Plainwell, the Island City — where city hall is an old paper mill
Downtown Plainwell sits on an actual island between the Kalamazoo River and an 1856 millrace, and its city hall occupies the beautifully reborn paper mill.
Plainwell calls itself the Island City, and it’s not a marketing stretch — it’s geography. In 1856 the Plainwell Water Power Company dug a millrace across a horseshoe bend of the Kalamazoo River. The original downtown has been ringed by moving water ever since. You cannot enter the heart of Plainwell from any direction without crossing a bridge. That gives the little downtown a charm most villages can’t buy — ice cream shops and all. (This is a serious ice cream town.)
The town’s best reinvention story is the mill itself. The Michigan Paper Company ran on the island’s riverfront for more than a century before closing. Instead of letting the hulk rot, the city bought the site and moved in. Since 2014, Plainwell’s city hall and public safety department have operated out of the restored mill building. Riverfront trails thread the grounds. A company town lost its company and turned the factory into its civic front porch. That’s about as Michigan as it gets, in the best way.
Where to see it
Cross any bridge into downtown Plainwell; the old Michigan Paper Company mill on the riverfront now houses city hall, and the island loop makes a fine walk.