“Opening Hummingbird House Designs was the most terrifying thing we’ve ever done. My wife and I were making wooden signs out of a shop, thinking that it would be easier for us to just make the signs and let retailers do the rest. That worked for a time, but then it got to the point where we couldn’t make the days any longer or do more work in the hours we had, so to grow the business, the next step was to open our own store. That was a scary move because we suddenly had to worry about things like health insurance or how much money was coming in without a weekly paycheck.
It was a hard decision, but worth it. Owning a store is definitely a lot more work than what we anticipated, but we've had a lot of great support from Lapeer and the DDA. Any questions that we have, we get a quick response and they give us as much help as they can provide.
We carry a mixture of local Michigan-made products and makers, everything from local honey to small furniture pieces. Most things here are Michigan made. We've tried to keep it as local as possible to keep community pride as part of it as much as we can. Our trivet lady literally lives down the road. The candle maker lives two blocks from here.
I love seeing people's reactions when they buy a piece or they find a gift for someone. People want that face-to-face interaction. When you buy something on the internet or at Walmart, it’s just a transaction. But when people buy local, there’s joy.”

“We are very, very proud of the group of makers and small businesses we carry here at Hummingbird House Designs. Our inventory changes all the time and we get so many new things in that two months from now there won’t be anything in here that’s the same.
I think our favorite thing about Lapeer is that it still has that small-town charm and vibe, but it is growing so fast. Hat's off to the DDA, honestly for what they're doing to bring back downtown to be a successful, fun, attractive place for everybody, not just one age group or demographic.
Whatever they’re doing is working. We're very happy to be able to jump on board and be able to offer a good handmade, local gift shop.”
– Adam Perry, Hummingbird House Designs

“My grandfather, Donald Sr., came to Lapeer from Detroit to run what was called Howell Industries at the time. Something to do with the war effort back in the day, I believe. How he went from managing that plant to this, I don't know, but in 1954, he opened Beyer’s Furniture here on Nepessing Street.
I grew up in this store. There wasn’t a parking lot in the back, but a few houses and a dirt alley. There was a huge door on the back of the building where semi-trucks were loaded and unloaded. My father was a slave driver and I worked for 50 cents an hour sweeping, riding in the delivery truck, and eventually driving.
My dream was to go to college to get a fancy business degree, run a Fortune 500 company, and fly around the world on the company jet—or so I thought. But that was during the recession in the 1980s. Business was horrible and I ended up back here by default, finishing my education at UofM Flint, which was a great school.
I always say I ‘just stuck around’, but I like what I do. It’s in my blood. My grandfather Beyer started the furniture store and on the other side of the family, my grandfather Robinson built houses. Mash the two together and it makes for some pretty solid DNA for the furniture business. On one hand you have a love of homes and interiors on the building side and then a love of the fashion side with the furniture.
The work is challenging. It's frustrating. It's rewarding. And it’s all the above that makes me like what I do. Now we're selling to the grandchildren of clients that my grandfather and father sold to back in the day, and I love that.

With Lapeer, it probably sounds cliché, but this is where my roots are. I enjoy the friendships and relationships with people here on Nepessing Street and all the different friends I've made over the years.
As a business owner, when you're faced with difficult times, it helps to have friends. Any business that tells you they don't face difficult times is being incredibly disingenuous with you. Whether it's the product not arriving on time like it's supposed to, or the sales volume isn't what you need it to be for the month, or the delivery trucks broke down—business owners face so many frustrations and challenges.

But when you walk out on the street and see someone like Jim coming across the street with a cup of coffee for you, it makes you think, ‘You know, this is a great place to live.”

