The inaugural Crain’s 50 Most In uential Women in West Michigan celebrates leaders in business, public policy, entrepreneurship, nonpro ts and higher education, all of whom play an integral role in the region’s economy. For this program, they share their inspirational stories and offer insights into their approach to leadership and other best practices that any business can leverage to become more successful. Meet them on pages 7-22.
Macatawa Bank Corp. had been approached numerous times over the years by prospective suitors, but directors at the Holland-based community bank passed every time. en Wintrust Financial Corp. came along, o ering a model that would retain Macatawa Bank’s brand name and local autonomy as a community bank and pay a premium to shareholders, while bringing new nancial services to o er customers locally.
“We’ve entertained a number of interested parties over the years, and this was the one,” Macatawa Bank Board of Directors Chair Richard Postma told Crain’s Grand Rapids Business. “ is was the right one in their business model of maintaining those chartered community banks.”
Wintrust Financial has “signi cant alignment with the culture and management of
See
CWD proposes $32M conversion into 140 housing units in the center of the city
By Kate CarlsonCWD Real Estate Investment LLC plans to invest $31.7 million into renovations to turn the top seven oors of the Fifth ird Bank o ce building into residential units.
e Grand Rapids-based commercial real estate development
company led plans with the city this month to expand the scope of the building’s brown eld plan at 111 Lyon St. NW in the central business district. e original plan was to rehabilitate the upper oors to attract a new anchor commercial or o ce tenant, but the company now is proposing to convert the space into 140 resi-
dential units.
e Grand Rapids Brown eld Authority approved $15.2 million in incentives on April 24. e project still must gain approval from the full city commission.
A construction rm has not been selected yet for the conversion project, which is being designed by Integrated Architecture.
“We are enthusiastic about the potential to bring a residential
See CWD on Page 45
City decides to end on-street seating program
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on Page 44
Family-owned Eastern Floral transitions to second generation
Nearly $4 million will get you a 256-acre contemporary ranch on a private lake
6
The founders of a new additive manufacturing startup in West Michigan are leveraging a partnership with multinational IT firm HP Inc. to innovate in the 3D printing space.
Brandon Teets and Tyler Marvin recently launched Accel Digital Solutions (ADS) at the beginning of 2024, basing their operations out of a facility at 2430 Turner Ave. in Walker.
ADS uses additive manufactur-
ing, or 3D printing, to design and produce various types of complex parts and components for customers in the health care, aerospace, defense, automotive, sports, marine and consumer goods industries.
Through an exclusive arrangement with HP’s personalization and 3D printing business, ADS will test HP’s latest 3D printing material advancements in North, Central, and South America, and help bring those to market.
Teets and Marvin said the new
partnership stemmed from an ongoing relationship Marvin has had with HP, and that the relationship has grown since the launch of ADS.
“I think they’ve seen … how we’re applying the technology and the materials to different products and applications for end use,” Teets told Crain’s Grand Rapids Business.
ADS will serve as one of the sole manufacturers of new multi-jet fusion materials, such as the newly
The Grand Rapids Downtown Development Authority is rethinking a COVID-era strategy that helped restaurants put seating on the streets during indoor dining restrictions, a move that’s drawn criticism from the businesses who’ve invested in creating outdoor spaces for patrons.
Citing underuse of the areas and strain on local retailers, Downtown Grand Rapids Inc., which administers the DDA, is ending a program that provided funding support for restaurants that have been using on-street parking spaces to expand their dining areas.
DGRI is phasing out the current iteration of the street seating program, requiring restaurants to remove their on-street tables and reapply for the city’s parklet program.
“If (restaurants) want to work with the city of Grand Rapids and
get concrete barriers put in and replicate the situation that they have today, that’s fine,” said Mark Miller, managing director of planning and design at DGRI. “It’s just not going to be facilitated or funded by the DDA anymore, and we’re
the spaces, as well as some conflict that arose with adjacent retailers and residents.
“We have multiple businesses that are no longer supportive of these (parklets) and do want them removed and do feel like they are impacting their business.”
Mark Miller, managing director of planning and design at DGRI
going to move out of the realm of that business support and try to move into some different pieces.”
The decision to end the funding came as a result of declining use of
Grand Valley State University’s $140 million plan for a new downtown Grand Rapids center that will train students in technology and related fields has landed federal funding to support operations and programs.
The $2.5 million federal appropriation approved in late March for GVSU’s Blue Dot project, also known as the Center for Talent, Technology and Transformation, is crucial for the project’s operations, university officials say.
“That federal funding, of which we are incredibly grateful, will go to support some of the programmatic and operational components of Blue Dot … (like) staffing, tools and technology,” said Stacie Behler, GVSU’s vice president and chief public affairs and communications officer.
“We have multiple businesses that are no longer supportive of these (parklets) and do want them removed and do feel like they are impacting their business,” Miller said. Miller said that the city is asking restaurants, many of which have created structures to outline and ornament their seating areas, to remove their infrastructure, stating in an email to one bar owner that October survey results determined “these installations are no longer achieving downtown goals.”
However, some bar and
Overall, the Blue Dot facility aims to be both a training facility for tech students and a way to connect entrepreneurs with economic development organizations and employers. Local leaders say it could be a key player in
a broader 10-year strategy to lure and retain thousands of tech-sector jobs to the region.
Announced last year, the Blue Dot Lab aims to revamp the Eberhard Center at GVSU’s Pew campus into a tech center and house computer science, data science and transdisciplinary degrees in business, computing and the humanities.
The federal funding comes less than six months after GVSU secured $30 million from state lawmakers in early November. Behler said the state capital outlay funding will focus on physical brick and mortar improvements.
With the project, GVSU plans to demolish part of the Eberhard Center building and construct a new 15,000-square-foot addition, bringing the center’s total footprint to 175,000 square feet.
The development will add audio and video studios, fabrication labs, collision spaces, research labs and presentation space, according to the university’s capital outlay plan.
In addition to building students’ digital skills and increasing graduates in tech-related fields, one of GVSU’s goals with Blue Dot is to facilitate collaboration between the university and startups, entrepreneurs, economic development
A DeVos-owned development firm has had to tweak dining and commercial plans for a forthcoming 36-room hotel in downtown Ada, though construction should wrap in the coming months on the yearslong project.
The three-story, 37,000-squarefoot Ada Hotel is taking shape at 7415 River St. in the area of Ada Township known as Ada Village. The hotel structure is in place, and the interior is currently being finished from the top floor to the bottom, with a few rooms nearly finished on the third floor.
Hotel construction started in February 2022 after the project was first announced in 2020. The project is now expected to wrap in midto late summer after delays prevented meeting an initial target to open this spring.
The developer and owner of the new Ada Hotel is Baton Collective, formerly known as CDV5 Properties. The firm was founded and is owned by Cheri DeVos Ehmann and Steve Ehmann.
DeVos- and Van Andel-owned AHC Hospitality will operate the Ada Hotel, which will employ 80 to 90 people, according to hotel General Manager Becky Jones.
“I’m just (over) the moon to get this open and be a part of the community in Ada,” said Jones, who’s worked at AHC for 15 years, most recently as food and beverage manager at the JW Marriott downtown. “… The energy, approachability and family-friendliness it’s
going to have — I’m just really excited to bring that culture and be a good neighbor to what’s already being built right now in Ada.”
The hotel — located near the global headquarters of the DeVosand Van Andel-founded Amway Corp. — will begin accepting reservations in May, Jones said.
Jones was one of several project leaders who gave a media tour of the hotel on April 16. Elements of the plan have evolved since Crain’s Grand Rapids Business last reported on the project, including the themes and seating capacity of the restaurants and plans for the ground-floor amenities.
When completed, the hotel will offer 36 guest rooms, first- and second-floor lounge areas, a fitness center, two restaurants and three
ground-floor retail spaces.
The ground-floor restaurant will be a pub/tavern-style venue called The Post, with seating for 120 people, a 10-person reduction to the seating capacity included in initial plans. The restaurant will feature both a “trading post” and a “post office” theme, allowing guests to participate in a pre-paid drink share program where they can buy their friends a drink and write a postcard to go with it. Both will then be stashed in cubby-holes that will line the back of the bar.
“Guests can pick up their mail when they walk in and get this drink,” Jones said. “It’s going to be a really unique concept.”
The second restaurant, Rix, which is named after Ada founder Rix Robinson, will be on the third
floor with indoor and three-season patio seating for 130 people, up from the previous capacity of 110. The concept for Rix also changed from New American fare to small shareable plates and craft cocktails.
Baton Collective CEO Loren Crandell said the Rix concept evolved to better align with “ownership’s overall vision for the restaurant.”
“We’ve switched it to be more of a casual, cocktail lounge with shareable plates and still a fullscale menu … but really trying to celebrate the indoor-outdoor feel because it’s got the outdoor terrace,” Crandell said. “It’s really going to be a super approachable, amazing space.”
The three ground-floor retail spaces replace an earlier iteration of the project design that called for a small meeting room. Crandell said that plan changed in response to community feedback.
“We’re still trying to define exactly what those partners will be for those storefronts,” he said, but suggestions have included a wine retailer, sandwich shop and public gym.
A coffee shop is not being considered for the spaces because the “A6” building that’s under construction on the corner of River Street and Headley Street next to the hotel will house Foxtail Coffee on the ground level and the Baton Collective offices on the second and third floors. That building is owned and is being developed by Baton Collective, as well.
Years ago, the site of the Ada Ho-
tel hosted a venue by the same name that burned down in 1943.
The DeVos family office, RDV Corp., bought the property for $680,000 in January 2019 and announced the hotel concept in early 2020.
As previously promised, project leaders said the hotel will give a nod to that old establishment — and to historic Ada in general — with the hotel’s design and decor.
Craig Schroeder, vice president of construction management for the project’s general contractor, Gaines Township-based First Companies, said a custom-molded glass fiber reinforced gypsum ceiling in the atrium will be visible from all levels and will depict the elevations, topography and Thornapple River that threads through Ada.
Jones said historic photos will be scattered throughout the facility to evoke Ada’s past.
Overall, the design will have a light-filled, warm, and inviting feel with clean mid-century modern lines, but with contemporary comforts, the project leaders said.
The second and third floors will feature nine different room types, including one-bed kings, two-bed queens, family rooms with a bunk bed and a queen, and one-bedroom suites. Most of the rooms will have king beds, Jones said.
The tour took participants through some of the rooms, many of which have balconies overlooking the Thornapple River. A few “executive rooms” will include Peloton bikes and coffee bars.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joined fellow Democrats in Grand Rapids to tout the economic benefits of a new law that could potentially generate new revenue for major entertainment projects such as Acrisure Amphitheater, the soccer stadium and an aquarium.
“Different places in the state have different needs, and as the city (of Grand Rapids) grows, drawing new residents from other parts of the country, it needs to be able to keep up,” Whitmer said at an April 15 press conference downtown. “So this law will help fund projects that improve the quality of life and draw more people to Grand Rapids, ensuring the growth for generations.”
House Bill 5048, which Whitmer signed on April 2, will allow the city of Grand Rapids to levy a new 2% excise tax on hotel and motel stays with approval from voters to pay for eligible entertainment facilities. Those could include the Acrisure Amphitheater and soccer stadium being developed by Grand Action 2.0, as well as an aquarium that’s still in the conceptual phase.
“The inclusion of aquariums and sports complexes in this list of eligible convention and entertainment facilities is a reflection of our understanding that diverse and mod-
ern amenities are crucial to keeping our communities vibrant and competitive,” said state Rep. John Fitzgerald, a Wyoming Democrat who sponsored the bill. “These facilities are not only venues for entertainment and recreation but also catalysts for economic growth, job creation and creating a positive upswing of economic growth that will continue for decades.”
The law, which has support from the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, also allows Kent County and seven other counties that currently levy a 5% hotel/motel excise tax to seek voter approval to increase their excise tax to 8%. Kent County leaders are considering putting the question on the ballot to voters as soon as the Aug. 6 primary, as Crain’s Grand Rapids Business previously reported.
“What I wanted to do was make sure we’re supporting communities that have good ideas and have community support to take that next step, and that’s what this legislation does,” Whitmer said.
Fitzgerald said the law allows communities to decide for themselves whether they want to use the new revenue tool.
“Every community will decide if this is their path or not,” he said.
Kent County already voted in December 2023 to use $15 million
from its current lodging excise tax for the $184 million Acrisure Amphitheater project.
