We have that small town ‘what can I do to help?’ I feel that here in Grand Haven, and you don’t get that everywhere.
Laura Girard- Surf Shop
“I absolutely love working with the public. I know that might sound corny to some people, but I love interacting with them, and I love Grand Haven. My employees always say I’m like a mini Chamber of Commerce. I know what’s going on. I know what events are going on. I can recommend different places. If people are lost, I can tell them where to go because I live less than a mile away from my store. People don’t come to my store because they have to, they come to my store because they want to, so it’s easy to engage with people and that’s a great thing.
I’ve always been drawn to the water, and Grand Haven is unique because the downtown is so close to it. I mean, we’re literally a half a block away from the river, and we’re probably a quarter of a mile away from the lake. There are other coastal towns along Lake Michigan, but they don’t necessarily have that ‘you can be there in a quick bike ride’ type of thing, so I just love that part about it.
I moved here when I was 13, and even from the start, everybody was just so welcoming here. Whenever anything major has happened or we need something, the business community, and then just the residents always pull together.
When the Corps of Engineers wasn’t going to put the catwalk back up on our pier, the community raised the money and we got the catwalk put back up.
A couple of years ago, the police department wanted to put life rings out in the lake where when you pull them, it automatically tells 911 that there’s somebody in danger out there. The community helped raise the money for that.
Whenever there’s something important to us, we have that small town ‘what can I do to help?’ I feel that here in Grand Haven, and you don’t get that everywhere. Some people are like, ‘Oh, well, we don’t go to the beach, so we’re not going to bother.’ No, everybody jumps in when they need something. And so I just, I just love my town. I really do. You know, it’s just great. It’s great, whether it’s downtown or East town, I love it.”
We have our little squabbles, just like every town, but I was talking about this with someone the other day, the reason why we have squabbles is because we all want to succeed. Sometimes we think differently about the best way to succeed, but we’re all like-minded in the fact that we want to make this a great place, not only for people to visit, but for people to live. “