“The custom furniture we do at Beyer’s Furniture came out of the 2008 recession. We had a supplier in Arizona that built oak TV stands and they went bankrupt. It was a difficult economy for everyone and we didn't have any money to give deposits back, but we had six or seven of these things on order. I've always dabbled in building furniture, loved old houses and woodworking, so I called every customer and said, ‘Hey, this is our dilemma. If you're willing to give me a shot, I'll build these things for you and if you don't like it, don't take it.’
So, I stuck my neck out and I built lots of little TV stands, carts and eventually some bookcases and tables, and it grew from there. Not only is it great for the store, but it’s great for me personally. I can come in here early in the morning, work in that back room for a bit, then come out on the sales floor for a few hours to make sure things are going right. I've got great people working for me, so sometimes I go back there to finish out my day or go install the custom furniture in people’s homes. It’s really deepened my love for this business.”
– Buddy Beyer, owner of Beyer’s Furniture
 

“My husband was getting his degree in business during his career in military service. We have three children, and it was a lot when one half of the team is traveling all the time. He started looking for a way to grow entrepreneurially and away from the military, while staying home and investing in the community where we lived and where we grew up as well.
He was the best man in his best friend's wedding down in Texas a few years ago. The day before the wedding, all the guys all went ax throwing and he just thought it was just so much fun. That planted the seed of ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to have something like that in Lapeer?’ Lapeer needed more activities and ‘things to do’, and at the same time, he was growing his hobby of arcade repair and restoration and pinball collecting. So, we thought about combining axe throwing and an arcade, and that’s how Axecadia began.
We opened April of 2023, so just over a year ago and it was a lot of work. We got the keys to the building, and if we wanted it to be an axe-throwing venue and arcade, we would have to take everything down to the studs and start fresh…so we did. Luckily, Chris is very handy and was able to do the majority of that himself and with the help of some wonderful people in the community. But at the end of the day, it was still a lot of work. We had a lot of positive buzz beforehand about it so we were really grateful for that. A lot of the community members, the DDA and more were supportive and excited about this opening up and we felt very supported throughout.
There's a lot of things I could say about why I love this place, but a big one is that we are a place where people come to have fun. We're a place where people can get excited and celebrate. Businesses do their Christmas parties and staff appreciation days here, and people come to celebrate their birthdays. We've had a wedding rehearsal dinner and class reunions. We're in the business of helping people make positive memories together, and it's very special to me that people come here to connect with each other. People are hungry for making positive connections and being around people, and it’s been fun seeing people interact and multiple generations come together.
There's a grandmother who's called me a couple of times this week saying, ‘You're open Thursday at 4:00, right? My grandsons are coming over for ‘Camp Grandma’. We visited last summer and we're going to come again. My grandsons are so excited about it.”

“Before opening Axecadia, we were encouraged by the downtown Lapeer atmosphere and how it's grown over the past seven to 10 years. We had moved out of state to North Carolina, but we still had a lot of family and friends up here, so we’d come back and visit. We would drive through downtown and initially it looked like a bit of a ghost town and it was so sad and disheartening. I heard a statistic that 10 years ago, 46% of these buildings were vacant.
Now, 93% are being used. We were excited about that growth and we wanted to be a part of it. Initially, we briefly considered other spots outside of downtown, but we were adamant that it had to be here.
We had looked at something like a dozen places until we thought we found ‘The One’...and then it totally fell through. It was so disappointing, and all the roadblocks started to bum us out.
Then there was a fall festival at our church in 2022. We were not going to go because we were bumming that day, but then I thought, ‘At least the kids will have fun and there are bounce houses and pumpkins...’ So, at the last minute, we decided to go. While we were there, my husband, Chris, was talking to an acquaintance who asked if we had found a building. My husband said no, and he said that he knew a guy who owned a building he didn’t know what to do with and would connect us.
The next day, we were on a family walk, and Chris's phone rings and it's the guy. He said, ‘I'm at the building right now, do you want to come take a look?’
So, we cut the walk short to run over there and look at it. It looked very different from what it looks like now. I need to see pictures of something for it to make sense, but immediately, Chris, paints a picture of it in his mind of how it will all work. So, even though there were walls all over the place and the upper floor had like 13 rooms or something in it for offices, he saw that the pinball machines could be laid out a certain way. He's like, ‘I think this could really work.’
So, I’ve just always thought it was neat how it worked out. Like what if we hadn't gone to that fall festival, would we have known about this building? He was not even close to putting it on the market. He had no idea what he wanted to do with it yet because there was so much work to be done. It was just special and a blessing the way we heard about it.
We were so thankful for how it worked out. Everything that we suggested to the owner, he was like, ‘That's great. Let's do it!’ Whereas some people who owned buildings in the spaces we were looking at they were like, ‘Axe Throwing…Are you kidding me? No way.’
– Christina Herr, Axecadia

