Houghton City Manager Eric Waara cuts the ribbon at the ceremony for the new Waterfront Walk on Pewabic Street. The walkway is part of the Lakeshore Drive Rehabilitation Project, which included tearing down the 1978 parking deck and adding greenspace and other amenities. (Houghton Daily Mining Gazette photo)

HOUGHTON — Near a former entrance to the Lakeshore Drive parking deck, Houghton officials, local business leaders and other community members celebrated the new Waterfront Walk on Pewabic Street with a ribbon-cutting Thursday morning.

The new walkway leads from Shelden Avenue to Lakeshore Drive, where the rehabilitation of the corridor has been substantially finished after the summer’s parking deck demolition. While some additional work is being done over the next week, it had progressed enough for the street to be reopened to traffic later Thursday.

The Pewabic Street walkway is part of the larger Lakeshore Drive project. The city borrowed $1.5 million to tear down the 1978 deck. The Michigan Economic Development Corp. added another $1 million for greenspaces, gathering areas and other placemaking elements.

“They put some extra money toward this project so that we didn’t have a patched-up demolition site, we actually have a contributing part of our downtown right now,” said Houghton City Manager Eric Waara.

After the scope of the project was reduced, the Department of Public Works also pitched in with additional improvements, Waara said.

Stairs and a direct sidewalk flank a zigzagging ramp with gentle slopes allowing for wheelchair access. Rain gardens line the sides of the ramp.

Halfway down the walkway is a plaza, where a pair of benches sat Thursday. Once the snow melts next year, they’ll be joined by tables and umbrellas, Waara said. An electrical hook-up will also allow for live music.

Thursday marked the first time people have been able to drive the length of the street since demolition of the parking deck began — and the first time in 45 years they’ve done it under open sky.

“Last spring, we had an aging parking deck,” Waara said. “We couldn’t afford to keep it. We found out over the summer just how bad that needed to go. And it went. So we no longer have that blight literally hanging over our heads. And it’s hard to remember what was there with what got built here.”