A company town’s public square

Midland is a company town in the plain sense that one large employer shaped it. The news is which spaces belong to the city anyway.

The Tridge is the clearest public piece: a three-legged footbridge at the meeting of the Tittabawassee and Chippewa rivers, in Chippewassee Park, with one leg toward the downtown riverfront. It is not a company gate. Main Street and the park are the city’s. The plant campus is a different property, with its own fence line and its own hours.

A company town can blur that line until every lawn looks like a benefit. It is worth sorting them. The bridge, the park, and the downtown sidewalk are civic. They stay available when the workday ends. The campus does not become the square because the city grew up beside it.

This Sunday piece does not name a product, a shift, or a person. Walk the Tridge and the block it leads to downtown. That is the public square Midland actually has, even though it is a bridge and a park rather than a courthouse lawn.

Midland