Bryan Weaver (Facebook photo)
Over the decades downtown Pontiac has seen a lot of highs and lows.
Bryan Weaver, who opened the Fourth Dimension Coffee Company on at 7 North Saginaw in January with Bryan Weaver and Brad Petrinec, sees a big high coming.
"In recent years the downtown has been kind of vacant,” Weaver tells the Oakland Press. “I didn’t want to go somewhere else and be a little fish in a big pond. We’re here because we have a belief that Pontiac will be the next best cool spot to be.”
There have been some positive things of late. In 2017, the venerable Strand Theatre, which had been closed for decades, reopened downtown. The same year, Peter Karmanos Jr., CEO of MadDog Technology, a high-tech incubator, brought five high-tech start-ups to downtown Pontiac. (Karmanos' MadDog Technology is an investor in Deadline Detroit).
Still, for now, the downtown is lined with vacant stores.
Of course, that could all change.
Deadline Detroit reported in early January:
Voters last August approved an ordinance allowing for 20 medical marijuana pot dispensaries and an unlimited number of growers and processors within the city limits. Some people think marijuana dispensaries could be what helps fuel a sustainable comeback, particularly in downtown Pontiac.
