A special meeting of the Village Planning Commission is scheduled for Tuesday, March 29, 7 p.m., Government Center. The only agenda item is to start the special use permit process about a request by the  Parallel 45 Furniture Company to manufacture upholstered furniture at the old Super Tool building on U.S. 31.

Excerpt: Preliminary presentation by Northern Lakes Economic Alliance assisting with the request for a Special Use Permit to allow for the establishment of a furniture manufacturing facility within the existing building located at 500 US 31 South, property #05-43-021-075-00 (Super Tool Bldg.)           Complete Agenda

Manufacturing in America is not dead. It’s just changing at light speed – and it’s going local.

More easily understood as something akin to terroir, geographic ingredient branding emphasizes “pride of place,” which runs deep in cities like San Francisco and New York.  NYT

And deep in Elk Rapids – and in Michigan in general. “Pride of place” now is coming back to manufacturing.

(terroir? – French for “soil” but in a way that is oh so French. Yes, indeed. It means much, much more than soil, especially if you make wine. It’s wholistic. It’s culture. It’s haut, haut, haut. Zut alors!)              (Source: Terroir Miller himself)

Witness the budding consortium of manufacturing that is forming in Elk Rapids. Newly conceived Parallel 45 Furniture Company is working with Wooden Hammer and Traverse Bay Manufacturing to make upholstered furniture somewhere nearby. And my neighbor just moved the whole family here from North Carolina to take a job at Wooden Hammer.

Local manufacturing is here and more of it is coming our way. It’s important that:

• we understand this trend,
• we don’t screw it up.
• and we don’t let it screw us up —

for example, by destroying our place and/or our “pride of place.”