The city of Trenton is hosting its first ever Noel Nights. The three-week event aims to bolster its local businesses and highlight extracurricular activities.
This is the first year Trenton has a Downtown Development Authority Director. Angelia Pusino is a lifelong resident of Trenton and the city’s first Director of Downtown Development Authority.
Director of Downtown Development Authority Angelia Pusino
The Metro’s Tia Graham spoke with Angelia about the three week long event, family friendly activities and what makes Trenton a tight-knit community.
Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on demand.
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In this episode of CuriosiD, we begin to answer the question:
What happens to the Campus Martius tree after the holidays?
… By first looking into where our Christmas trees come from.
At Hillside Christmas Tree Farm in southern Michigan, the work of growing holiday trees begins long before December.
Tony Stefani runs the multi-generation family operation, and also serves as president of the Michigan Christmas Tree Association. He first became involved with the organization more than a decade ago, after his father brought him to a growers’ meeting.
“I had no idea how large this industry truly is,” he says. “There’s a farm in Michigan that sells a million trees annually. It’s quite astonishing when you consider the scale of this business.”
What customers want to know
Customers at Hillside Christmas Tree Farm often ask how long their trees will last. Stefani says a fresh-cut tree should hold up through the holidays. “I’ve received photos in mid-February showing trees still standing and even beginning to sprout new growth,” he says.
Another category of questions has to do with ornaments. “I’m very detail-oriented,” Stefani says. “If you have heavy decorations, I recommend certain species based on their characteristics.”
Young saplings, like these, require more attentive care.
Tree height is also a growing topic, especially as more homes are built with vaulted ceilings. He says, “There is a strong market for tall trees…but taller trees are generally older [and take] more time in the ground, more effort, and higher costs.”
Better for the environment?
Questions about sustainability are becoming increasingly common, and Stefani believes the benefits of real Christmas trees are clear.
“We offer a product that spends seven to ten years growing in nature, supporting various microecosystems, ” Stefani says. “One acre of trees produces enough oxygen for 18 people.”
He contrasts that with artificial trees, which are “manufactured on assembly lines from petroleum-based materials,” arguing that there’s no environmental case in their favor.
Real trees are also biodegradable. He says that after the holiday season, a tree can be recycled and mulched. “On our farm, we recycle the waste and return it to the land, something that can’t be done with artificial trees,” Stefani says.
A full, healthy tree ready for the holiday season.
A Michigan tree heads to the White House
This year, Michigan earned national attention in the industry. “For the first time in 38 or 40 years, Michigan won the national competition,” Stefani says. Corson’s Tree Farm will send a roughly 15-foot concolor fir to the White House.
“If you win the state competition, you can compete nationally,” he explains. “And if you win nationally, your tree is presented to the president and the first lady.”
Beyond the holidays
Hillside has become a hub for other members of the community. Beekeepers place hives on the property during the summer. Search-and-rescue teams train their dogs on the acreage. Falconers and professional photographers also make use of the farm.
“We’ve hosted hives for supporting pollination,” Stefani said. “Search and rescue training, falconry activities, and collaborations with photographers seeking scenic backgrounds are also part of what we do.”
It takes time to grow
Stefani says one of the biggest misconceptions about the industry is how much time it takes for a Christmas tree to grow to commercial height. “I wish people understood how long these trees are actually in the ground,” he said. “The trees we harvested this year were planted back in 2016.”
Luke Gleason of Clinton, MI returns each year to find the perfect tree.
As president of the Michigan Christmas Tree Association, Stefani says many growers worry about how difficult it is to enter the business, mainly because trees take years to mature before they can be sold.
“Our biggest competitor is the artificial tree,” he says. “Entering this business can be quite difficult for new growers. You’re typically looking at a 7 to 10-year period before you start recouping your investment.”
As the holiday season approaches, he says one of the things he wants those searching for the perfect Christmas tree to understand is the time, energy, and effort it takes to bring this holiday centerpiece to your home.
Stay tuned for the next CuriosiD, where we answer what happens to our Christmas trees after the holidays.
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A WDET listener wanted to know what happened to the big tree in Campus Martius after the holiday season… but first, we take a look at Michigan’s Christmas tree industry to provide more context.
In this episode of “CuriosiD,” we answer a question about a beloved Detroit holiday tradition that ran for nearly 40 years before quietly ending in 2002.
The City of Dearborn says new absentee ballots will be mailed to residents after a printing error was discovered.
City Clerk George Darany says the original ballots included the name of a city council candidate who dropped out of the race.
Darany says people should throw away the old ballot and fill out the new one. Voters who have already submitted their ballot or those who do not send in the correct ballot will have their ballot ‘duplicated’—which does not mean counted twice.
“So in other words, we will have two people assigned to remove the ballot and put it into the duplicate new ballot, so everything they chose would be transferred to the new ballot,” says Darany.
Voters should receive the new ballots in the next ten days.
Early voting begins in Dearborn October 25.
