Tourism & MCABI: Good Match?

Marinette County officials are giving serious thought to moving tourism promotion to the county’s economic development arm, MCABI.

That’s a good idea. Read more here.

MCABI, by the way, stands for Marinette County Association for Business & Industry. It was a moribund little organization until Ann Hartnell took over as executive director in late 2012.

Hartnell and her board are responsible for finally getting the long-talked about business center/ incubator off the ground. The center is located across from Ironworks on Main Street in mid-town Marinette.

She retired at the end of 2017, and will be replaced by Lindsay Callow. That is another piece of good news, I think, as Callow has demonstrated that she is a creative thinker with a solid background in business and marketing.

Callow and her husband own two area wineries, and have done a stellar job getting them off the ground and engaged in the community. They are vested in the community.

Now is the time to make tourism promotion a part of economic development. Lindsay Callow appears to be a great choice to oversee both areas.

I never met the county’s most recent tourism coordinator who quit last fall.

I do know that within the last two years, I picked up a copy of the Marinette County tourism guide that was full of misused words, misplaced modifiers, dangling participles and other grammatical catastrophes. It looked good, but was full of writing errors. I can’t see that happening with Callow at the helm.

Tourism has been a political football in Marinette County. It’s been overseen by the chamber on at least two occasions, by a consultant, by the county, by a committee - and dare we hope, finally under MCABI?


It seems Callow resigned 3-4 weeks into the job.

Oh, well.