Dodge Park: Sterling Heights' riverfront living room

For a city its size — Michigan’s fourth-largest — Sterling Heights keeps its heart in one surprisingly green place: Dodge Park, where the Clinton River bends through the middle of town. The park is the city’s year-round living room, with riverside trails, a splash pad, a farmers market, winter ice skating, and a modern community center on the banks of a river that’s cleaner and livelier than it has been in decades.

Once a year it becomes something bigger. Sterlingfest, staged at Dodge Park since 1983, is one of metro Detroit’s larger summer fairs — three days of headline concerts, a juried art fair, a carnival midway, and fireworks that draw crowds from all over Macomb County. The rest of the calendar, the park hosts everything from cultural festivals to movie nights, which fits a city that has become one of Michigan’s most internationally diverse. Big suburb, small-town main square — Sterling Heights just built its main square on a river.