“My grandmother initially started feeding migrant farmers. My dad’s family is originally from San Antonio and they came up here when he was about 14. He talks about that trip from San Antonio to Imlay City being the first time he drove a car. They were migrant workers, and while my grandmother never worked in the fields, she fed everybody and was a phenomenal cook. That's really where Hernandez Mexican food began and has evolved to what we have now.
We had always wanted to open a restaurant, but after retirement. Then some other things that happened in our life that made us think, ‘Well, maybe it's time now.’ We saw this building came up for lease, so we went ahead and did it in October of 2021.
Both of our kids are in the food business, and they got bit by the bug as well. So, the restaurant became a partnership with our kids where we said, ‘We're all in on this together.’ They agreed, and they do a lot of the day-to-day operations running it.
It's evolved with our daughter, because her actual trade and what she loves to do is bake. She's a pastry chef and she does all of the cookies and cakes and stuff that we make here. She also sells her own cakes out of here too, that you can call in and order. She's our opener, so she comes in and does a lot of the initial cooking with my recipes or my grandmother's recipes that I've written down and told her, ‘This is what you do, you do not change it.’ Then our son usually comes in during the afternoon and we like to call him our maintenance guy, too. If something goes wrong when our daughter comes in, she calls him. One morning the water was sputtering, and she was on the phone with her brother in a heartbeat, like ‘I don't know what's going on, but I need you up here.’
Our food comes from the heart and it's our family. Family is the most important thing to us and always has been. That's the way we were raised. I have a sister and a brother who live 90 miles away. We live in a perfect triangle, with one in Belleville and one in Olivet. It's a phone call and they're here, or I'm there. It doesn't matter and we do it with pride and that's all there is to it.
When people ask me like, ‘You're not open on Sunday and Monday?’ I say, ‘We're not because while we’re a family business, we also need to be a family.”

“We know our regulars. They come in and it’s like, ‘How's your mom doing? Is she still okay?’ Being a local business, we really get to know our neighbors and our community, and they get to know us. When you get out into a strip mall or burger row, it's not like that. I like the fact that we don't have a drive thru and people have to come in and we have to interact with each other. As we all know, after we came out of 2020, that went away. Now we're getting people filtering in we're starting to try and bring a lot of that back face to face and getting to know your neighbor, and that's important.
We especially enjoy the downtown area. Little downtown communities are dying. But we wanted to be more in a downtown area because they have a bigger and better sense of community than ‘burger row’ or a strip mall somewhere.
There are people who are walking their dogs or a handful of neighborhood kids who come in and get their bottles of Coke a couple times a week. I used to walk home from school, all the way on the other side of town. I remember looking in the windows saying, ‘If I save my allowance, I might be able to get that or grab a little snack on the way home.’ As cheesy as the idea of small-town America sounds, we really wanted to be a part of that. We refer to this place as our ‘cute little family taco restaurant’, because that’s what we really think of it.”
– Deanna Hernandez Schlaud and Zac Schlaud, Hernandez Mexican Food
 

“My husband and I had a previous restaurant in the big city. But we are originally from smaller towns, so we wanted to move our business somewhere where we can watch our kids grow up in a safe community in a smaller town. We opened at the end of April, and we're very grateful. The construction took a long time and we were really worried. It was overwhelming because you can lose some of the momentum, but everyone has received us well and the other businesses and the DDA have been so helpful.
We’re not necessarily concerned about selling the most—we want to sell the best. We think everyone needs good food. We think of our restaurant as also a teaching experience to open peoples’ minds about different cuisine and cultures. We want to have partnerships with local farmers to have fresher ingredients and that's accessible here. There are still things that we cannot get here, like bean sprouts, but there are a lot of other things that we use in cooking that can be purchased locally, like green onions, bell pepper, eggplant, basil, carrots and lettuce. Big franchises might give you a lot of food, but you don’t know what’s in it. They are corporate owned, and the food isn’t made by the hands of someone who truly loves their business and what they do.
As far as our dishes, I really enjoy our Drunken Noodles. It's not like the well-known Pad Thai, but it’s in the noodle family. Ours is a different sauce and it doesn't come spicy, so you don't have to worry about that. It's not as spicy and it’s very fulfilling.
For Lapeer, I like that with business to business, everyone is so helpful. It's so close knit, and it's something that as a family, we have longed for. Before, we were in a plaza before where I never knew my neighbors. But it’s different here—we want to be in a community that we can contribute to.”
– Debie Thao, Kin Thai Cuisine