“We are lockstep on this (with the county),” said Grand Rapids Mayor Rosalynn Bliss. “I’ve always said that one thing I’m really proud of in our community is we continue to punch above our weight class. These assets, these amenities, have contributed to us being able to have this thriving downtown we see today in this growing region.”
Large downtown venues like DeVos Performance Hall, Van Andel Arena and DeVos Place have contributed to Grand Rapids’ status as
a “premier destination,” Bliss added. The new legislation can provide the city with a local revenue stream paid for largely by visitors, she said.
“All of these venues support retail, office and residential that is growing downtown,” Bliss said. “They are a huge, major draw for retention and attracting not just residents but also businesses.”
Democrats Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, House Speaker Joe Tate and U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten also attended the press conference.
Tate noted that West Michigan’s success can lift up the entire state,
adding that the new bill accomplishes House Democrats’ goals to improve the quality of life for residents across Michigan.
“This legislation today that we are celebrating just adds to that work that is being done by creating these opportunities for transformational projects that attract talent, that attract jobs, that attract private investment into this region,” Tate said. “That’s been a focus of effort for us.”
Besides the Acrisure Amphitheater and soccer stadium projects, several speakers noted that the legislation could also support an aquarium in West Michigan that is in earlier planning stages compared to the other projects.
A feasibility study conducted last year in coordination with Kent County, the city of Muskegon, Canopy Strategic Partners and John Ball Zoo found an aquarium in the region would be able to compete on a national level and generate billions of dollars in economic activity over a 10-year period.
“The aquarium is a long journey, but potential funding is always an important first step,” John Ball Zoo CEO Peter D’Arienzo told Crain’s Grand Rapids Business after the press conference. “There is a lot of progress happening behind the scenes.”
Bing Goei is in the middle of succession planning for his businesses, which are mainstays in West Michigan, but he is hardly retiring.
Goei, 75, started stepping away from the day-to-day operations at Eastern Floral and the Goei Center over the past couple of years as his daughter, Rachael Goei Vander Heide, showed more interest in running them. Goei remains the CEO of both businesses, but his daughter is increasingly taking the lead and assembling her team.
“My wife and I have always dreamt that as we continued to grow our family and entered into the business world that we could be somewhat successful and pass on our legacy to our children in some form,” Goei said. “Rachael has taken over and she has put a good team around her.”
Turning over the reins has freed up Goei to lean into his next chapter: Becoming the first Asian-American to serve as a city commissioner in Grand Rapids, where he represents the Third Ward, all while launching Grand Rapids’ first Asian International Leadership Summit.
Goei was encouraged by the number of participants in the leadership program’s inaugural year.
“I’m the first Asian American to sit on the city commission in our city’s history,” Goei said. “If you look at any other boards, there are very few Asians, if any, especially if you look at financial or economic development boards. And yet, in Kent County we are one of the strongest small business economies.”
Goei hopes the Asian International Leadership Summit will send the message that immigrants can be a driving force in West Michigan’s success.
“The whole leadership summit was organized because I saw the Asian and international talent leaving the community,” Goei said. “If you want to stay here, we’ll help open doors for you. We’re not going to do it for you, but we’re going to help introduce you to the right leadership. The approach we’re taking, and that I always tell young people, is to say there are opportunities here and companies that want them for the talent they bring.”
Even before launching the summit, Goei had a reputation for helping other up-and-coming leaders. Ace Marasigan said Goei was one of the first people he reached out to for advice when launching the Grand Rapids Asian Pacific Festival in 2017.
“He’s a great mentor for many because of his commitment to the Asian community,” said Marasigan, the executive director of the Grand Rapids Asian-Pacific Foundation. “He has continued to pave the way for us as immigrants for what we can do as long as we work hard.”
Marasigan credited Goei for having a “significant impact” on his career by showing what an immigrant can accomplish in West Michigan.
“Our story might be slightly different but still we have similar struggles, challenges,” Marasigan said. “The entrepreneurial spirit
has always been there, but was awakened when I saw what Bing was doing.”
Goei’s passion for immigrants and underrepresented communities in West Michigan stems from learning about how his father had been unfairly compensated as a schoolteacher after the family immigrated to Grand Rapids.
Goei’s family fled Indonesia as political refugees and lived in the Netherlands for five years before coming to Grand Rapids in 1960 when he was 11 years old. The family was sponsored by the Fuller Avenue Christian Reformed Church.
As Goei got older, he learned about the mistreatment of his father.
“I promised him that as long as I live, I will always find ways to improve the treatment of human beings, period, no matter who they are, whatever it is, and to ensure that underrepresented and underserved communities get a fair shake,” Goei said. “That’s always been a part of who I am. I think that’s also one of the reasons why I applied for this position (of) Third Ward commissioner, which has been historically disinvested.”
Goei was sworn in on March 19 to fill a vacant commissioner seat in the city’s Third Ward after Nathaniel Moody resigned at the end of 2023.
“I’m going to be very aggressive about making sure that the Third Ward receives not only its equal shares, but its equitable shares of funding that’s been passed out to a lot of other communities,” Goei said.
Throughout his career in West Michigan, Goei has been a strong advocate for immigrants and other minority communities, particularly in business. In 2014, Goei was appointed to the first director of the Michigan Office for New Americans by former Gov. Rick Snyder in an effort to attract international talent to grow the state’s economy. He also received the Hillman-Orr Award from the World Affairs Council of West Michigan in 2022 for bringing global awareness and international understanding to the region.
Goei has taken a gradual approach to the leadership transition at Eastern Floral and the Goei Center, but he said his daughter has taken the businesses “to a new level.” He noted Goei Vander Heide is more knowledgeable about technology, which has been a major asset for the company.
“Overall, I’m very happy and proud of what Rachael has done in terms of putting a team together and the tough choices she was needing to make, but she made them and we’re better for it,” Goei said.
Leaning on best practices he’s observed in other succession plans, Goei is being very intentional to avoid micromanaging. He said he’s giving advice to his daughter only when she seeks it.
“I said if you’re going to do this and want to learn this, you’re going
to have to make mistakes, and I’m going to have to allow you to make those mistakes,” Goei said. “But again, I have enough confidence in her to know what she’s doing.”
Goei Vander Heide returned to Grand Rapids after spending about two decades outside of the area. She started doing accounting for Eastern Floral in the fall of 2019 and has been working full time in her father’s businesses since her family relocated to the area in the summer of 2021. She now serves as president of Eastern Floral and the Goei Center.
“I’m very honored to have this opportunity,” Goei Vander Heide said. “Eastern Floral obviously has been a huge part of the Grand Rapids and West Michigan community, so I don’t take any of this lightly — the responsibility and opportunity to do this and continue the legacy of not only Eastern Floral but
also my dad.”
While Goei Vander Heide stepped away from the business and West Michigan for a time, she said her life has been dotted with “little touch points” and experiences in the floral industry. Goei Vander Heide worked in a flower shop in East Grand Rapids as a teenager, and more recently spent time working at the Judith Blacklock Flower School in London. She also remembers riding around Grand Rapids in her dad’s truck as he sold baskets and other flower shop equipment to florists around town while running his first wholesale business.
In addition to the event business at the Goei Center, Eastern Floral has several divisions including online flower delivery, plantscaping, floral design classes and a gift shop.
“The floral industry continues to change, and I love the learning and
creative aspect of it,” Goei Vander Heide said. “I look at the depth of our offerings and try to see ways to grow each and every part of the business. There are single, standalone businesses of each of the things we do, but we’re all together in one.”
Eastern Floral operates one physical location at 2836 Broadmoor Ave. SE in Kentwood. Bing Goei and his wife, Jean, sold two prior locations to daughter and son-in-law, Nikki and Rick Huisman, who purchased the floral shops in Holland and Grand Haven in 2021. The locations now do business as Huisman Floral.
Goei got his start in the floral business when he bought Reliable Wholesale at the age of 23. He later took a hiatus from the floral industry in 1986 when he was appointed as director for race relations for the First Reformed Church of North America. He later re-established his wholesale floral business, acquired Plainfield Floral in 1996, and bought Eastern Floral in 2001 when the Florida-based company filed for bankruptcy.
Goei attributes much of his business success in the floral industry to acquiring other businesses along the way and learning from mentors. They included the late Frank DeVos, a cousin of Amway Corp. co-founder Rich DeVos and the original founder of Eastern Floral who sold the business to Gerald Stevens in 1998 because his children did not want to take it over.
Jonathan and Renee Grice bought a vacant youth camp on an Oceana County lake five years ago and transformed the massive rural property into their personal dream home and an outdoor lover’s paradise.
After a job change, the Grices are now selling their approximately 8,000-square-foot home in Ferry Township, near Hesperia, for just less than $4 million. The township is in the Huron-Manistee National Forest, about a half-hour drive from Silver Lake Sand Dunes on Lake Michigan and about 65 miles northwest of Grand Rapids.
Their Realtors, Ryan Ogle and Allyson Fea of Kentwood-based Blu House Properties, listed the property on March 19.
The sale will include 256 acres of rolling hills and hardwoods surrounding the 15-acre private, spring-fed Gillon Lake. Along with the house, the buyer will get a horse barn and a caretaker’s cottage that were part of the former Camp Keewano.
According to past media reports, Camp Keewano started out as a girls’ camp under the ownership of the Camp Fire organization in the 1950s, but later became co-educational around the 1970s before closing in 1996. Since then, the property has been privately owned.
The Grices combined their purchase of the nearly 240-acre camp with a separate purchase of about 20 acres to arrive at the current property size.
They spent their first three to four years of ownership tearing down the deserted camp’s former dining hall, chapel, counselors’ outpost and several cabins to make way for their home, which they completed in 2023.
The house overlooks the lake with panoramic and completely private views from every window.
“It’s our little secret out here,” Jonathan Grice said.
The home’s amenities
The sprawling contemporary ranch includes 4,000 square feet on the main level, 4,000 square feet in the walkout basement, and a fourcar garage topped by an in-law suite with a separate entrance.
Including the bedroom and bathroom in the guest suite, the house offers six bedrooms and five bathrooms.
The main floor has the owner’s suite, two bathrooms, an office, movie theater, great room, formal dining room and a large open plan kitchen.
The lower level is centered by a large rec room, with four more
bedrooms, two bathrooms, plenty of storage, a workout area and a safe room.
One of the family’s favorite features is the covered three-season porch adjacent to the great room and accessible from the kitchen hall. The screened porch has a cozy seating area and fireplace, and guests can exit the porch and step onto a massive outdoor patio with a fire pit.
From the patio, the yard slopes 40 yards to the shoreline, where there are two docks and an anchored swimming raft on the lake.
On the opposite side of the house, there’s a wraparound front porch that connects to a back deck with a hot tub overlooking the lake.
Blu House Properties’ Fea said she and Ogle are marketing the listing primarily as a single-family house and, to a lesser degree, on the commercial multiple listing service as a potential corporate retreat center.
“It’s such a big house, and the land is so vast, and it’s all private, so a company could send like 15 of their team members there for the week, and they could do team-building activities and all have places to stay,” Fea said.
With no formal training, Renee Grice designed most of the home with initial help from an architect and then later from lumberyard staff, who helped her translate sketches into an action plan.
Grice said her interest in interior design started on Pinterest seven or eight years ago and blossomed from there, to the point she realized she was working at a high enough skill level to manage the challenge of designing their home mostly on her own.
“(Pinterest) is more decor, but I didn’t realize design was going to be a thing that lit me up like it did with this project,” she said.
They chose what they call a “modern mountain” style for the home, with vaulted, wood-beamed ceilings and wall space for taxidermied hunting trophies.
“We’ve always been drawn to the ‘Out West lodge feel,’ but obviously, we wanted to make it something that fit this area,” Jonathan Grice said.
Renee Grice added that the couple wanted to avoid having it look like it was “Montana sitting in Michigan,” and they also intended it to be functional for a modern lifestyle. Therefore, they chose a largely open floor plan and contemporary finishes.
The couple hired Weidman-based Anchor Construction as their builder.
Within the past couple of months, they took leftover building materials and constructed a treehouse in the yard. It overlooks the lake and echoes the design of the main house.
Renee Grice said the estate was “made for entertaining.”
“Everything was designed for groups, for a large family, for sharing,” she said. “This has been a bittersweet chapter for us (preparing to sell). This is a special place. A lot of people have come here, and it’s been fun to share.”
Jonathan Grice is originally from Shelby, which is about 12 miles west of Gillon Lake. Buying this property felt like “coming home,” he said.
“People don’t usually think of Hesperia as having a gem like this, but with the combination of being from around here, but also all of the outdoor adventures we can have, it was a really good fit for where we wanted to just set down roots,” he said.
