News Photo by Steve Schulwitz Snow covers the ground of a vacant piece of property in downtown Alpena on Wednesday. The Alpena Downtown Development Authority is considering ways to use the land until a development project takes shape.

ALPENA — On Tuesday, the Alpena Downtown Development Authority discussed ideas of how to utilize the riverfront property at the corner of 2nd Avenue and Water Street if a mixed-use development project were to fall through.

The property was the former home of the Alpena Power Company for many years until it was demolished, obtained by Target Alpena, and placed on the market for future development about a decade ago.

Target Alpena President Mike Mahler said the proposed project for the land that features businesses on the ground level and apartments on the floors above, is still moving forward, but he believed it would be a good idea to come up with some ideas about how to use the property temporarily, should something with the proposed project fall through.

“The project is still moving forward, but it’s a good idea to plan ahead and try to use that space if we need to,” Mahler said. “With the cruise ships coming into town, it would be good to have something there.”

Anne Gentry, executive director of the DDA, said some of the ideas that surfaced at the meeting included offering small spaces for individual businesses to set up shop or having one large mobile structure that would be erected and have a market inside where vendors could gather.

“I think having little structures that could be used as pop-up shops people could rent out to small businesses,” she said. “Another idea was to have a large tent, or something that could easily be put up and taken down, where that could be a market. The long-term goal is to have the property developed, but doing something with it until then is a good idea.”

Gentry said Target was open to the idea of finding ways to utilize the property until a development project begins. There is still work to be done to learn more about how much it would cost to have the small pop-up business cabins ordered and how big of an expense a larger portable structure would cost.

Gentry said if the DDA decided to purchase the needed materials, and a project was finalized, the DDA could still use the new items in other areas of the downtown for events or sell them.

Steve Schulwitz can be reached at 989-358-5689 or sschulwitz@TheAlpenaNews.com. Follow him on X @ss_alpenanews.com.