“We met in Virginia. I owned a coffee company there and my wife owned a brewery. I tried to get her to buy my coffee to make her stout beer, and long story short, she ended up with both my coffee and me.
We moved to the area because we wanted to be closer to family. We sold our businesses when we left Virginia, but came here with the intent of starting our coffee business. When we got here and got settled in, we started driving around exploring all the different cities in the area to figure out where we wanted to open. Every time we hit one, we were like, ‘Let's see what the downtown looks like,’ and it was like ‘Oh my gosh, this is so cute!’ We’d look at all the old buildings and stop to read the plaques if they had them.
We had actually decided to open our first shop in another city—we hadn't even been to Lapeer yet. We were working on a lease agreement when I saw on Facebook that Lapeer was having its Car Cruise. I love cars, so we went.

And when we saw the downtown, we canceled our lease and started working with Jim and Lapeer Main Street. He said, ‘I’ve got a building’, and we opened September 6th, 2023.
We roast in-house and we have a few different varieties. Everything is done here and it smells amazing when we roast coffee. You can smell it outside, so we have people walk in like zombies following the scent!
The Doghouse Coffee’s is a coffee shop, but it’s mission is to help rescue dogs and shelter dogs. We did the same thing in Virginia. We had two rescue dogs ourselves and learned firsthand what it takes to take a dog from the shelter and completely change its life. Dogs living in shelters don't have anybody. They don't have a voice and they cannot help themselves. They are just sitting there waiting for somebody, and we wanted to be that somebody.
With that mission in mind, we’ve partnered with Paradise Animal Rescue and now the Great Lakes Dog Rescue. We do a couple of different things including events like community dog walks on Sunday mornings, where people can come to the shelter, take the dogs out of the kennel and walk around the street or take them to the park so they can breathe some fresh air and get some sunshine. We also collect donations for what they need on their wish lists: blankets, food, toys, or anything else they need. Another way people can contribute is by sponsoring a dog. Every dog has an adoption fee and we’ve covered three dogs so far where if somebody cannot afford the adoption fee, we cover it for them.

We love the coffee shop because it’s about community, and that’s what we love about Lapeer, too. There are people always posting stuff with Doghouse and sharing it on social media. It's awesome to see people love this place, and for so many people to support it and our mission.”

“The community here is amazing, but when we moved here, we noticed that it was missing a coffee shop. First thing in the morning, people had nowhere to go or gather. Now, at 7:00 in the morning, we have people outside already waiting to come in. People meet, read people or do their homework. We have a lot of college students come in here to hang out. There are two desks in the windows that people fight for. Just being in the downtown of a small town is a whole different atmosphere. People walk down the street back and forth and they hang out, go for a walk, or chill.”
– Don and Ulyana Wingard, The Doghouse Coffee

“When I was 20 years old, I had a cup of vanilla ice cream with peanut butter cookies in it. As I was eating, I thought, ‘Why hasn't anyone done anything fun with cookies and cream?’ It’s always just Oreos and vanilla ice cream, but there are SO many other kinds of cookies and flavors of ice cream that could work. And what if there was a ridiculously high proportion of cookies to ice cream, like a 50/50 mix? So, I went around the universe for 15 years – no joke –  saying ‘Why hasn’t anybody done this before?’
Eventually, I started working as the marketing director for Woodchips BBQ and the owner, Patrick, asked me if I had any interest in opening a cookie and an ice cream shop across the street. Now, I had no intention of actually creating a brick and mortar shop, but when he asked me, I said, ‘Well, I have this idea…’ We ran over to Meijer, got generic cookies and ice cream, threw it in our mixer to do a 50/50 mix and tried it.
It was then we knew we were onto something, and the beginning of Kookys N Cream. 
We opened in August of 2019. We’ve got all different flavors and textures. We have a lot of fun with it! It’s definitely for the people who like a lot of ‘stuff’ in their ice cream. You get the coolness and flavors of the ice cream, with the flavors and textures of the cookies. At first the purists might be skeptical, but you have to taste it—it sells itself! The mix can be hard to describe, so I really love giving people samples and seeing that smile creeping and them processing it all and being like, ‘I've never had anything like this before!’
I also have a really amazing team, so I have to give a lot of credit to the wonderful team that I have here. My head baker, Serena, is our head baker. She’s amazing and has a team that absolutely adores her. They're amazing and I'm very blessed.
Lapeer has a lot of heart. There’s a lot of pride here, and people are willing to support small businesses. People share our product with friends or even ship it across the U.S. and ‘This is the best.’ It feels like people have a sense of ownership of the businesses in the community—I also don't think any business owner here thinks that they're doing it on their own. Everybody acknowledges that this is a community effort—I love that about Lapeer.”