A big part of the draw was owning his own woods for hunting and a deep-water lake for ice fishing and boating, as well as the property’s proximity to the north branch of the White River.
“Right now, the steelhead are in (the river), and in the fall, the salmon are in it,” he said. “(We also have) any kind of hunting you want to do.”
The Grices’ forest also contains a former railroad grade that’s now partly their driveway and partly a trail system that connects to state land just north. They’ve used the trails for snowmobiling, hiking and riding all-terrain vehicles through the woods.
“Sometimes, Oceana County gets overlooked, as when people are looking for Lake Michigan or lakeshore property, they’ll gravitate toward other counties,” Jonathan Grice said. “But Oceana County inland, I really love it. The outdoors is second to none around here.”
The Grices noted other benefits include being just a half-mile north of M-20 and within a 20-minute drive of the Oceana County Air-
port, which accommodates private aircraft.
Fea, one of the Realtors working on the listing, said the list price was based on the large amount of land, combined with the luxurious accommodations and outbuildings.
“There’s not that many massive chunks of land like that available in Michigan … (and) no expense was spared on the house,” she said. “Pair those two together, and looking at it all as one, it’s obviously going to be a unique buyer, somebody that’s absolutely going to adore the property.”
The Grices said the property is too much of a treasure for them to consider parceling it up for development at this time.
“In our minds, it’s a gem being kept just like it is, so we didn’t want to go into it with a mindset of developing or breaking it up,” Jonathan Grice said. “Now that we’re looking at passing it on, we’d like to sell it that way.”
Crain’s Grand rapids Business is celebra ting the 50 Most influential Women in West Michigan for their leadership and accomplishments in business, public policy, entrepreneurship, nonprofits and higher education. While the honorees cover a broad spectrum of industries, they all have one thing in common: They are pushing West Michigan forward with their leadership, knowledge, expertise and collaboration. All of them are an integral part of the business community and are focused on using their talents to make the region a great place to live and work. Join us in celebrating these leaders at a special luncheon event on May 1 at the JW Marriott in downtown Grand rapids. Tickets to Crain’s inaugural 50 Most influential Women in West Michigan event are available under the Events tab at crainsgrandrapids.com.
President and CEO
Steelcase Inc.
Steelcase Inc. President and CEO Sara Armbruster is passionate about helping people do their best work by creating places that work better.
After more than a decade with the company, Armbruster in 2021 assumed the role of CEO at the global office furniture manufacturer based in Grand Rapids. She is the 10th CEO in the company’s 112-year history.
Throughout her tenure with Steelcase, she has served in executive roles that have spanned strategy, innovation and technology, and business leadership.
Armbruster has a proven track record of delivering growth and innovation through strategic, results-oriented leadership. Her diverse responsibilities have included leading information technology, global design research, new business initiatives and the company’s global COVID-19 crisis response team.
Before joining Steelcase, she led strategy and business development at Banta Corp., a global printing and supply chain services company, and she previously worked for McKinsey & Co.
Armbruster holds a bachelor’s degree in Slavic languages and literatures from Yale University, a master’s degree in international relations from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, and an MBA from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College.
In addition to being a board member at Steelcase, Armbruster also serves on the boards of the Steelcase Foundation, Winnebago Industries, Catalyst, Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose, BIFMA, The Right Place, The Economic Club of Grand Rapids and Business Leaders for Michigan
Amanda Barbour
Founder and CEO
Children’s Healing Center
Since opening the country’s first recreation center for children with weakened immune systems and their families in 2015 on Grand Rapids’ east side, Amanda Barbour has grown the Children’s Healing Center to become a refuge for nearly 3,000 kids.
The idea for Children’s Healing Center stemmed from Barbour’s cancer diagnosis in her early 20s. While being treated at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, Barbour witnessed children fighting for their lives but who were isolated and alone.
Over five years of gathering community support, Barbour raised $3.2 million to launch the center in 2015. Since opening, the center’s membership has grown from 50 families to 275.
That rapid success has prompted the need for a larger location in West Michigan and also spurred plans for a second location in Ypsilanti Township, which secured $5 million in state budget funding in 2020. The southeast Michigan location is on track to open in July, while the new Grand Rapids location is set to open in September. The two projects represent more than $10 million in new construction.
The state budget allocation also allowed Children’s Healing Center to develop a pilot program with Priority Health that tests a reimbursement model for its members and tracks health outcomes to better understand social determinants of health in the healing process.
In addition to her work leading the Children’s Healing Center, Barbour serves on the First Steps Kent Commission’s board as well as the Community Impact Council for the Catholic Foundation of West Michigan.
Hannah Berry
Executive Director
Lions & Rabbits Center for the Arts
Hannah Berry is the executive director at Lions & Rabbits Center for the Arts in Grand Rapids. With a background in strategic planning, transformative placemaking and workforce development, she is dedicated to fostering creative community development.
Berry established Lions & Rabbits in 2016 with a vision to nurture artistic expression within the community. After graduating from Grand Rapids Community College and Kendall College of Art and Design, she recognized the potential of public spaces as hubs for creative expression. Collaborating with artists and community partners, she developed arts-based classes and curated events in the downtown and Creston neighborhoods for several years.
In 2021, Berry expanded her vision by founding Lions & Rabbits Center for the Arts, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting public artists and intentional placemaking. Her leadership has led to implementing comprehensive plans driving creative community growth, enhancing cultural landscapes and creating vibrant hubs for artistic expression.
Her ability to secure funding through grants, sponsorships and partnerships has supported Lions & Rabbits’ mission. Under her guidance, she has directed and managed a team of over 800 artists, fostering a collaborative and innovative work environment.
Berry’s community involvement includes work with Grand Rapids Arts and Cultural Collective, Grand Rapids Mayor’s Next Generation Advisory Board, Steelcase’s Better Futures Community, Kent County’s The Big Sort 2050, Creston Business Association, North Quarter Corridor Improvement Authority, Downtown Grand Rapids Inc., Mel Trotter Ministries and Friends of Grand Rapids Parks.
Tasha
Blackmon President and CEOCherry Health
During her 18 years at Cherry Health, the largest Federally Qualified Health Center in the state, Tasha Blackmon has championed health justice through aggressively disrupting health care disparities.
Cherry Health provides integrated health care services to more than 55,000 patients in Barry, Kent, Montcalm, Muskegon, Ottawa and Wayne counties.
Her experience comes from an operational perspective, having established high standards of care using a health equity lens to treat an individual’s health needs holistically, rather than symptomatically.
Blackmon led numerous large-scale expansion and development projects and held six positions within Cherry Health before becoming president and CEO in 2018, the first woman of color to attain the role. As an accomplished and mission-minded leader, Blackmon said it is imperative to her that the community is healthier, one patient at a time.
Blackmon’s passion for her hometown extends beyond the health care industry. Her board memberships include the American Heart Association, Housing Kent, Next Pointe Real Estate Services, Rende Progress Capital and YMCA of Greater Grand Rapids. Blackmon also serves on various committees for Black Impact Collaborative, Grand Rapids Community Master Plan, The Economic Club of Grand Rapids, Grand Valley College of Health Programs, Grand Valley State University MHA and the Grand Rapids Justice and Governance Partnership.
She also is a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), National Association of Health Services Executives (NAHSE) and United Way: Women United.
Mayor
City of Grand Rapids
Rosalynn Bliss became Grand Rapids’ first female mayor when she took office on Jan. 1, 2016, after serving as a Second Ward city commissioner for 10 years. She was re-elected for a second term in November 2019.
Bliss cites several accomplishments while serving in office, including securing funding to connect trails, passing a parks millage and moving city operations off of 201 Market Ave. SW to clear the way for a downtown amphitheater.
“In addition to the vibrancy downtown, we have developed tools that have enabled significant growth in our neighborhood business districts, invested in our neighborhoods and enhanced public safety with our fire prevention efforts, the creation of a mental-health co-response team and our Homeless Outreach Team,” she said. “Ultimately, I believe all of these efforts have contributed to Grand Rapids being recognized as one of the best places to live in the United States, which I hope others are proud of as well.”
Bliss also is active in the community.
She is past president of the Michigan Municipal League, and currently serves on the boards of the Downtown Development Authority, Monroe North TIFA, Experience Grand Rapids, the the Grand Rapids-Kent County Convention/Arena Authority, Grand Rapids Promise Zone Authority, Housing Kent, ArtPrize 2.0, Urban Core Mayors, The Economic Club of Grand Rapids and Interurban Transit Partnership.
Before serving as mayor, Bliss was director of residential services at D.A. Blodgett-St. John’s and most recently served as the Frederik Meijer Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Grand Valley State University’s Frederik Meijer Honors College.
Majority Leader
Michigan Senate
Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks grew up on a dairy farm as the daughter of Dutch immigrants, quickly learning the value of hard work at a young age. After her father died when she was only 6, Brinks watched her mother raise five children while also running the family farm — setting an example of resilience and determination that she carries with her to this day.
From 2012 to 2018, Brinks served in the Michigan House of Representatives. She was elected to her first term in the Michigan Senate in 2018, becoming the first woman to represent Grand Rapids in the state Senate since Eva McCall Hamilton was elected in 1920. Now, Brinks is the Senate Majority Leader, the first woman ever to hold this position in the Michigan Senate.
As a legislator, Brinks participated in efforts to protect Michigan’s drinking water from toxic PFAS chemicals, contributing to the creation of the Michigan PFAS Action Response Team. She also championed expansion of Medicaid coverage for a full 12-month postpartum period for moms and babies to improve equity in maternal and infant health care for vulnerable communities.
Brinks’ other legislative priorities include repealing the retirement tax and right-to-work laws, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, reestablishing prevailing wage and expanding civil rights protections for the LGBTQ+ community.
She is a graduate of Calvin College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Spanish with a concentration in sociology.
Grand Valley State University congratulates President Philomena Mantella, Trustees Shelley Padnos and Kate Pew Wolters, and WGVU radio host Shelley Irwin on being named to the Crain’s Grand Rapids Business list of 50 Most Influential Women.
Their positive influence on higher education, our community, their colleagues, and their chosen work have made a lasting impact on West Michigan and beyond.
Lauren Davis has led the West Michigan team at Huntington Bank as the regional president since July 2022. Her lifelong career has included positions in retail, operations, risk management, finance and commercial banking.
A native of northern Michigan, Davis has dedicated nearly three decades to serving West Michigan’s financial landscape, showcasing expertise in sales, strategic expansion and fostering top-tier talent. She’s also active in the community, serving board positions at The Right Place, The Economic Club of Grand Rapids, and King Milling, a family-owned business. She is a strong advocate for women’s empowerment and mentorship with her former roles at YWCA and Michigan Women Forward. Additionally, Davis serves as the 2024 chair for Samaritas’ Be the Rock Gala.
Davis holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from Central Michigan University and an MBA from Grand Valley State University.
While some may see a circuitous path, Davis said all her career moves are part of her plan.
“Building on acquired expertise, seeking mentorship, and cultivating advocates both internally and externally became integral to my career progression,” she said. “Over the years, my development plan presented me roles that were lateral or even taking a step back to create those opportunities to move forward in the future. This mindset has helped me focus more on learning new skills, gaining knowledge or experiences instead of focusing on title changes. Staying true to my plan like a compass has created a path for my success.”
Betsy DeVos Director
Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation
The former U.S. Secretary of Education may be most active on the national stage these days for her schools-related advocacy, but Betsy DeVos remains active in West Michigan as well.
She is a director of the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, which donates hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations across the area. In 2023, she and her husband, Dick DeVos, spoke to lakeshore arts groups at a strategic planning session hosted by the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland. Also in 2023, her alma mater, Calvin University, honored her with its Distinguished Alumni Award.
DeVos authored the book, “Hostages No More: The Fight for Education Freedom and the Future of the American Child” in 2022 following her tenure in former President Donald Trump’s administration.
DeVos counts her efforts as Education Secretary as one of her greatest professional accomplishments “advocating for policies that help students, empower families and improve education in all 50 states.”
DeVos is a fixture on Fox News and Fox Business talking about education issues. In November 2023, she joined the board of the Manhattan Institute, a New York-based conservative think tank that called her “the nation’s leading advocate for education freedom.”
She is a former chair of the Michigan Republican Party as well as Grand Rapids-based private investment and management firm The Windquest Group. DeVos also is the former chair of the American Federation for Children and The Philanthropy Roundtable.
