brazilian friend's wedding, and one of the guests was a Brazilian woman that worked for Dow in São Paulo. She considered the annual free trip to Midland to be a perk lol.

Yeah, and much like Intel here, Dow has its own corporate planes and regularly flies its employees to its other locations and sometimes vacation destinations. At least they used to.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by subterranean

Apologies, I just meant minor league. I’m not a big sports guy.

no worries at all.

like i said, i was just shocked when i read that because the vast majority of AAA teams are located in cities a couple of tiers above places like midland. AAA baseball is one of the highest levels of professional baseball in the world outside of alpha-dog MLB.

i mean, grand rapids doesn't even have a AAA team (though with its growth, it could easily support one these days), so the idea that little old midland could have a AAA team just had me doing a "WTF???" double-take, that's all.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Isn't that true of most chemical companies? I'd imagine that it's almost as hard recruiting someone from Paris to go to Wilmington, Delaware.

Wilmington is in the Philly metro. And a decent-sized town with cultural weight and urban amenities. And just a few minutes from a major global airport. And not that far from NYC and DC, and the ocean.

I realize I'm being harsh on Midland, but the same applies to a lot of these legacy small towns with major corps. Battle Creek is much bigger than Midland, with more amenities, and just a short drive to Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids, but Kellogg's basically gave up on recruiting there.

Who knows, though. I'm not a recruiter. Maybe there are people who ask to be transferred from Zurich to Midland. You'll sure get a lot more house for your money.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Battle Creek is much bigger than Midland, with more amenities, and just a short drive to Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids, but Kellogg's basically gave up on recruiting there.

well, kellogg announced last summer that they will be spinning-off their snack food division (which accounts for ~80% of total revenue) into a new entity called "Global Snacking Company" which will be headquartered in chicago, while the much smaller cereal division will become a new entity called "North American Cereal Company", which will remain heaquartered in Battle Creek.

(i believe both names for the new entities are just placeholders until marketing fully develops the new corporate branding for them)

i wonder if issues trying to recruit talent to battle creek played a role in the decision?

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Wilmington is in the Philly metro. And a decent-sized town with cultural weight and urban amenities. And just a few minutes from a major global airport. And not that far from NYC and DC, and the ocean.

I realize I'm being harsh on Midland, but the same applies to a lot of these legacy small towns with major corps. Battle Creek is much bigger than Midland, with more amenities, and just a short drive to Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids, but Kellogg's basically gave up on recruiting there.

Who knows, though. I'm not a recruiter. Maybe there are people who ask to be transferred from Zurich to Midland. You'll sure get a lot more house for your money.

Philly also has a large French expat population and private french schools in the region (a lycee?).

But it's main differentiator is that it historically has been a chemical hub (Dupont, Rohm and Haas, etc) and has a lot of chemical companies as is, so the talent pool situation is different vis a vis if you move here, you have other employment options in the market.

I've met a weirdly large number of Brazilians here who work for Braskem, which has a presence in the region.

Even so, I'm rooting for the Midlands of the world.

[Steely Dan]

looking at the F500 map, Michigan has to be one of the leading states for F500 HQ's located in smaller cities outside of major metropolitan areas.

in adition to Dow in Midland and Kellogg in Battte Creek, there's also Whirlpool in Benton Harbor, Stryker in Kalamzoo, CMS Energy in Jackson, and Jackson Finacial & Auto-Owners Insurance in Lansing.


though, once the Kellogg split is finalized, i wonder if what's left of Kellogg in Battle Creek will be big enough to still be a F500?

[subterranean]

Originally Posted by galleyfox

There’s a new tallship coming to the lakes.

Schooner Alliance moving to Traverse City.

https://www.sailyorktown.com/schooner-alliance.html

Beautiful.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Wilmington is in the Philly metro. And a decent-sized town with cultural weight and urban amenities. And just a few minutes from a major global airport. And not that far from NYC and DC, and the ocean.

I realize I'm being harsh on Midland, but the same applies to a lot of these legacy small towns with major corps. Battle Creek is much bigger than Midland, with more amenities, and just a short drive to Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids, but Kellogg's basically gave up on recruiting there.

Who knows, though. I'm not a recruiter. Maybe there are people who ask to be transferred from Zurich to Midland. You'll sure get a lot more house for your money.

I'm just highlighting that caliber of urban amenities probably doesn't rank high in the calculus for people in that industry. This industry isn't really based in very sexy cities on a global basis.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I'm just highlighting that caliber of urban amenities probably doesn't rank high in the calculus for people in that industry. This industry isn't really based in very sexy cities on a global basis.

Yeah, you're probably right. It isn't a particularly cosmopolitan or glamorous industry.

But still, these employees presumably often have spouses and children. And they presumably have lots of disposable income. Maybe it's bc I'm now at that stage in life, but I cannot imagine how they get mid-career employees there. Not saying they have to be in a "sexy location", but somewhere with an airport, and private schools, and restaurants, would be a start.

Omaha, I get. Even Lansing, I get. There's stuff. Midland, to me, would be a mystery, if someone didn't have local family connections.

[subterranean]

We're probably beating a dead horse at this point, but as a kid in Midland we used to get new kids in school all the time from other locations. There were a ton of people from Texas and Louisiana, and I bet it's just like any other job where you are making your way up the corporate ladder and just going where you need to go. Those kids were from very well off families, too. Dow kids lived in the big houses, their parents had the nicest cars, wore the expensive clothes, were going to camps, played soccer and tennis, played the cello (our elementary school had an orchestra), etc.

I'm at the stage of my life with two young kids where my day-to-day is centered around home life, not how cool or amenity rich the area is. If you have a few decent restaurants and grocery stores, I'm pretty much set. I may be romanticizing it a bit, but every time I visit my brother and parents in Mid-Michigan, I find myself getting a little bit jealous. Sure, we've got the coast out here, the mountains, the lack of crazy winter weather. But the pace is slower there, less traffic, warm people, big and cheap houses, lots of space, less pretentious. Many of those same people seem to have enough disposable income to have toys like campers, jet skis, dirt bikes etc. And while me and my wife pull in a quite a lot on paper, we live in a 1200 sq. ft. shack in a less than desirable area of Portland so that we're not house poor.

All I'm saying is, not everyone has the same priorities, and even those change over time. Would I want to be in Midland, Michigan as a young person or empty nester? Hell no. But in the prime child raising years? Would be pretty great if you ask me.