“We’ve received some notoriety on social media and now I ship my cookies across the U.S. We opened in August of 2019, which if you do the math, was six months before the pandemic. Not ideal for a brick-and-mortar location! So, I took my cookie shop online. I had some really big success on TikTok and from there, I was able to ship my cookies and support the business at a time where people weren't coming into the store.
We also just finished a remodel, and we also brought in retail. I think we have a great retail district developing down at the other end, but I don’t think there can ever be too much retail in a downtown.  I brought in items that are very focused on this idea of whimsy. My new slogan is, ‘Baking transcends science. It's pure magic.’, so a lot of the stuff you will see is about the magic of life, whether it's about the moon cycle or growing flowers. In general, I think being alive is pretty magical, so it sort of pays homage to that.
Every month we put out new cookies. We have our traditional cookies, our monthly cookies, and we take desserts and turn them into easy-to-eat cookies. For example, every June we do an ice cream-inspired cookie month and we did a Strawberry Crunch Cookie sandwich with buttercream. It was so good! We also did an ice cream sandwich version of that.
We've also got our Banana Split, our Mint Chocolate, and one of our new cookies is this Moose Tracks cookie with mini peanut butter cups in it. Last year, we came out with a butter pecan cookie and it tastes so much like butter pecan. It's amazing, but this year we threw in even more toffee to make it more fun.
There's a lot of cookie competition, but what makes our cookies different is a lot of the cookie shops out there will have a base dough and throw other things in it. It might be M&Ms here, or Oreos there, but we do a unique dough for almost every single one of our cookies.”
– Jessica Harold, owner of Kookys N Cream
 

“I worked for the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre for 17 years doing props, faux finish, and graphic art. That’s quite a lot, but basically meant that I counterfeited and committed forgery for a living! There would be a chair made from wood that I would have to make look like metal, then a couch with metal reinforcement I had to make it look like wood. I did scene design for their cabaret space and then for other smaller companies throughout Milwaukee.
I came back because I was born and raised here. The building our gallery space is in was originally built by my family and was originally a clothing department store. I was literally raised in the building. While I was living in Milwaukee, my father passed, and my mom and my brother and his family lived here. I also have a niece, who was four at the time, and she sent me a card in Milwaukee that said ‘Aunt Jill, please come home and play with me.’ You can’t say ‘no’ to something like that pulling at your heart!
At the Center for the Arts of Greater Lapeer, we have 64 live performances coming up in the next year. That includes family fun programming, which is a Saturday 2:30 show that we offer free of charge for families with small children with puppet shows, a musical from Detroit Opera, and the Three Little Pigs magic shows. The next age range we have is a program called The ‘816 Experience’, which is for ages eight to 16. That's the group where you're too old for the young children’s programming but too young for everything else. That programming happens on Friday nights and has things like Nerf Wars, where we turn the theatre into a battleground of Nerf! We have a guy who comes in with all the equipment, ammo, and blinds. He sets up throughout the theatre and they get to go for it. We also make giant bubbles in the theatre, and have a comedian and magician that comes in performs just for that age range.
For adults, we have something called the Showcase and Regional Legends Showcase Series which are acts that are nationally touring. They run from all different genres. In the past, we've had performances like Sisters Late Nite Catechism and The Three Redneck Tenors whose resumes are incredible.
The Regional Showcase is more Midwest touring shows and also Canada. I'm getting a lot of acts from Canada now, including comedians. We also have a Comedy Series which has stand-up comedians. The Legend Series is groups that perform specifically music from one band and we've had everything from Queen to Glen Campbell, to different country acts. Hopefully, there is something for everyone.
The other thing that happens in the summer is we have our youth theatre plays and those are produced by us.
Then the newest thing is turning the gallery into an immersive cabaret experience where we have a trio, set up round tables, dim the lights and have candles and twinkle lights.
For seniors, we have a Wednesday matinee for those that don't like to drive anymore or are retired and can come on Wednesday. Recently, we showed the classic movie Casablanca and had a good crowd.”

