Forging city and lake: Marquette's waterfront beyond the ore dock legacy

Since the decommission of Marquette, Michigan???s massive waterfront ore dock in 1971, the city???s post-industrial lakeshore has been left to decay and has become the locus of a marginal landscape. This scenario is true for many harbor towns with ore docks on Lake Superior. There have been recent efforts to redesign Marquette???s waterfront and development plans are now being implemented, but they are not adequately forward-thinking and do not secure the site as public property. This thesis explores planning options for Marquette???s waterfront while establishing criteria for a design that will ultimately make the city function better and secure its place as an operational site for the future. Through the process of analysis of land and the flow of natural resources, Marquette is examined in order to reconnect the lost history of the industrial age and to improve on post-industrial landscape adaptive reuse objectives. The plan employed the waterfront with accessibility, space for social functions, and renewed site ecology, reestablishing a functional ecosystem. This was achieved in part by implementing flexible programming, while seaming the connection of the water to the city. The criteria established could be applied to the redesign of other Lake Superior city waterfronts that are in similar states