Cheri DeVos
EhmannFounder and Owner
Baton Collective
Cheri DeVos Ehmann is the founder and owner of Baton Collective, a family-owned commercial real estate and business management company focused on engaging the local community, supporting neighborhoods, and creating a positive place for residents and visitors in the greater Grand Rapids area.
The company has a diverse portfolio that includes retail, restaurant, commercial and office real estate. Its most recent project has been the redevelopment of downtown Ada. DeVos Ehmann also served as the founder of Michigan Sports Academies, which provides club sports programming for West Michigan youth in volleyball, basketball and soccer. Otter Air Services, which offers concierge charter air travel services, is the most recent addition to the Baton Collective portfolio.
“I grew up in Ada and the development and rejuvenation of Ada Village has therefore been a meaningful mission for me,” she said. “It’s been gratifying to see the village change and grow to meet the needs of the neighborhood it serves, becoming a true community hub with retail stores, restaurants, offices, residential and fun local events bringing people together.”
DeVos Ehmann established the CDV5 Foundation with her family as a tool to support many different causes and organizations, including children and families through education, health and wellness initiatives in greater Grand Rapids and select communities around the world.
A Hope College alumnus, she is a past member of the Hope College Board of Trustees, Hope College Business Advisory Council and Amway Corp. DeVos Ehmann also played an integral role in the initial planning and design of the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital.
Evelyn Esparza-GonzalezPresident
Hispanic Center of Western Michigan
Evelyn Esparza-Gonzalez brings more than a decade of expertise in nonprofit administration to her role as executive director of the Hispanic Center of Western Michigan.
A native of Mexico, EsparzaGonzalez immigrated to the United States at age 15, igniting her dedication to creating an inclusive space for the Latinx community in West Michigan. Through her leadership and a committed team, she strives to position the Hispanic Center as a trusted institution delivering tailored, high-quality services to meet community needs.
Her professional journey began in early childhood development, where she recognized the growing support needs of Latinx families. Her instrumental role in establishing the Strong Beginnings’ Familias Fuertes program at Family Futures underscored her commitment to community service. As the finance director at the Hispanic Center, Esparza-Gonzalez revamped and stabilized critical departments including accounting, HR, fund development and language services, establishing a strong operational foundation. Her expertise in budgeting, financial forecasting, reporting and cash flow management has bolstered the organization’s financial stability.
Esparza-Gonzalez holds a master’s degree in accountancy from Davenport University and a bachelor’s degree in accounting and general business from Grand Valley State University. Beyond her professional endeavors, she is passionate about guiding and supporting the next generation in their educational and career pursuits.
She sits on the boards of Cherry Health, MI PODER and The Employers’ Association. She’s also active with the Calvin University Advisory Group, The Health Equity Council, Kent County 2050 Steering Committee, KConnect’s Community Engagement Workgroup and Latina Network.
Principal, Architect
Mathison | Mathison Architects
As firm principal and owner at Mathison | Mathison Architects, an award-winning architecture and design firm in Grand Rapids, Megan Feenstra Wall is passionate about creating spaces that matter to people and places that work for everyone. For the licensed architect, that includes designing for the breadth of human ability and driving change in the profession around the lack of women and diversity.
As the Midwest regional executive of commercial banking for PNC Bank, Krista Flynn focuses on leading her teams to provide financial solutions to businesses across the lower middle market.
Flynn has 28 years of experience in the financial industry, including commercial and middle market banking, capital markets and credit.
Active in her community, Wall has served as board president of the American Institute of Architects Grand Rapids and worked on a national taskforce to rewrite the AIA’s Framework for Design Excellence, the trade group’s guide to sustainable and inclusive design. She founded a local Women in Architecture group, juries and serves on advisory boards for Ferris State University and Kendall College of Art and Design’s architecture programs, and received the AIA Michigan Young Architect Award in 2016.
Wall said some of her most meaningful projects and collaborations include Special Olympics Michigan, St. Cecilia Music Center, Payload, Traverse City Whiskey Co. and small nonprofits like Thresholds, Disability Advocates of Kent County, UCOM and Alpha.
Past and present board work includes Design Week West Michigan, Children’s Healing Center, Ferris State Architecture Advisory Board and the Board of Formation for the MArch program at Kendall College of Art and Design. She also mentors students through the Peter C. Cook Leadership Academy, a program of Grand Valley State University’s Hauenstein Center.
She said achieving executive-level leadership roles not only in banking, but in corporate banking – which tends to be heavily male-dominated – all while remaining grounded in authenticity is one of the highlights of her career. Flynn said she enjoys using that experience to influence the next generation of finance professionals and help them navigate their careers.
She’s also proud of leading a large employee and client base through a significant leadership change plus two mergers within a two-year time period earlier in her career.
Flynn serves on the boards of Michigan Economic Development Corp., Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, Grand Action 2.0, KConnect, Armed Forces Thanksgiving and Safari Circuits. She also participates on committees with Kent County 2050, Association for Corporate Growth and the Convention and Arena Authority.
“West Michigan is really near and dear to my heart. I love this community,” she said. “I like being on the boards that I serve, and really like making West Michigan the best place to live, work and play.”
Flynn’s volunteer efforts include working with Kids’ Food Basket, Heart of West Michigan United Way and Samaritas.
Tina Freese Decker serves as president and CEO of Corewell Health, Michigan’s largest in-state health system that provides care and coverage to millions of residents. Corewell Health includes 21 hospitals and 300-plus ambulatory sites and integrated insurer Priority Health, the third-largest provider-sponsored health plan in the country with more than 1 million members.
Freese Decker, who leads a team of more than 65,000 employees, has more than 20 years of experience in integrated health systems and has developed a track record for cultivating culture and driving strategy.
“My goal is to make health better — for everyone,” Freese Decker said. “In 2022, we successfully brought two of Michigan’s leading health systems together (Beaumont Health and Spectrum Health) to form Corewell Health. From day one, physicians, nurses and team members across the state came together to connect, learn and implement best practices to innovate and truly transform health. Our integration has allowed us to do many things, including offering even greater access to specialized care in rural and urban areas across the state.”
Freese Decker will serve as chair of the American Hospital Association beginning in 2025. She is a current board member and past board chair for The Right Place and The Economic Club of Grand Rapids, and past board chair of the Michigan Health and Hospital Association. She also serves on the boards of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, Business Leaders for Michigan, Detroit Regional Partnership and Detroit Regional Chamber.
LaSandra Gaddy
President and CEO
Grand Rapids Community Foundation
LaSandra Gaddy in February became president and CEO of Grand Rapids Community Foundation, Michigan’s oldest community foundation, as the organization stepped into its second century of service and impact.
In her role, she guides the foundation’s staff and board in their fundraising, grantmaking and community leadership efforts. A passionate servant leader with more than 20 years of executive leadership experience, Gaddy has extensive expertise in team development, strategic planning, forming collaborative partnerships and fund mobilization, and is focused on expanding the scope and reach of Grand Rapids Community Foundation.
She previously served as CEO of Women’s Resource Center, a gender-responsive organization focused on improving women’s economic opportunities. Before that, she held various executive leadership roles in the nonprofit sector focused on building long-term, sustainable change. Gaddy also spent 15 years in banking, including serving as a vice president in retail, business banking and wealth management.
Recognized for her leadership and expertise in the Grand Rapids community, Gaddy has received many awards and honors. She was a member of the 2023 Grand Rapids 200 by Crain’s Grand Rapids Business, was honored at the Giants Awards in 2019 with the W.W. Plummer Humanitarian Award, and is a previous Athena Award finalist. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Cornerstone University and earned an executive MBA from Grand Valley State University.
Congratulations on being named one of Crain’s
Mshkawzi Law LLP
Tanya Gibbs, a citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, is branching out on her own this year.
Gibbs and two law partners on April 1 formed Mshkawzi Law LLP, a womanowned and majority Native law firm based in Grand Rapids. In the Anishinaabemowin language, “mshkawzi” means to be powerful, physically strong and tough.
Since 2013, Gibbs worked for Rosette LLP, where she focused her studies on business transactions. She graduated magna cum laude from Thomas M. Cooley Law School and holds a bachelor’s degree in political theory and constitutional democracy from James Madison College at Michigan State University.
Gibbs’ practice focuses primarily on complex litigation, gaming, non-gaming economic development, health care, employment and labor, government-to-government negotiations, regulatory and compliance, and internal tribal governance. She exclusively represents tribes in the U.S. and First Nations in Canada, as well as their wholly owned business enterprises.
Gibbs said she believes in starting tribes down the path of diversifying their economies with a keen focus on fundamentals, beginning with good corporate governance. She sees it as a proven recipe for success.
“When you have that governance set up in a systematic way that everybody understands, it just makes business function way easier than anything else,” she said.
Outside of her practice, Gibbs serves on the board of directors for Twelve Clans Inc., a Section 17 Corporation owned by the Ho-Chunk Nation.
Your commitment to drive innovation and reimagine the future of health for the people we serve sets you apart. You inspire us to make health care and coverage simple, affordable, equitable and exceptional.Tina Freese Decker President & CEO
Vanessa Greene is a leader, advocate and influencer for racial and health equity. With a strong educational background, including bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Grand Valley State University and multiple certifications, Greene is skilled in strategic planning, leadership development, advocacy, research and community engagement. Her career is dedicated to creating change while remaining committed to the pursuit of social justice and equity.
Attorney and Managing Member
Avanti Law Group PLLC
Raquel Guzman is a criminal defense attorney, co-founder and managing member of the Wyoming-based Avanti Law Group PLLC, and a successful real estate investor with a portfolio of residential and commercial properties in Michigan.
Greene lists her role as the CEO of the Grand Rapids African American Health Institute (GRAAHI), which she took on in 2020, as one of her most noteworthy accomplishments. At GRAAHI, she provides overall leadership, strategy and direction, leading the charge for transformational outcomes through the organization’s four pillars of community, advocacy, research and education. Greene said her approach is rooted in a data-driven, systems-level perspective, resulting in tangible change in the health and wellness of the Black community.
Prior to joining GRAAHI, Greene spent 17 years at Hope College, where she served as the school’s associate dean of students and directed its diversity and inclusion efforts.
In addition to her responsibilities at GRAAHI, Greene is active in the community, where she lends her talents to the Health Equity Council, Giant Awards Committee and Women’s Health Advisory Council. Greene also serves on the boards of Trinity Health Medical Group, KConnect, Circle of CEOs and Exalta Health.
Greene’s volunteer work includes assisting small nonprofits with grant writing, mentoring young adults and supporting elderly women.
As a lawyer, Guzman has been the lead attorney on thousands of criminal cases and investigations. She’s a regular legal analyst for Univision, the largest Spanishlanguage TV network in the world, where she shares her knowledge of the law on ongoing criminal cases that get national attention. She also is a faculty member of the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission Trial Skills Program.
Guzman has been invited to the White House twice, has traveled to more than 55 countries, attended classes with the Dalai Lama in India, and reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak on the African continent.
She serves as a board member with Housing Kent, and previously worked with the Kent County Family & Children’s Coordinating Council Child Welfare, West Michigan Minority Contractors Association, Michigan Women Forward, Michigan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Latina Network of West Michigan.
Guzeman said she measures her success as a small business owner by contributing to the local economy through hiring, training and retaining local talent.
“As of today, my businesses hire almost 100 local men and women that work and live in the greater Grand Rapids area,” she said.
Teresa Hendricks Executive DirectorMigrant Legal Aid
Teresa Hendricks heads the Grand Rapids-based Migrant Legal Aid and litigates class and collective actions for Michigan farmworkers, including for wage theft, trafficking, poor housing and dangerous working conditions.
She practices in state and federal courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court. She is bilingual, a member of Scribes American Society of Legal Writers, and has published articles in The National Law Journal and the Michigan Bar Journal that have been cited by the U.S. Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit and other law journals.
“My biggest professional accomplishments to date are related to legal protections for migrants,” Hendricks said. “My representation and advocacy over 32 years has protected the health, dignity, and livelihood of farmworkers, helping them overcome wage theft, unnecessary exposure to pesticides, labor trafficking, child labor, and dangerous housing and working conditions.”
During the pandemic, she led her team to conduct outreach to migrants to protect the health of farmworkers in Michigan. This eventually led to mobile vaccination clinics for the migrant community.
Hendricks also was instrumental in building the Fair Food Project, where members in the food supply chain receive alerts of active labor disputes and have the opportunity to address those disputes with vendors before they escalate.
She also is a board member for Heart of West Michigan United Way and serves as a legal trainer for young lawyers.