 

“The gallery exhibits usually run six to eight weeks. The theme this year was ‘Wild Thing’ but we tried to make that as broad based as possible. When people asked, I said, ‘It can be a wild animal. It can be your dog. It can be your grandkids.’ So, it's pretty open and the exhibit is made up of people from all over the community in all different mediums and different levels of expertise. It is juried in that they had to show at least three pieces of their art to get into the show. There's some fun stuff and it's really neat to see all the closeted artists in the community that come out, and the majority of the work is for sale.  Or you have those that have just started in some cases. It’s their first time showing anything publicly, which is kind of cool to watch. We get a lot of first timers in their 50s, 60s, 70s and above.
Community Mental Health holds art classes here once a week. Currently, we have a showing of what they've done over the past year. The instructor has saved their artwork to showcase what they do. There's some amazing art up there, too.”


“Matt Modrack is one of the reasons why art is so important to Lapeer. He was the city planner when The Pix was up for sale, and he was very concerned with preventing it from becoming a drugstore or being torn down. In the late 1990s, he convinced the Mayor and City Commission to purchase the building with the idea of turning it into a live performance venue. It became a true community effort, where evenMatt was in here tearing off some of the acoustic curtains. Because this used to be a movie theatre with seats going all the way down to the screen, they built a stage. So, that is the movie screen.Matt saved the building. Downtown Lapeer was going through some really rough times, but he knew both the arts and saving our historical buildings would help.
Then, five years after The Pix was running and successful, they purchased the building next door and turned that into the art gallery. The art gallery was run by the City and the DDA for five more years and then in 2012, the merger joined the gallery and the theatre together to have it run by one board.
The Center for the Arts of Greater Lapeer unites the community. Because we live in a digital world, we don’t have many opportunities for a shared experience. We’re not all watching the same three channels anymore. When I was a kid going to school, everybody was watching Happy Days and talked about Happy Days. Why? Because there wasn’t anything else to watch. The theatre is one of the last places we can really experience community in a single moment.
That helps the entire community, too. My job is to get people to come through our doors, but in doing so, we're also promoting the rest of the community by saying, ‘Hey, come to a show, and while you’re here, do some shopping and dinner before, catch the show, and you’ll still get home before dark.’ We try to partner with local restaurants and give out gift certificates. If they sponsor us, we give out gift certificates to get people to grab some dinner before the show. It's worked quite well just in the 10 years that I've been here, because I've watched as more and more storefronts have opened.”
– Jill Lynn Lyons, Executive Director of Center for the Arts of Greater Lapeer

