Clarkston Mayor Eric Haven

Beasley Digital

Caught up with Clarkston Mayor Eric Haven to talk about the rich history of Clarkston...our Workforce City Of The Week

Transcript

00:00Ladies and gentlemen, the Honorable Mayor of the City of Clarkston, is it honorable?

00:04I hope so.

00:06Eric Haven with us here.

00:08Thank you so much for having us here as our City of the Week.

00:11And how long, Clarkston goes back to the 1800s, right?

00:141830s.

00:15Actually, Butler Holcomb came here, hacked his way through the jungle, I used to say, from Detroit,

00:21and put in our first dam, which was an earthen dam in the day.

00:24And that's what all these little towns around here were.

00:27They were mill villages.

00:28So when water transitions from one level to another, goes down, you can put a mill wheel in,

00:34and you begin to cut logs then.

00:36And that's how you build your homes, originally.

00:38Then later on, as the community prospers, it turns into a grain mill,

00:43so you do grist for flour and cornmeal and that sort of thing.

00:46And then you build.

00:47And we became a vacation spot, just like Lake Orion has a subheading where life is a vacation.

00:54All these little towns were vacation spots in the day for people out of Detroit,

00:58and we just want to come out here and splice around the water, you know, and fish and that kind of thing.

01:02And so that's the history.

01:04And you see it written on our, there's pictures on many of our restaurant walls,

01:08and that's a lot of these people in the boats and so on that came out in the 1830s to enjoy Clarkston.

01:14And we always talk about, so like when you were heading up north in the old days, that was Clarkston.

01:20Going up north was going to Clarkston, wasn't it?

01:22Exactly, before I-75, oh yeah.

01:23And so here we are now, though, as we get ready for the Taste of Clarkston coming up this Sunday.

01:27And it's become just an amazing event.

01:30It is.

01:31I don't know how many years, 40 years, I want to say, that they've been doing that thing.

01:34It's amazing.

01:34And then Chamber also holds concerts here, and they've been holding them that long here.

01:38We're hoping to build a band shell for them at some point in the near future

01:42where they can even get better bands and so on to come right here to Depot Park.

01:46Now, I don't want to tell you to do your business,

01:47but you should keep track of how many people have their homecoming

01:50and also their prom pictures taken in this gazebo because you could set a record.

01:55Well, we wouldn't need a turnstile to do that.

01:57We don't want to put a turnstile in here.

01:58We want it to be open-handed.

01:59People come as they want, you know.

02:01But, yeah, it's a delightful place, and many senior pictures have been taken in this location.

02:07So are you born and raised here in Clarkston, or you got here as soon as you could?

02:10No, I was born and raised in Traverse City.

02:11Okay.

02:11My father was in radio and television up there between the 40s and the 50s,

02:16really the pioneering of television.

02:18And so I'm used to this sort of venue, and I'm really enjoying it, Jim,

02:21and thanks for the invitation.

02:22It is such a wonderful downtown, and it's nationally recognized as well, wasn't it,

02:27like in the registry in the 1980s?

02:29What exactly is the title for downtown Clarkston?

02:31We are the city of the village of Clarkston, and people say,

02:35why can't you get your name right?

02:37The reality is it has a dual meaning, and the cityhood sort of carved ourselves

02:43out of the larger township to be self-governing back in 1992.

02:48And so we just celebrated our 30th anniversary last year as a city.

02:51It's a 191-year-old village, but the other part of it was we looked at a name,

02:58and we didn't want to name it just the city of Clarkston because we love being a village.

03:03So we became the city of the village of, and we became a city to remain a village.

03:07That's really the rationale behind the name.

03:09But Main Street itself is on, as a nationally, I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for?

03:14It's a state highway.

03:16Right.

03:16It's a state highway.

03:17It's a trunk line.

03:19And so that's owned by the state, but then our roads around it are managed by us.

03:23But it is on a national registry as well.

03:26It's like for historic downtowns as well.

03:27Oh, I know what you're referring to then.

03:28What you're referring to is our historic district.

03:30That's it.

03:31Our historic district's 176 structures that were identified back in the 80s

03:36because MDOT wanted to put four lanes through town, and that would have ruined our town.

03:40Never knew that.

03:41And so they established the historic district and really plotted the corners of it

03:46so that they could do research in the corners back then.

03:48We are just now this year finishing up our study of all the structures,

03:53and they will be in the National Register of Historic Places, as many of them have been already,

03:57but the later ones will be there now with much more sophistication.

04:00And we want to do more with celebrating that here locally.

04:05Technology is going to give us the opportunity to take some of this information now

04:09and put it online.

04:10And so you can walk down Main Street with your camera,

04:13and you can call up a QR code on your cell phone, you know,

04:16and you can read all about these homes and so on.

04:18So it's going to be really, I think, something that is cutting edge,

04:21and we'll have national variety.

04:22I don't want to put you on the spot, but can you confirm there will be a statue made for Union Mac and Cheese?

04:27I can't confirm it.

04:28But I wouldn't deny it either because it's pretty celebrated.

04:32I mean, that Union Mac and Cheese was in the Wall Street Journal.

04:34I mean, that was amazing.

04:37Yeah, that's one of those things, like when your significant other says,

04:40can I have a bite?

04:40The answer is no.

04:41No, that's right.

04:42Especially on the lobster mac and cheese.

04:44Oh, don't even.

04:45Yeah.

04:45My son could be watching this, Mayor, and he may be heading there right now.

04:48Thank you so much for the time,

04:50and it's an honor for CSX to be part of this in the beautiful village of Clarkston here.

04:53Thanks again.

04:54You betcha, Jim.

04:55Nice to see you.

04:55Glad to do it.

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