Shelley Irwin hosts and produces The WGVU Morning Show, a newsmagazine talk-show format on the West Michigan NPR affiliate.
She also hosts several public affairs TV programs, including Family Health Matters and Kalamazoo Lively Arts. Irwin is award winning in her profession, including five consecutive Gracie Allen Awards from American Women in TV and Radio for excellence as a program host. She was recognized with the Grand Rapids Chamber’s 2016 Athena Award, Rotary of Grand Rapids’ Service Above Self award, and was a Meals on Wheels of Western Michigan’s Chef Speciality 2021 honoree.
Irwin was named as one of the 200 Most Powerful Business Leaders in West Michigan by the Grand Rapids Business Journal and the Michigan Broadcaster of the Year by the State Agriculture Association. Her community involvement extends from the Kent County Parks Foundation to the Girl Scouts, Hope Network, Circle Theatre and Paws with a Cause, among others. She also has represented the U.S. in long distance triathlon and duathlon world championships.
Irwin currently serves on the board of advisers for the David D. Hunting YMCA and is a board member for Paws with a Cause, Circle Theatre, Hope Network Foundation, Girl Scouts of Michigan Shore to Shore, Meals on Wheels, Kent County Parks Foundation and C Snip Campaign Committee. Irwin also is a member of Rotary Club of Grand Rapids and Grand Rapids Lions Club.
Holly Johnson President
Frey Foundation
As president of the Frey Foundation since 2018, Holly Johnson directs a grantmaking program that awards nearly $5 million annually to nonprofit organizations throughout West and Northern Michigan.
Johnson has spent her career in community-based philanthropy. She previously led campaign efforts at Greater Ottawa County United Way and was the former vice president of development and then president at the Grand Haven Area Community Foundation.
“I feel privileged to work alongside so many community corporations and families who are working to make Grand Rapids the best community it can be. Every professional accomplishment that I have had has been because of partnerships,” she said. “I do nothing alone and am grateful for the many opportunities that I have had to lead teams and care for the community.”
Johnson remains active in her industry. She has worked with Lakeshore Nonprofit Alliance, Council of Michigan Foundations, Association of Fundraising Professionals, West Michigan Planned Giving Group and Lake Michigan Estate Planning Council, as well as national organizations Exponent Philanthropy, Council on Foundations and the National Center on Family Philanthropy.
Currently, she serves as a board member at Grand Valley State University Foundation, Lakeshore Advantage Corp. and Grand Rapids Promise Zone. She’s also a member of the regional advisory council for Housing Next and the finance advisory committee for Corewell Health.
Christina Keller
CEO and Chair
Cascade Engineering
Four years into her tenure as CEO, Christina Keller recently became board chair of Cascade Engineering, a family-owned private business founded by her father Fred Keller in 1973. With the experiences she’s garnered since joining the company in 2009, Keller’s aim is to ensure Cascade Engineering, a certified B Corp. and womanowned business, demonstrates continued leadership as a triple bottom line-focused sustainable company.
Before she rose to her current position in 2018, Keller served as president for various divisions of Cascade Engineering including CK Technologies, Cascade Business Team and TripleQuest, and previously led the strategic integration of Cascade Engineering’s North American operations. Prior to Cascade Engineering, Keller worked at Accenture and Polaris Management Partners in New York City and Environmental Resources Trust in Washington, D.C.
Keller is deeply involved in the Grand Rapids community, serving as chair of The Economic Club of Grand Rapids and as a board member of Independent Bank, the largest bank headquartered in Michigan. She is on the board at Paragon Die & Engineering and the Grand Valley State University Foundation, and previously served with the Grand Rapids Community Foundation and Housing Stability Alliance, and chaired the GR Chamber of Commerce Summit on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
She has spoken on sustainability issues at TEDxDetroit, TEDxGrandRapids, The St. Gallen Symposium, Michigan State University, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, University of Virginia Darden School of Business, GVSU, University of Vermont and the Johnson School of Business at Cornell University.
Monica King
CEO
Gun Lake Investments
Monica King serves as CEO of Gun Lake Investments, the tribally-owned non-gaming investment arm of the Match-E-Be-Nash-E-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, or Gun Lake Tribe. She has more than 20 years of operations and finance experience with companies of various sizes, complexity and industry.
After spending a significant amount of her career in management roles with Fortune 500 companies, King established and operated her own business advisory firm focused on small business stabilization and growth. Through this work, she engaged with a larger consulting firm that she eventually joined and remained with for several years, becoming an owner, partner, COO, and also CEO/managing partner in the last few years of her tenure. She launched the firm’s tribal consulting practice in early 2018, resulting in a strong connection with GLI. She joined GLI as an adviser before assuming the interim CEO role in 2021 and the permanent position in 2022.
She is active with community service and nonprofit organizations, currently serving as secretary and founding board member of the National Native American Supplier Council, board member of the city of Wayland’s Downtown Development Authority, and board member of Lakeshore Advantage.
“I am proud to be part of the founding group of members that started the National Native American Supplier Council, which formally launched in September 2023,” King said. “I currently serve as secretary and board member among an amazing group of humans, passionate about supporting tribally owned businesses and also creating a network with and providing education to corporate partners.”
Birgit Klohs Executive Chair
New Community Transformation Fund
Birgit Klohs has focused her 40-plusyear career in economic development on the betterment of the state of Michigan. She is a foremost economic development strategist, collaborating with local, state and national organizations on critical issues related to economic development.
Best known for her role as president and CEO of The Right Place Inc. from 1987-2021, she fostered and grew the regional economic development organization into an economic development powerhouse that continues to benefit greater Grand Rapids. Under her 33 years of leadership, The Right Place spurred more than $5 billion in new investment in the region.
A native of Germany and a leading authority in international business and economic development, Klohs developed and led The Right Place’s international business development strategy. She spearheaded numerous foreign direct investment missions to Europe, Asia and the Middle East each year, both independently and in collaboration with the state of Michigan and the governor’s office, that resulted in new jobs for West Michigan.
Through her work with The Right Place, she recognized the challenges entrepreneurs of color have in accessing capital and launching new business ventures. After retiring from The Right Place, Klohs co-founded and launched the New Community Transformation Fund, raising more than $10 million to seed the venture capital fund created for diverse entrepreneurs.
In 2014, she was appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder to serve on the International Crossing Authority, a joint venture between Michigan and Canada to facilitate construction of the Gordie Howe International Bridge.
“I imagine a community where ALL have the opportunity to prosper. I imagine a community that doesn’t only talk about equitable and inclusive opportunities, but that lives it out.”
LaSandra Gaddy President and CEO
• Earn your MBA in 22 months while working
• Engage with a hands-on capstone consulting project
• Tap into valuable community and business connections
• Hybrid and remote learning options
• Personalized leadership development
• Exceptional faculty
Cindy Lotterman Schneider
President
San Chez Bistro, Roam, Beacon Corner Bar, and The Express
Cindy Lotterman Schneider put herself through college at Grand Valley State University and along the way fell in love with the hospitality industry.
Today, she is president of Grand Rapids restaurants San Chez Bistro, Roam, Beacon Corner Bar and The Express.
“I have been working in the Grand Rapids area – mostly downtown – for 40 years,” she said. “My focus has always been entertainment and fun. Food and service gave me a voice in Grand Rapids.”
Schneider said she and her husband, Dan, are building a business they hope is sustainable for years to come. Working in a family business isn’t always easy, but the payback can be uplifting, she said.
“(We’re) building a legacy for our sons to continue on with after I am gone,” she said, adding that knowledge of family dynamics is part of the education process. “Maintaining both a business relationship and a loving family relationship is at times challenging, but so rewarding.”
Giving back to the community also is important to the owners of the restaurant group. Schneider said the organization for years donated $5,000 worth of product each month to a nonprofit organization. Although COVID-19 interrupted the 26-year streak, the company is on its way to achieving those goals again.
Her proudest accomplishment: “Creating four amazing different culinary restaurants in the downtown area for Grand Rapids to be proud of,” she said.
Schneider is a member of the Gordon Food Service Business Owners Council.
Diane Maher is the president and chief strategy officer of DP Fox Ventures LLC, a family office and diversified management company with interests in real estate, transportation, fashion, sports and entertainment. She also serves as president and chief operating officer of Fox Motor Group.
Fox Motors is a retail automotive and powersports dealership group representing 44 locations and 49 brands. The locations stretch from Chicago to Grand Rapids to Marquette in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Maher started at DP Fox Ventures in 1993 as the firm’s vice president of finance and was later promoted to CFO a few years later. In 2009, she was named chief operating officer and added the title of chief strategy officer in 2023. She has been hands-on for every Fox Motors dealership acquisition since the company’s first deal in 2000.
“My biggest professional accomplishment is the growth of Fox Motors and Fox Powersports. Dan (DeVos) and I have been working on this together for more than 24 years and the growth has been amazing,” Maher said. “We started with one small Saab store on Division Avenue and now have 44 brands, 49 locations, 2,200-plus employees, $2 billion-plus in revenue and are the 53rd largest dealer group in the USA.”
A Ferris State University graduate and licensed CPA in Michigan, Maher is a global board member and vice chair of Our Daily Bread Ministries, and also sits on the boards of the West Michigan Policy Forum and One Starfish Foundation.
President
Grand Valley State University
As the fifth president of Grand Valley State University, Philomena Mantella oversees Michigan’s third-largest public university, with more than 22,000 students, 3,000 faculty and staff across three campuses, and six regional centers.
Deidra Mitchell
President and CEO
Waséyabek Development Co. LLC
Mantella Mitchell
Since taking over in 2019 as the university’s first woman president, Mantella expanded the GVSU’s offerings and potential learners with programs aimed at non-traditional and underrepresented students. This led to GVSU welcoming its largest and most diverse incoming class ever in the fall of 2023 and an overall increase in enrollment at a time when higher education faces constant challenges and steep demographic declines.
Mantella’s commitment to growth and disruption is at the core of her work to redefine what higher education is for the public good. She focuses on education’s fitness for the future, equipping graduates with the competencies and mindset to succeed in the knowledge economy. This includes creating partnerships with the business community, developing a national alliance to give underserved student voices a say in their education and breaking down barriers to increase access to higher education for adult learners.
She earned a doctorate in college and university administration from Michigan State University and bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Syracuse University.
Mantella currently serves on the boards of Corewell Health, Grand Action 2.0, The Economic Club of Grand Rapids, Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, Michigan Association of Public Universities, Michigan Education Trust, The Right Place, TalentFirst, Grand Rapids Community Foundation, and Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration.
Since joining Battle Creek-based W.K. Kellogg Foundation in 1987, La June Montgomery Tabron rose through the ranks to become the organization’s first woman and first African American chief executive. As president and CEO, she leads efforts to support thriving children, working families and equitable communities.
Currently, Tabron serves on the board of Kellanova and chairs the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Trust. She’s also active on other boards, including Battle Creek Community Health Partners, Bronson Healthcare Group, the Michigan Economic Development Corp., and the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of AmericaCollege Retirement Equities Fund.
Tabron holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in business administration from Northwestern University Kellogg Graduate School of Management. She is a certified public accountant.
Tabron set out to transform the philanthropic sector from the inside out. She pushed the foundation to look inward at its own structural issues, embraced “big bet” grantmaking and bold initiatives like the National Day of Racial Healing and the global Racial Equity 2030 initiative. She also urged philanthropy to do more during the pandemic with its first-ever $300 million social impact bond and helped catapult WKKF to the forefront of a global conversation on racial equity and racial healing.
During its last fiscal year, the foundation disbursed over $298 million in grants, including more than $78 million in Michigan, from its more than $8 billion endowment.
Deidra Mitchell serves as president and CEO of Waséyabek Development Co. LLC, a 100% tribally-owned holding company that manages the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi’s non-gaming economic development activities. Waséyabek’s purpose is to diversify the economic and investment interests of the tribe beyond gaming and create diverse employment opportunities for tribal members.
Under Mitchell’s leadership, Waséyabek has grown from three employees to more than 500 people, from three entities to 31, and from one location to coast-to-coast business entities. Mitchell is a recognized leader in Indian Country, developing and implementing tribal economic diversification initiatives using best practices in strategic planning, due diligence and operational controls that
work within the unique governance structures of tribes. She has served as a panelist and speaker at numerous local and national conferences and co-hosts Tribal Economic Development, a podcast focused on sharing economic development expertise with those working and operating in Indian Country.
In 2019, Mitchell organized nine of the 12 federally recognized tribes in Michigan to complete a study on tribal non-gaming economic impacts in the state. The report received nationwide attention and was lauded as a first-of-a-kind study.