Additional headlines for Thursday, October 2, 2025
Mosques encouraged to increase security
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, Michigan chapter is encouraging local mosques to step up protection after an individual threatened to burn down a mosque in Dearborn Heights this week.
CAIR Michigan Executive Director Dawud Walid says he’s concerned in light of the political climate and the attack on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc on Sunday.
“We encourage all mosques in the state of Michigan to review the care community safety kit an to make sure that they have the property security measures for the Friday congressional prayers.”
Walid says he hopes Dearborn Heights Police investigate the threats at The Islamic Institute of America as a potential hate crime.
He says several mosques in Michigan have received threats in recent weeks.
Detroit Public Schools fills District Board of Education seat
The Detroit Public Schools Community District Board of Education voted not to start a lengthy selection process to fill a vacant seat and will instead offer the seat to the runner up of the last special election.
Current board member Sherry Gay-Dagnogo is expected to resign and start as the city of Detroit’s next Ombudsman.
During a special meeting the board recommended leveraging the finalist from the July 2025 vacancy process, because it has been less than 90 days since a thorough, transparent, and public search was conducted.
Local business pitch competition
The Arab American Women’s Business Council and the New Economy Initiative are announcing their 2025 Pitch Competition. Local Small Businesses and entrepreneurs can pitch their ideas and compete for seed money. Cash prizes between $1000 and $3000, and a grand prize of $5000 will be offered.
The application deadline is October 17. Eligible applicants must be in the ideation phase or have a business less than five years old.
Listen to the latest episode of the “Detroit Evening Report” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Last Monday, tens of thousands of people walked across the Mackinac Bridge as part of an annual Labor Day tradition. Beneath their feet was nearly 70-year-old metal that for the past few years has been slowly getting replaced and then sold off.
So, who ends up buying pieces of the Mackinac Bridge? And how far those pieces end up traveling around the globe?
A beloved landmark
You may have an early childhood memory of crossing the Mackinac Bridge for a trip Up North or maybe you’re a transplant to the state who was wowed seeing the Mighty Mac for yourself for the first time.
Kim Nowack is the director of the Mackinac Bridge Authority. She says when the MBA began replacing the decades-old grating that millions of people drive over every year, people would call asking if they could have it. ”Everybody seems to have some kind of story about the Mackinac Bridge. And so just getting a piece of it for themselves, whether it’s large or small, is on a lot of people’s list of things to do. ”
For a while, the authority would send those folks to a scrap yard. But that changed around 2018.
“We realized that there was a market for these pieces, and many people were interested in having them,” says Nowack.
The MBA now sells different sizes of grating, from small pieces at its office to auctions of 40-foot-long cuts of metal.
In local business
And if you search websites like Etsy, you’ll find many listings for jewelry, wall art and other metalwork all made from these pieces of the bridge. One of those small businesses is Atomic Rabbit Iron Work based out of Charlotte.
James and Megan Race are in their home blacksmithing workshop where James is heating up a piece of the bridge in a red-hot forge, so it’s malleable enough for him to shape it into a bottle opener on his anvil. “Getting these pieces, every time you touch it and you work with it, it just reminds you of going to the UP and all those great memories.”
The Races have shipped their creations, the bottle openers as well as keychains and necklace pendants to all 50 states and even internationally.
“With the people that we sell it to, the stories are so fun,” they say. Like a couple who used a piece as part of a cake topper for their wedding on Mackinac Island. Or a woman who buys one for her husband for every time he participates in a certain bike tour.
DeWitt resident Jan Brnitnall also bought a small piece of the bridge from the Races. It looks like a little cross, cut from where two pieces of metal met for the bridge grating. “It has on it different colors of paint, of the different coatings of paint that have been applied to it over the years,” Brnitnall points out.
In the 18th century, her ancestor came from France to the region to trade fur. “My third great grandfather traversed the straits in a voyager canoe. And I wanted a piece of that to remember him.”
Going to the ends of the Earth
Just as people have come from across the globe to Michigan, it seems like the Mackinac Bridge has made its way worldwide, and even to the South Pole
Indiana resident Brendan Fisher helped incorporate some medallions cut from a piece of the bridge into the ceremonial South Pole marker while working a heavy equipment job in Antarctica.
He describes the marker. “It’s surrounded by 13 flags of different company countries that signed the Antarctic Treaty. you can take a picture with the reflective ball of the marker, and you have the South Pole Station as your backdrop.”
In a video a colleague took, the winds whips around Brendan and the flags as he fits the ball onto the white and red striped pole. You can see his breath as his friend cheers him on.
“Once you start making things out of history, you’re kind of making double the story,” says Fisher.
Fisher’s Bridge medallions were also added to the 2024 geographical South Pole marker, which gets replaced every year as the pole shifts.
“Now it’s in a display case down there at the South Pole. When that display case gets too full, there they ship maybe 10 at a time, to the Smithsonian where it’ll live till eternity,” says Fisher.
The Mackinac Bridge may only span 5 miles, but with the help of some of its biggest fans, its reach is worldwide.
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