“A lot of art kids hear, ‘How are you going to make money? How are you going to be successful?’, but my parents were the opposite and really encouraged my artistic habits growing up. They supported me fully in anything that I wanted to do and were always right behind me cheering me on.
So I went to college for art. I watched a lot of people who I studied with end up working for Corporate America or join marketing agencies. But when I came back I said, ‘I don't want to work for somebody else. I want to help other people.’ My mom and I would just spitball ideas off of each other, and both of my parents have started businesses and were willing to help make The Whitney Creative Art Studio happen. To be 23-years-old, own a whole storefront that helps other people make art is great. I get to do this as my job and make a living off of it. I'm so blessed and grateful for that, because I couldn't have done it without them.
We have two employees that work here for us every week, and we’ve been able to hire a bunch of instructors to teach classes with their different skills. We've had things like oil and watercolor painting classes, and we're getting really big into ceramics right now. People can come paint bisque and we have a deal with a friend of ours who is an art teacher and she fires for us until we can get our own equipment. We do Walk-in Paint on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. People can come in from 12:00 to 8:00 on Mondays and Wednesdays or 12:00 to 4:00 on Sunday and paint without instruction and can choose ceramics or canvas to paint on. We have art camps for kids, and the thing that I'm most excited for is we're doing a young entrepreneurs club. We have kids who come in and make these bracelets or other things, so we did a four-week program where we have different people coming in to teach different aspects of running a business, and the program ended at Lapeer Days with a kid's market where they will got to sell their stuff for the first time. We do a lot of homeschool outreach opportunities and classes for the community around here because Lapeer has a large homeschooling community. Then we also do art therapy for both kids and adults.
I'm actually in the process of working right now to get switched over from an LLC to a 501(c)(3). It's been a longer process than what I'd hoped, but it’s in the works. With that, our classes can be significantly cheaper, if not free. We'll be able to give out scholarships to local community members for people pursuing art, do a lot more outreach and have a lot more grant opportunities.
When people ask me what I do for work, I forget that I work. I'm very lucky to be able to make a living doing something that I love.”
– Mallory Wetzel, The Whitney Creative Art Studio

“We are lucky to have so many talented people in one small community, and Lapeer is great at embracing the creative community. That’s important because if you don't give those people a chance to do what they do, they will go somewhere else.
Before we bought this studio, I had plans to move to Chicago when I finished school. I didn’t want to stay here and I wanted to live in a larger metro area. I thought there would be more opportunities there, and growing up, everyone said, ‘You shouldn’t stay here.’
I've found growth putting myself in those bigger situations, but Lapeer will always be special to me. My grandparents and my mom have always been here. My family is all here. If I have a daughter, I’m going to name her Whitney and can bring her here and show her this. I want this to be a legacy, and I want it to be in Lapeer. My family has their own legacy in Lapeer and I want to give them something to show for that.”
– Mallory Wetzel, The Whitney Creative Art Studio

“I started in 2007 as a volunteer. I was teaching seventh and eighth grade English when we moved here for my husband's job. I didn’t have a job at the time, so I called the Literacy Center and asked if they were hiring. They weren’t, but had volunteer work and I needed something to do, so I worked in the office for a little bit and then started as a tutor at the GST Michigan Works office that we have in Lapeer. Over time I worked in a bunch of different areas, and eventually became the Assistant Executive Director.
This place is important to me because we help people achieve their goals. I always say I love my job because I get to see and help people do the things that they never thought they could or they were told they couldn't do, like getting a GED. It’s a life-changing event for them and their family.

“The Family Literacy Center provides free one-to-one and small group tutoring for people who want to improve their basic skills. Most of our students want to earn their GED, and last year, we had 53 of our students earn their GED.
We talk to people all the time who want to do this but are ashamed or embarrassed. If they want to earn their GED, I'm going to tell them exactly how it's going to work when they come in the door, so they don't have to be nervous of what's going to happen.
You're going to come in and we'll get your basic information. Then we're going to give you a test, but there's no ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ on the test. We want you to do your best on it, but it’s just to know where you’re at and how we should begin. After that, we're going to match you with a tutor based upon your goals and they're going to work with you on a one-to-one basis. You're going to meet with them one or two times a week for about an hour.
We always get the question, ‘How much is this going to cost?’ It's not going to cost you anything. We hold fundraisers, we write grants and we're scrambling for every dollar to keep the doors open, but it's not going to cost you anything.
I even talk to them about some of the special things that we do. We have some donors that gave us a little bit of money, so that we can do incentives for students. We'll also do other types of assistance, like provide bus passes or flexible schedules. We're going to do everything we can to get you to the finish line as quickly as possible.
For a lot of people, they have nowhere else to go for help. They want to do different things with their lives, but they need a partnership and positive relationships to make that happen. A lot of our students don't have positive relationships with their family or friends. They don't have support structures in their life. That's one thing that our staff and our volunteers are really good at, is developing good, positive relationships with people to help them achieve what they can.
At our graduation this year, a couple of our students said things like, ‘I started too late, but I’m glad I did it.’ But there isn’t a time limit on this. It’s never too late–you did it, and now we can move on to the rest of your life.”
– Mary Shelton and Meredith Donahue, The Family Literacy Center