In 2023 and 2024, Mitchell was invited to provide guest lectures at Harvard University’s Kennedy School to discuss Waséyabek’s successful implementation of the business practices consistent with the Harvard Project on Indigenous Governance and Development.
She also serves as a board member for the Literacy Center of West Michigan and is on the advisory board of CG Financial Services.
General Partner
Grand Ventures
Camila Noordeloos joined Grand Ventures, a Grand Rapids-based early stage venture capital firm, in 2019. In her role as general partner, she identifies promising investment opportunities across Grand Ventures’ sectors of interest and works closely with portfolio companies driving strategy development and implementation. She also leads the firm’s operations and is responsible for managing all stages of the investment process from fundraising through portfolio management and exit.
Noordeloos has more than 15 years of consulting, corporate and venture capital experience. Prior to joining Grand Ventures, she worked at General Electric, holding management positions in finance, portfolio management and business strategy. She spent six years at GE Ventures, playing a crucial role in building the foundation for it to become one of the most active corporate venture capital firms in the country, and managing a portfolio of over 150 investment companies.
“As a venture capitalist, my goal is to find incredible founders and help them create a better future by providing capital and hands-on support and advice,” she said. “I have leveraged my experience to support local entrepreneurs and ultimately drive economic growth to the region and foster job creation.”
Noordeloos, a Kauffman Fellow, currently serves on the board of the Michigan Venture Capital Association and on the advisory board of Tech Week Grand Rapids. She has been recognized as one of the 39 most important VCs in the Midwest by Business Insider, and was named a member of Venture Capital’s 2024 Rising Stars by Venture Capital Journal.
Brooke OostermanExecutive Director
Housing Next
Brooke Oosterman joined Housing Next as director of policy and communications to support the organization’s expansion into Kent County and now serves as its executive director. Her extensive experience in economic development, policy advocacy and business support has focused on community development.
Since joining the organization, Oosterman has led cross-sector partnerships to move housing supply solutions forward. This work has included policy advocacy, community will building, new tool creation and communications strategies.
Housing Next was selected by the Michigan State Housing Development Authority as one of the organizations to lead West Michigan’s five-year regional strategy for housing solutions. It has solidified its work in Ottawa and Kent counties with formal partnerships and worked with both counties to establish revolving housing loan funds to provide gap financing for the development and preservation of affordable housing.
“Expanding the regional footprint and impact of the organization has been incredibly rewarding,” Oosterman said. “The ability to offer support to municipal and development partners in creating communities that they are proud of, that offer a place to call home for everyone no matter their income, is a dream come true.”
Oosterman earned a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Michigan State University. She sits on the boards of Grand Rapids’ Brownfield Redevelopment Authority and Economic Development Corporation, and also is a committee member with Women of Habitat Kent. As well, she spends time supporting elementary school students through her work with the nonprofit Affinity Mentoring.
Andi Owen Chief Executive Officer MillerKnoll Inc.As CEO of Zeeland-based MillerKnoll Inc., Andi Owen oversaw the $1.8 billion mega merger in 2021 of furniture manufacturers Herman Miller and Knoll. The unified brand has nearly 11,000 employees and had annual revenue of $4.1 billion in the 2023 fiscal year.
Prior to serving as Herman Miller’s president and CEO from 2018 to 2021, Owen had a 25-year career with clothing retailer Gap Inc.
In her position at MillerKnoll, Owen approaches complex problems with design-based thinking, a leadership strategy that’s meant to create a standardized process for innovation.
In addition to leading the 2021 merger, Owen has overseen the growth of MillerKnoll’s retail portfolio, which has tripled in sales over the past two years. Owen also played a key role in launching the Diversity in Design Collaborative in 2021, which aims to lift up Black creatives across the design industry.
Owen also has overseen MillerKnoll’s sustainability strategy that has incorporated more than 127 metric tons of recycled materials into its packaging through a partnership with NextWave, and has diverted more than 300 metric tons of plastic waste from landfills.
In addition to her executive role, Owen serves on the boards of home building company Taylor Morrison, Business Leaders for Michigan and the National Association of Manufacturing, and is a board member emeritus for Susan G. Komen.
Jennifer Owens PresidentLakeshore Advantage Corp.
As president of Lakeshore Advantage, Jennifer Owens is responsible for setting the vision and strategy of the organization. Owens delivers direct business attraction, expansion and retention services while providing overall leadership to the regional economic development agency for Allegan and Ottawa counties. Since joining Lakeshore Advantage in 2013, she has successfully landed numerous major business expansion and attraction projects.
Owens has more than 20 years of leadership experience in marketing, communications, business retention and business attraction working in various state and local economic development positions throughout Michigan. Prior to joining Lakeshore Advantage, she held leadership positions at Southwest Michigan First and Consultant Connect. In addition, she held key positions at Ann Arbor SPARK and the Michigan Economic Development Corp. Now, she’s looking toward the future.
“My biggest professional accomplishment is a project under construction – the Next Center. The Next Center will provide a physical presence and go-to resource for the region’s entrepreneurial community,” Owens said. “Situated at the corner of 7th and College in downtown Holland, the Next Center fulfills a long-term vision of the Holland SmartZone. The 20,000-square-foot project includes the construction of a modern, three-story building that will serve as a beacon of innovation to the community and its visitors, and a symbol of the high-tech ecosystem of startups and entrepreneurs who make the Holland SmartZone their business home.”
The project is targeted for completion by the end of 2024. Owens is a member of the MEDC Collaborative Development Council, West Coast Chamber, Holland Planning Commission, Lakeshore Leadership Council and Economic Development Leaders for Michigan.
Shelley Padnos
Executive Vice President, Executive Committee Chair Padnos
Shelley Padnos is executive vice president and among the thirdgeneration leaders at family-owned recycling and scrap management firm Padnos, which is more than 100 years old.
She is past president of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), the national trade association representing scrap processors and recyclers across North America, and in 2021 received the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her years of leadership and efforts around government relations and environmental management. She was the first woman to serve as chair of ISRI.
Nationally, Padnos was appointed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technologies Superfund Subcommittee that was charged with making recommendations to the Clinton administration on the reauthorization of Superfund legislation.
Locally, she is on her second stint as a board member at Grand Valley State University, having been appointed to the post by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. She has a long history of supporting the university. Padnos and Carol Sarosik created the Padnos/Sarosik Center for Civil Discourse, which is housed in the Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies. She has been a Grand Valley University Foundation director for three decades.
In addition to her work with GVSU, Padnos also has given her time and support to the Ottawa County Parks Advisory Committee, Hospice of Holland Inc., Holland Community Hospital, and Child and Family Services of Western Michigan.
Padnos earned a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and her Juris Doctorate from Thomas Cooley Law School.
Kate Pew Wolters is the president of the KRW Foundation. Founded in 1997 by Kate and her late husband, Richard Wolters, the private foundation makes grants to nonprofit organizations with an emphasis on the arts, education, social justice and people with disabilities.
Pew Wolters also serves as a member Steelcase Inc.’s board of directors since 2001, and chair of the Steelcase Foundation, an endowed private foundation of Steelcase Inc. She was appointed chair of the Steelcase Foundation upon leaving the post of executive director of the foundation in October 1996.
Locally, she serves on a number of boards, including DisArt and the ACLU Michigan. She is co-chair of the First Steps Children’s Commission, which was instrumental in securing the Ready by 5 Early Childhood Millage in 2018.
Pew Wolters was appointed to two terms on the Grand Valley State University Board of Trustees by Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Gov. Rick Snyder. In 1994, she was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the National Council on Disability, where she served until 2003.
“My appointment to the National Council on Disability by President Clinton was an incredible experience. Working with other disabled advocates from all over the country to work with Washington on the issues most important to us … what an incredible opportunity!” she said. “Supporting my community’s always been number one for me, specifically for people that may not have the same voice that I’ve been afforded.”
Grand Rapids Public Schools
Since February 2020, Leadriane Roby has served as superintendent of Grand Rapids Public Schools. In that role, she leverages more than 26 years of experience in public education to strive to make a difference in the lives of scholars in the Grand Rapids community.
Roby’s efforts have affected classrooms, communities and cultures in urban and suburban districts. Before serving as superintendent in Grand Rapids, she worked
Hillary Scholten
U.S. Representative for Michigan’s Third Congressional District
U.S. House of Representatives
as a district leader, elementary and secondary principal, mentor, instructional leader, and elementary classroom teacher in districts in Michigan and Minnesota. From turning around school performance to strategic planning, she embraces solutions with authentic, inclusive, transparent and comprehensive engagement and data-driven decisionmaking.
As an advocate for educational equity, access and excellence for all scholars, Roby is mindful of the current academic, social, emotional, public health and economic environment. She said teacher preparation, support and mentoring shape the academic experiences of scholars, and she remains passionate about building partnerships with community stakeholders to support
learners throughout the district.
After reviewing two months of community input from a diverse set of stakeholders, the 2021 Strategic Plan resulted in six prioritized outcomes and six themes that will help shape the trajectory of the district’s future. The district also is enjoying its highest graduation rates in recent history.
Roby’s community involvement includes Kent Intermediate Superintendents Association, Middle Cities Education Association, Education Advocates of West Michigan, TalentFirst, The Economic Club of Grand Rapids, GRPS Foundation, Heart of West Michigan United Way and KISA Region III and IV Superintendents.
Congresswoman Hillary Scholten is the first woman and mom to represent West Michigan in Congress. She represents Michigan’s Third Congressional District, a diverse area that is anchored by the urban centers of Grand Rapids, Muskegon and Grand Haven, and includes suburbs, farmland, and miles of Lake Michigan shoreline.
In Congress, she serves on the House Small Business Committee and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. She said service is at the heart of what drives her mission to deliver for the district every day.
This includes securing infrastructure investments and eliminating transportation barriers in isolated communities, supporting the region’s small businesses, expanding opportunities for the next generation of West Michiganders by ensuring access to affordable child care and education from pre-K to college, and fighting for individuals’ fundamental rights at the federal level.
Scholten is one of only four freshman representatives selected by her peers to serve in a senior leadership position. She has delivered more than $20 million back to West Michigan in her first year in office through grants and casework and helped more than 1,400 Michiganders work with various federal agencies. To date, she has introduced eight bipartisan bills, including measures to make sure U.S. Coast Guard personnel are paid during a shutdown and to crack down on employers who violate child labor laws.
She also formed the Child Labor Prevention Task Force in Congress.
What matters to you, matters to us. That’s why we continue to invest in proven behavioral health treatments based on cutting-edge research. Why we opened the first same-day psychiatric urgent care in the state and pioneered new training programs for the next generation of mental health experts.
You matter to us. That’s why.
Jen Schottke
President
West Michigan Construction Institute
Jen Schottke is president of the West Michigan Construction Institute (WMCI), a leading commercial construction trade school located in the Roosevelt Park neighborhood near downtown Grand Rapids. WMCI serves a diverse student population from high school juniors and seniors to seasoned industry professionals.
Under her leadership, WMCI launched in January 2022 following a successful $6 million capital campaign and will be expanding its facility in 2024 to accommodate new labs and classrooms.
Schottke’s commitment extends beyond the classroom as she actively engages in student outreach, collaborates within the K-12 and higher education systems, and champions the commercial construction sector.
“At the entrance of WMCI, we have a hardhat donor wall thanking the over 150 contractors and individuals who made WMCI possible through their generosity. We were all aligned in the mission of celebrating the value of the trade professional pathway and that made the way for the work we do today,” she said. “In our two short years of operation, we’ve tripled our high school enrollments and received state approval to be a high school Career and Technical Education program, thanks to our partnership with Kent ISD. We’ve tripled our adult craft training enrollments and grew from instructing in two trades to now instructing in five trades and (are) adding more in 2024-2025.”
Schottke is a member of the Grand Rapids Downtown Development Authority and the workforce development board West Michigan Works!, and serves as treasurer of the Grand Rapids Public Schools Board of Education.
T h a n k Y o u !
Kris Spaulding President Brewery Vivant, Broad Leaf Brewery & SpiritsAs the president of Brewery Vivant and Broad Leaf Brewing + Spirits, Kris Spaulding manages the people and planet aspects of the company’s triple bottom line focus in addition to the daily operations.
She was the driving force in the pursuit of the company’s LEED and B Corp. certifications and is an advocate for businesses engaging with their community in a meaningful and impactful way.
Spaulding currently serves on the board of directors for the national Brewers Association. During the pandemic, she also helped found MI Restaurant Promise, in which restaurant and bar owners committed to upholding the state of Michigan and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention safety guidelines at their establishments to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
“I am proud of how we navigated the pandemic and all of the ramifications it had on our company and our industry. It was not easy in any way, but we did everything we could to provide a safe environment for our team and our guests,” she said. “We also joined forces with other local industry leaders, learning together, sharing what was working and not and creating a path forward.”
Locally, she is a board member for the East Hills Business Alliance and co-chair of the Women’s Resource Center Propel Campaign. Her volunteer efforts include working with Friends of GR Parks and the Land Conservancy.
PRESENTING SERIES SPONSORS
Hekman Gordon Family Foundation PREMIER LEVEL - $10,000 AND ABOVE GOLD LEVEL - $5,000 AND ABOVE
SILVER LEVEL - $3,000 AND ABOVE
BRONZE LEVEL - $1,750 AND ABOVE
Ronda StrykerPresident
Stryker Johnston Foundation
Director Stryker Corp.
Forbes ranks Ronda Stryker as the third-richest person in Michigan (behind Dan Gilbert and Mat Ishbia), with wealth estimated at $7.4 billion.
She is the largest individual shareholder of Kalamazoobased Stryker Corp., the international medical devices firm founded by her grandfather, Homer Stryker, who is credited with inventing the mobile hospital bed and other innovations. Combined with her siblings Jon Stryker and Patricia Stryker, she owns an estimated 10% of the company, which generated revenues of nearly $20.5 billion in 2023, an 11% increase from the prior year.
In January, Stryker and her husband, William Johnston, donated $100 million to Spelman College in Atlanta. Stryker has served as a trustee on the college’s board since 1997.
The Stryker Johnston Foundation grants millions of dollars annually to Kalamazoo County organizations, focusing on intergenerational poverty, anti-racism and equity.
Additionally, Stryker and Johnston donated $100 million in 2011 to launch the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker School of Medicine. A native of Kalamazoo, Stryker worked as a teacher in Kalamazoo Public Schools early in her career and earned a master’s degree from Western Michigan University.
The Stryker Johnston Foundation also donated $57.7 million in 2019 and $28.2 million in 2020 to the Foundation for Excellence, which was formed in 2017 to create a bridge between philanthropy and municipal finance in Kalamazoo.
PREMIER LEVEL - $10,000 AND ABOVE
SONATA LEVEL - $5,000 AND ABOVE
SCHOOL OF MUSIC SPONSORS Louis M. Dexter Memorial Foundation
WALTZ LEVEL - $2,500 AND ABOVE
MINUET LEVEL - $1,500 AND ABOVE
Health
the Michigan Arts and Culture Council including federal support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Merrill Lynch Wealth Management
With more than 25 years of experience in the financial industry, Renee Tabben serves as the president for Bank of America in Grand Rapids. As the senior enterprise leader in West Michigan, she leads the many ways associates can have a positive effect in the community, for clients and for employees. The regional footprint covers Barry, Kent, Montcalm and Ottawa counties.
Tabben also leads Merrill Lynch, the wealth management business for Bank of America, in West & Central Michigan with 300 associates, providing holistic wealth management for individuals and institutions.
She is active in the community, serving on the boards of The Right Place, Grand Rapids Symphony (chair) and The Economic Club of Grand Rapids, as well as co-chair of the West Michigan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s capital campaign.
“I am most proud of my contribution and impact through my board work. Each opportunity has added to the previous one, allowing me to engage and collaborate with incredibly talented, globally minded people,” Tabben said. “From my love for the arts and passion for our symphony to the critical thinking and challenge of planning for what’s next with The Right Place, I am most proud to be ‘at the table’ with those whom I admire and respect; with those that are making real impacts to our state and region.”
Sue Tellier PresidentJetCo Federal
Sue Schweim Tellier is the president and owner of JetCo Federal, a U.S. Small Business Administration- and Women’s Business Enterprise National Councilcertified woman-owned small business that serve as a prime contractor in supply chain management and logistics serving the defense industry.
Since opening in 2007, JetCo Federal has gained a reputation for agile solution design and earned positive performance assessments from federal agency clients.
Prior to moving to the private sector in 2007, Tellier worked in procurement marketing for the Michigan Department of Management and Budget. As the department’s head of supplier diversity and business outreach, Tellier instructed more than 4,300 companies in the processes involved with bidding on and winning state government contracts.
“Small business ownership is no joke, and it’s not for the weak. This is the most challenging and most rewarding professional role I’ve had,” she said.
Tellier volunteers her time to support the defense industrial base and is an advocate for small and womanowned small businesses. She holds a bachelor’s degree in public affairs management from Michigan State University and a graduate certificate in economic development from Wayne State University.
She is the immediate past chair of the Women in Defense (WID) National Council; president of WID’s Michigan chapter (the largest in the country); board chair of the Small Business Association of Michigan; board member of the Michigan Strategic Fund; and board vice chair of Women Impacting Public Policy.
From modest beginnings of four original engineering partners in 1962, to over 270 employees across the nation today, Progressive AE embraces the need for change.
While design remains core to our business, the range of services has grown to include Universal Design consulting, change management, sustainability leadership, controlled environments, program management, and capital planning.
The shift to Progressive Companies offers greater flexibility as the firm continues to diversify beyond architecture and engineering.
Carol Van Andel
Executive Director
David and Carol Van Andel Family Foundation
Co-chair
Grand Action 2.0
A native of West Michigan, Carol Van Andel’s life has been marked by service to others through volunteer roles with more than a dozen nonprofit organizations.
She serves as executive director of the David and Carol Van Andel Family Foundation and co-chairs Grand Action 2.0, the nonprofit whose primary mission is to identify capital-intensive projects aimed at transforming downtown Grand Rapids, galvanizing public opinion and support for these projects, and leveraging public and private investment. Grand Action currently is working on an 8,500-seat soccer stadium to be located on the west side of Grand Rapids and the Acrisure Amphitheater, a 12,000seat outdoor venue that will occupy riverfront land in the southern portion of downtown. The multimillion-dollar projects are being developed simultaneously.
“We’re really focused on two projects right now, which is something that’s never been done by Grand Action, two projects at the same time,” she said, noting more than $1 billion in anticipated economic spinoff from the amphitheater and soccer stadium. “It’s pretty awesome.”
Van Andel said she is passionate about her community in ways that advance education, children’s issues, arts, health and human services, and uses her influence to create these types of opportunities for people of all ages and all walks of life. She has a business degree from Hope College and currently sits on the boards of Hope College and Western Theological Seminary.
Michelle Van Dyke
President and CEO
Heart of West Michigan United Way
Michelle Van Dyke serves as president and CEO of Heart of West Michigan United Way, a position she has held since January 2016.
Previously, Van Dyke was the president of Fifth Third Mortgage Company. She joined Fifth Third Bank in 2001 through its acquisition of Old Kent Bank, and assumed the position of executive vice president of retail banking. In 2004, she was named president and CEO of the Western Michigan affiliate. She later was named regional president for each of Fifth Third Bank’s Michigan affiliates. In 2009, Van Dyke assumed the responsibility for the St. Louis affiliates, and the Ohio affiliates in 2011. In 2014, she accepted the role of president of Fifth Third Mortgage Company.
Van Dyke serves on the boards of Davenport University and Legacy Trust. She was named one of American Banker’s 25 Most Powerful Women in Banking four times from 2007 to 2014 and a Woman to Watch four times from 2005 to 2015. In 2013, Van Dyke was named a Woman of Achievement and Courage by the Michigan Women’s Foundation. The Grand Rapids Business Journal named Van Dyke as one of the 50 Most Influential Women in West Michigan on six occasions. In 2023, Crain’s Grand Rapids Business included Van Dyke as part of its Grand Rapids 200 Most Influential Leaders list.
She also serves on the board of First Steps Kent and is a committee member with Corewell Health West Michigan, Kent County Vision 2050 and the Kent County Family and Children Coordinating Council.
Tami VandenBerg
Co-owner and Co-founder The Meanwhile and The Pyramid Scheme
Tami VandenBerg owns a pair of successful businesses in Grand Rapids, but she might be better known for her work in the community.
She and her brother opened The Meanwhile, a neighborhood pub on Wealthy Street SE, which was followed a few years later by The Pyramid Scheme, a music venue on Commerce Avenue SW.
However, VandenBerg’s immersion into community activism started much earlier. After graduating from Calvin College, she joined Americorps and lived in Louisiana for a year working with people who were released from state hospitals and often living on the streets while struggling with mental health issues. She returned to Grand Rapids with a desire to end homelessness and spent approximately 10 years addressing the issue.
With both of her businesses finding early profitability, she took over a failing nonprofit called Well House, where she served as executive director for five years and moved 200 people off the streets and into permanent housing. She then joined the board of MILegalize, which successfully worked to help legalize cannabis in Michigan. This year, she launched a new effort called Sunflower Housing to further address the housing crisis.
VandenBerg also helped save the Grand Rapids Red Project from closure. As board chair, she increased the budget from less than $50,000 annually to more than $500,000 and petitioned the city to expand harm reduction efforts, including syringe exchanges, while bringing Narcan to Grand Rapids to reverse overdoses.
Jody VanderwelManaging Partner
Michigan Capital Network
Since 2020, Jody Vanderwel has served as a managing partner at Michigan Capital Network, a firm that provides early-stage investment, entrepreneurial support and portfolio oversight involving four venture capital funds and five regional angel investing groups.
Prior to that, she served as president of Grand Angels, a Grand Rapids-based angel investing organization. Before entering the angel investing industry, Vanderwel had a 16-year career at Herman Miller, where she served as both corporate counsel to the firm, and later as vice president of corporate giving.
Vanderwel has devoted the past 20 years of her professional life to helping entrepreneurs develop and launch their ideas into the marketplace through advice, networking and early-stage investing. She is widely regarded as one of the founders of the angel investing movement in Michigan. She received the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Michigan Venture Capital Association and West Michigan Dealmaker Hall of Fame award in 2023 from MiBiz, the predecessor to Crain’s Grand Rapids Business. She also was recognized as one of the 200 Most Influential Business Leaders in West Michigan by Crain’s Grand Rapids Business in 2023.
She currently serves on the boards of Plymouth Growth Partners Fund III, Invest Michigan, Northern Trust West Michigan and Baker Publishing, as well as chairs the board of Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services.
Previous board work includes Michigan Venture Capital Association, Michigan Strategic Fund, Priority Health and the Grand Rapids and Holland symphonies.
Patti VanDort has worked at Holland Hospital since 1987, beginning as a staff nurse before taking on various nursing leadership positions. She joined the executive team in 2001, first as the vice president for nursing and chief nurse officer, and then in 2018 as senior vice president of hospital operations. She was appointed CEO on Feb. 1 after a 21-month succession process.
VanDort said her directive is to “keep growing and
Allie Walker
President Truscott Rossman
Allie Walker was named president of Truscott Rossman in May 2023, eight years after joining the communications firm and a year into running day-to-day operations as vice president.
Walker brought to the role 15 years of strategic communications and organizational leadership experience, having previously served as a communications specialist with Honda North America Inc. and in various roles for former Congressman Dave Camp, including press secretary. Walker says her time on Capitol Hill taught her an ability to work fast and balance competing projects and priorities.
In her role as president, Walker’s accomplishments include the development and implementation of the company’s management standards and processes, along with introducing the Entrepreneurial Operating System to run the business. Other accomplishments include backing policy shifts to expand employee benefits, investing in project management and providing an example on how to advance in a career while having a family.
A native of Traverse City, Walker is based at Truscott Rossman’s Grand Rapids office. She also serves on the board of Safe Haven Ministries, chairs the Michigan Chamber Foundation’s board and graduated from the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce’s leadership program in 2019. More recently, Walker has served as spokesperson and advocate for Trail.Club, an initiative backed by the DeVos family that encourages residents to explore West Michigan’s outdoors.
progressing and serving well … and how you do that is through both culture and strategy.”
During her more than three decades at Holland, the hospital and its medical group experienced tremendous growth in the services provided to the community. That growth included the addition of the Special Care Nursery, the hospital’s emergence as a market leader in robotic surgery and its development of a recognized total joint replacement program. Additionally, the hospital has achieved high quality and patient satisfaction metrics, resulting in numerous state and national recognitions. Under her leadership, the hospital secured the Magnet designation for excellence in nursing practice.
