Welcome to Michigan -- unless it's Tuesday or Wednesday.
Starting soon, the state's 14 welcome centers will have reduced hours of operation because of budget cutbacks, according to the Michigan Department of Transportation.
One of those centers is in Port Huron, on the Water Street exit from westbound Interstate 94.
Centers in the Lower Peninsula will be closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, according to a MDOT statement. Centers in Mackinaw City and the Upper Peninsula will be closed Saturdays and Sundays.
The centers are staffed and offer literature about attractions throughout the state.
At the Port Huron center, local attractions cover one side of a kiosk. The attractions include a variety of locations, such as Knowlton's Ice Museum of North America, and a pamphlet about architecture in Port Huron.
Bill Shreck, MDOT director of communications, said the Port Huron center has about 225,570 visitors a year.
The centers will be open from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. five days a week instead of seven. Restrooms will be open seven days a week at all centers except those at Detroit, Iron Mountain and Menominee.
Funding for the welcome centers was cut from $5 million to $4 million for the 2010-2011 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.
"Our main goal was not to close any, and then to make sure the (closings) had the least effect on the tourism in the state," Shreck said.
He said days for closure were determined by tourism traffic. He said Tuesdays and Wednesdays were the slowest days in the southern part of the state.
Susan Bennett, director of the Port Huron Museum, said the loss of a few days at the welcome center is not a huge concern.
She said her staff drops off 6,000 to 8,000 general pamphlets a year at the local center, but the museum distributes tens of thousands more to other places, including the Blue Water Chamber of Commerce, the Blue Water Area Convention and Visitor's Bureau and Vantage Point.
"(The welcome center) is such a goofy place to stop," Bennett said. "You can only get to it leaving town if you stop there ... so I really haven't worried that much about them."
http://www.thetimesherald.com/article/20101111/NEWS01/11110317/Welcome-center-hours-slashed