Cecilia (“Cece”) Riley is the Communications Director for the
Muskegon Lakeshore Chamber of Commerce, the 2010 winner of the
Michigan Association of Chamber Professionals (MACP) Outstanding Chamber of Commerce award (their second time earning the title). As the Communications Director, Cece handles the website, social media marketing, promotions and events campaigns, email communications, print marketing, and is also the resident photographer for the Chamber.
“Working for our Chamber is a lot of fun because you get to wear a lot of different hats,” she says. She attended
Grand Valley State University and earned a Bachelor’s in General Communications. “The Chamber world is a perfect fit for me,” she says. “[In school] I couldn’t choose [a focus] within Communications because I liked it all!” She studied journalism, video, photography ... everything; she also minored in hospitality and tourism. “My background really played into the Chamber world.”
Muskegon is her hometown, and she has a lot of love for it. “Muskegon is really great because we have awesome stuff to do here year-round,” she explains. “During the summer, we’re on the water and that’s a huge part of our culture and our lives here. There are 27 miles of Lake Michigan beach, 27 lakes and 400 miles of rivers just within our county.” There’s even a dog beach, which you won’t find in most other lakefront communities. “Muskegon is kind of a hidden gem,” she states. “Grand Haven is to the south of us and gets a lot of publicity about their beach, but ours is bigger and more private!”
One of her absolute favorite places to hit in the summer is
Dockers Fish House and Lounge. “It has to be one of THE coolest places on the planet!” she exclaims. It has expansive outdoor deck seating and a tiki bar outside, but Cece swears by the shark tacos. “They are to
die for. I crave them all winter long.” Last year in honor of the National Geographic Channel’s Shark Week they even roasted a giant shark. Plus they have live music on the weekends.
There are a lot of locally-owned restaurants in Muskegon, and the city is also home to the
Culinary Institute of Michigan. “Having the Culinary Institute here breeds a lot of really cool restaurants in the area,” Cece notes. The Institute has its own student-run restaurant, which serves a full lunch and dinner menu Thursdays through Saturdays. “It’s gourmet food on a budget,” Cece says. “They have the BEST food and you can walk out spending only $5!”
A relatively new place called the
Lake House Waterfront Grille features
literal waterfront dining, with booths ON the dock on the water.
Hennessy’s Irish Pub has an authentic Irish flair with Irish cuisine and live Irish bands. And
Bernie O’s Pizza, which used to be a fairly off-radar kind of place before the Food Network featured it on their “Outrageous Foods” for their fire-mouth Firebird pizza, made with (among other things) hot sauce, minced jalapenos, and chili powder 300 times hotter than a jalapeno. Cece also recommends the “Twist,” which has “everything but the kitchen sink on it.”
But sometimes you just want to grab a beer. To do that, mind your P’s and Q’s at
Pints & Quarts Pub and Grill. Owned by the same people who own Dockers, Pints and Quarts (P’s & Q’s, as the locals call it) is the local go-to bar after work with the largest selection of draft beers in the community. (A community which, while not home to its
own brewery—yet—is known for a very strong home brewing presence.)
There are also a lot of specialty shops in the area. Cece recommends the
Cheese Lady, a woman who got her start selling a variety of cheeses at the farmers’ market and whose business is growing faster than she can expand. (Think of her place as an edible Encyclopedia of world cheeses.) There is also the
Lakeside Emporium, another unique specialty shop that is a retro-style candy store that makes their own fudge.
But Muskegon isn’t just an exciting place in the summer. In the cold winter months, there’s the
Winter Sports Complex in
Muskegon State Park. “They have every winter activity you could possibly want,” Cece states. There are two ice rinks, ice skating trails that wind through the woods, and one of only three ice luges in the country. Every year they host “Dine and Glide,” a progressive dinner on a cross-country ski trail that draws people in from as far as Chicago.
Downtown Muskegon is really going through a renaissance right now, which started after the demolition of the Muskegon Mall located right in the center of downtown. (“It killed our downtown,” Cece states.) The revival was spearheaded by the Chamber, which was the first business to build a new building on the site of the old mall; the building has become the business hub of downtown Muskegon, a one-stop-shop for business resources.
The
Lakeside Business District provides all the boutique retail therapy one could need, with places like
Art Cats Gallery which features the handmade work of over 40 different artists, from jewelry to paintings to pottery. The recently-opened
Century Club Center Gallery downtown is phase 1 of a two-part project. The Century Club, formerly a gentlemen’s club then a furniture store, is now home to nearly a dozen unique businesses. “It’s growing by the minute,” Cece says. “In three months it went from two businesses to 11, and it’s nice for the retailers because there is a central check-out system.” She recommends clothing store
Turquoise Boutique and vintage candymakers
McDonald’s Candies. There are also a number of artists with their own shops inside. “This community really fosters entrepreneurism,” she says, and also points out that there is a strong commitment to the arts and culture community. Phase 2 of the project, the
Russell Block Market, will be a nonprofit retail incubator catering to small local vendors and artisans, and will open in the spring.
Muskegon is also home to a number of huge festivals every summer, which draws in crowds by the thousands from all over Michigan, Indiana and Illinois. But while nothing can match the energy of a huge festival in a small town, there’s a lot to see and do in Muskegon even without them. “People who come for the festivals don’t really get to experience that uniqueness,” Cece points out. “This is really an exciting time to be part of our Chamber and part of what’s fostering the growth here in our community.”