VanDort has served in a variety of leadership positions in both professional organizations and the community, including board positions with the West Coast Chamber of Commerce, Hospice of Holland and the Holland Community Health Center. She’s also a member of the advisory councils for the nursing departments at both Hope College and the Kirkhof College of Nursing at Grand Valley State University. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from GVSU, where she has since received the Kirkhof School of Nursing Outstanding Alumni Award.
Mary Anne Wisinski-Rosely
Partner and Executive Vice President
NAI
Wisinski of West MichiganMary Anne Wisinski-Rosely has worked in commercial real estate for 28 years and specializes in the sale and leasing of office space throughout West Michigan.
Commercial real estate can be a lonely industry for women, but Wisinski remains undeterred.
“I believe that my biggest professional accomplishment is that I am well-respected by my peers in the industry, as well as by my clients in a male-dominated industry,” she said. “I have become a top commercial real estate agent throughout West Michigan.”
She said her recipe for success is simple: “No client need is too small. You never know who they know or what they may grow into someday. It is all about the relationship.”
For several years, Wisinski-Rosely has been active with the Commercial Alliance of Realtors both as a past president and a member of the organization’s many committees. She also has been involved with the Society of Office and Industrial Realtors and is a past president of the group’s Michigan chapter.
In addition to industry organizations, Wisinski-Rosely also works with the Grand Valley State University Economics Advisory Board and the West Michigan Youth Ballet, where she is board president. She previously served on the boards of nonprofits Dwelling Place and Ronald McDonald House of West Michigan. She also is a member of Commercial Real Estate News’ Commercial Real Estate Hall of Fame.
Kara Wood
Executive Director
Grand Action 2.0
Kara Wood serves as executive director of Grand Action 2.0, the nonprofit behind several ongoing transformational projects in downtown Grand Rapids.
Grand Action 2.0’s mission is to identify downtown and adjacent neighborhood building and transformational capital-intensive projects, galvanize public opinion and support, and leverage public and private investments to formulate and implement funding strategies. That includes securing private sector funding in support of requests for primary public dollars.
“The initiatives that Grand Action 2.0 is leading will have a generational impact throughout West Michigan,” Wood said upon joining the organization in 2022.
Wood holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Michigan State University’s Eli Broad College of Business, and a master’s degree in public administration from Western Michigan University. She also earned the designation of Certified Economic Developer.
Previously, Wood spent three years as associate vice president for community partnerships in the office of government relations at Western Michigan University, and 12 years as the city of Grand Rapids’ economic development director and the managing director of economic development and Mobile GR parking services.
Her board work includes positions with Western Michigan University, Michigan Community Capital, Grand Rapids African American Arts and Music Festival, Downtown Grand Rapids Inc., Experience Grand Rapids, Great Lakes Commercial Finance and Grand River Network.
Carrie Yunker Executive Vice President Bell’s BreweryCarrie Yunker leads Bell’s Brewery as executive vice president after joining the team as a receptionist more than two decades ago. In her multiple leadership positions within the company over the years, she has helped guide Bell’s to national distribution with iconic brands such as Two Hearted IPA and Oberon Ale.
In her role, Yunker is the visionary and leader behind Bell’s strategic plans. Her passion for positively affecting Bell’s coworkers and the community propels her desire for demanding more from business. She also works closely with executives from parent company New Belgium Brewing to position both breweries as leaders in the brewing industry and beyond. In her work supporting 1,300-plus employees across the nation and overseeing day-to-day operations, she prioritizes recognizing, elevating and celebrating the individual value a person brings to the organization. Yunker said she leads with a passion for doing right by people, and she emphasizes creating an inclusive and inviting work environment for all.
Yunker co-founded Craft Beer Human Resources, a national group with more than 100 members that fosters collaboration and sharing of best practices among HR professionals in the craft community, and also developed a philanthropic giving strategy for Bell’s, later formalized in 2022 as Inspired Giving, which allocates $1 per barrel sold to philanthropy.
She is a current board member of the National Women in Beer Alliance and Southwest Michigan First, and chairs the Alumni Committee for the Kalamazoo Valley Community College Foundation.
Researchers at a Kent County nonprofit have pulled together new data that paint a bleak picture of housing affordability, or lack thereof, for the average worker in Kent County.
Grand Rapids-based Housing Kent last month rolled out a metric library based on regional and national data on wages and home prices.
The group found entry-level home prices in Kent County increased by 126% between 2015 and 2022, while wages only increased by 26% in that time, according to Zillow’s Home Value Index and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Housing Kent also cited data from Zillow that found a typical entry-level home in Kent County costs $205,707, which would require an annual salary of $62,000 to afford, based on mortgage and utility costs as a percentage of income. BLS data show the county’s median annual wage is $42,730, which represents an affordability gap of 31%.
On the rental side, Housing Kent researchers found wages have not kept pace with the cost to rent since 2012. Using BLS and American Community Survey one-year estimates, they determined the income needed to afford the county’s estimated median rent of $1,196 is currently about $47,840, which means the average renter is paying about $425 per month more than they can afford based on the median wage.
Housing Kent is a backbone organization convening several area agencies to develop a system for increasing affordable housing,
ending homelessness and eliminating systemic racial disparities.
The nonprofit was born out of KConnect’s Housing Stability Alliance, a group of 130 public and private sector entities in West Michigan.
Housing Kent officials believe the organization’s metric library is the first-ever local effort to pull together comprehensive data on the state of housing affordability in the county, and is intended to help “drive decision-making” in the county.
“Right now, most of the individual organizations operate with data in silos, or in isolated format, so it’s pretty compartmentalized,” said Eureka People, Housing Kent’s president. “The dashboard is intended to give all of our community stakeholders a clear and comprehensive view of the housing problems in Kent County so that we can better partner together on how to collaborate … (to) really transform the housing system over time.”
A recent Zillow analysis found that Americans need to earn more than $100,000 annually on average to comfortably afford the typical home. People said Housing Kent wanted to pinpoint exactly what wage people need to make to afford the minimum viable entry-level home.
Alex Kontras, senior director of data and policy for Housing Kent, said the nonprofit’s staff consulted with volunteers from the Housing Stability Alliance to help determine which data to examine for this project.
He said they decided to go beyond Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines on household income to get a
more “comprehensive view” of housing affordability by combining entry-level home prices and median wages over time.
“At a certain point along the way, we realized we really need to understand wages, and how wages have grown over time, and not just household income,” Kontras said. “The Bureau of Labor Statistics has that wage data, and that is what really elevated our view of housing affordability and brought something unique to the table, because it shows families have been working harder to keep up … whether that’s having a spouse work where they otherwise might stay at home with kids, or adding that second job on the weekends and evenings.”
People and Kontras said Housing Kent will process and publish new data on a rolling basis by source as it becomes available.
In addition to BLS, Zillow and American Community Survey data, the metric library cites sourc-
es such as the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, point-in-time homeless counts, courts’ and clerks’ data on foreclosures and evictions, etc.
For now, the Housing Kent metric library is presented as a static page containing data from 20102023. People said the hope is to eventually secure enough funding to create a dashboard that refreshes regularly with new data in real time.
People said she hopes the data will illustrate the scope of need to the business community and support strategy-building around housing as an economic development priority.
“Our biggest hope would be that they could see, as a lot of the trend data has been telling them over the years, that housing really is a competitive advantage to them now, and that it’s a vital business growth strategy,” she said.
People said she also expects the data will be useful to nonprofit and
philanthropic groups that are looking for a treasure trove of data to use when filling out grant applications or seeking donations.
Family Promise of West Michigan is one of the member groups of the Housing Stability Alliance and has already begun using the dashboard to inspire greater involvement in its mission to end family homelessness.
At its March 14 Dreams Dinner Gala fundraiser, the organization cited the data on the widening gap between wage growth and home values ahead of the dashboard’s public launch and was able to raise well over $50,000 in one night to support its programming.
CEO Tenisa Frye said on a broader level, the dashboard creates a “one stop shop” for the Housing Stability Alliance member nonprofits, who all tend to collect data in different ways.
“In conversations that I’ve had with other agencies, we’re starting to have intentional conversations regarding: Are we capturing the right data amongst our agencies? Are we asking the right questions for people that come into our programs? How does our data look different, and then where do we have alignment?” she said. “… It just creates a platform for us to advocate more. Like in our situation, the families that we’re serving, it amplifies their voice to be able to include what they see.”
Frye said she also hopes the data can be used to help build awareness and reduce community bias around homelessness.
“I know I’ve had conversations with people, and whenever I share some of the data that I’ve learned through Housing Kent, their minds are blown,” she said.
A Florida-based coffee roaster is moving into the Michigan market this summer under a franchise deal with Baton Collective, the family office for Cheri DeVos Ehmann.
The company plans to open Foxtail Coffee Co. franchise locations in Ada and Holland, where work is currently underway at the former Ferris Coffee location at 57 E. 8th St., which closed on March 23.
Sam Nichols, director of business operations at Baton Collective, said he believes the premium Florida coffee brand will “resonate really well with the community.”
Crews will renovate the Holland storefront over the next several months as Nichols and his team customize the space to fit the Foxtail Coffee brand. Anticipated additions include a location-specific mural that aims to tie Foxtail to the Holland community.
The partners expect to open Foxtail’s Holland location in late summer.
Nichols said the shop will offer a “craft coffee menu” in addition to light food options like sandwiches.
He also anticipates adding beer and wine to the menu in the near future.
Founded in Winter Park, Fla., in 2016, Foxtail Coffee Co. currently operates more than 60 shops in the Sunshine State as well as in Nevada and Georgia. Fifty-eight of the Foxtail shops are located in Florida, where the chain is focusing the bulk of its effort to open dozens of new stores over the next five years, according to reports.
The growing chain “bridges the gap between a quick-service offering and an independent coffee shop,”
Foxtail Coffee Co. founder Alex Tchekmeian said in a statement.
The brand offers seasonal and traditional coffee from beans roasted in-house and focuses on creating spaces “built around community,” Nichols said.
A representative for the company, helmed by DeVos Ehmann and her husband, Steve Ehmann, “had a great experience” at one of the Florida locations and connected with Foxtail’s owners. The conversation ultimately led Baton Collective to bring the franchise to Michigan, Nichols said.
The Holland coffee shop will be the first of several locations Baton Collective plans to open in the state.
The family office also is planning a Foxtail Coffee Co. location at 7399 River St. SE, Suite 101, in Ada, according to an application with the municipality’s Downtown Development Authority.
The coffee shop, adjacent to the planned Ada Hotel development, will serve as a community meeting space that is “an integral part of the larger development plan for the
downtown Ada retail space,” per documents filed with the township.
The DeVos- and Van Andel-owned AHC Hospitality, the management company for the 36room Ada Hotel, is partnering with Baton Collective to operate Foxtail Coffee.
Foxtail Coffee Co. will feature two seasonal outdoor seating areas and will be open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. The Ada location expects to employ 18 people once it’s up and running.
Like the Holland store, Foxtail’s
Ada location aims to sell a range of beer and wine, and will apply for a social district permit, according to the filings.
Nichols said that more Foxtail-branded coffee shop locations are “part of a broader plan,” noting Baton Collective is actively scouting for additional retail space.
Foxtail’s entry into the Michigan market comes amid an ongoing growth spurt for the coffee industry. A February report by Research and Markets estimated the U.S. coffee market to grow from $28.06 billion in 2024 to $33.64 billion by 2029. As well, a report last year by the National Coffee Association estimated that U.S. consumers spend nearly $301 million on coffee and related goods daily.
“Our dedication to the art of coffee and roasting and sourcing premium origins is matched by our commitment to offering guests a welcoming and comfortable environment,” Tchekmeian said. “I’m excited that West Michigan is being introduced to what we call the Foxtail Experience. It’s something that coffee lovers cherish and look forward to every time they visit.”
A consortium of groups has set out to brand Lansing as a bioscience destination in a move to better position the region within the industry in Michigan, and maybe even begin to craft a state version of North Carolina’s famed Research Triangle.
In launching the Michigan’s Health Core brand initiative, the private- and public-sector partners want to highlight and leverage the Lansing region’s biosciences strengths and grow the local sector.
“It’s a testament to the advancement and opportunities within the life sciences and medical technology industry in our region,” said Keith Lambert, chief operating ofcer for the Lansing Economic Area Partnership (LEAP), the economic development organization in Eaton, Ingham and Clinton counties. “We’ve recognized that there’s so much unconnected potential. Michigan’s Health Core is really about bringing together all those di erent pieces.”
To create a brand identity, the backers behind Michigan’s Health Core want to better connect with other markets that are home to
growing bioscience clusters. at includes leveraging the work in Ann Arbor, