Bellevue Community Alliance Tests the Need for Local Revitalization
- jwebb072
- 16 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Jack Webb
A signpost welcoming people to the village of Bellevue.
BELLEVUE, Mich. - Located within a village of over 1,300 citizens, the Bellevue Community Alliance is an organization that is relatively new to the local scene. The group is entirely volunteer-run and not-for-profit, and they host meetings on the first Tuesday of every month in the Bellevue High School library. However, despite only being five months old, having been established in Oct. 2025, their mission and vision of “reviving” Bellevue has helped question if there is a need for the revitalization of local communities.
The organization was founded by Kyle Lang, a local resident and a trustee for Bellevue Township.
“He was hearing things in the community that people really wanted to come together, so he started with some public meetings every month,” said Tracy Shick, who after meeting with Kyle, got on board. Although they have volunteers, the regular day-to-day operation is largely handled by them.
“The first thing we worked on was creating a website,” said Shick. “And our number one goal was to really start uplifting our local economy."
One of the ways they have tried to do that is through the creation of a business directory, which features businesses in the town, and in the surrounding area. In total, there are over 150 businesses and places listed, ranging from food and drink options, to civic and public services, to contractors and skilled tradesmen, and more.
“Different residents, businesses, governance, faith leaders, they can submit different events to us, different information, and I'm processing and looking through that all throughout the day,” Shick said.
In addition to the directory, the organization’s website also has a calendar that features a list of events happening in the town. As of Mar. 24, they have 15 events listed for the month of April, including recurring events, such as their own monthly meetings, or one-time events. They have recently expanded their services, with the creation of a digital, bi-weekly newsletter called the Bellevue Herald, which they eventually hope to turn into a physical newspaper that is mailed to everyone.
“We really are two things, a media [source] and a chamber of commerce,” said Shick. “But we don't require fees or anything. It really is free to the community."
A south-facing view of Bellevue’s downtown area.
Are You Hopeful That the Bellevue Community Alliance Will Survive Long-Term?
The existence of the Bellevue Community Alliance raises an important question: is there a need to “revitalize” communities in this area? Shick, who lives in Bellevue and grew up in Olivet, draws on the challenges that technology brings when it comes to local communication.
“There's absolutely no doubt we can use it for so many good purposes, but it has also created a little bit of isolation with people,” Shick said.
Melanie Farkas, a 15-year resident of Bellevue, also notices this trend.
“We have a whole group of people who use Facebook religiously...but then there's this whole other group of people who refuses to get on Facebook,” Shick said. “Everyone is using a different communication channel."
Farkas believes that Bellevue, in particular, needs to be revitalized “on every level,” but she is pleased with what the Bellevue Community Alliance has been doing so far.
“The Bellevue Community Alliance really is just focusing in on how can we come together as a community to make positive change and bring about a better future for ourselves and our children,” Farkas said.
Even in the town five miles to the east, there are similar sentiments.
“I think that there's quite often a need to revitalize any location,” said Olivet Mayor Laura Barlond-Maas, “because there's always people coming in who don't know as much as other people.”
As a longtime city official, however, having first gotten involved with city government in the 1990s, Mayor Barlond-Maas says that there isn’t much that city government can do to help.
“There's all of that kind of work going on that we're doing in order to help make the town more attractive and build the infrastructure,” Barlond-Maas said. “That's really our role. We don't have a large role in bringing in the actual businesses."
She also mentioned some of the past difficulties when city government did try to play more of an active role, going back to her first tenure as mayor from 1997-2005.
“I started a newsletter that goes out quarterly to people who pay water bills, because it goes out with the water bill,” Barlond-Maas said. “I decided I wanted to try to highlight different businesses each quarter, and I got a lot of pushback, actually, from businesses that were not mentioned in that quarter."
Upon hearing about the Bellevue Community Alliance, Mayor Barlond-Maas seemed interested in having an Olivet equivalent to that.
“I think it would be lovely if we could have something like that,” Barlond-Maas said. “I'm happy to talk about it a little bit at the council meeting during my comment section at the end, just to sort of get that idea out there on the record again,” she said.
Despite this, though, she believes that the power truly lies with the citizens themselves, whether that is supporting the local businesses that are already there, or coming together to brainstorm ideas.
“I think that lots of times, because we either live in our own little world on our, frankly, cell phone...we don't always look around and say, ‘what can I do?’,” Barlond-Maas said.
Even if there is a need for the “revitalization” of local communities, there comes a challenge of long-term sustainability, as two newspapers that have served Bellevue, in particular, have gone under in the past, and both Bellevue and Olivet do not have a chamber of commerce. Despite the history not being as favorable towards these initiatives, Shick is hopeful that the Bellevue Community Alliance will stick around.
“I think what makes me hopeful is that this is what the community wants,” Shick said. “And when the community really wants something, they will pull together, they will help fund, they will volunteer, and they will help keep it alive."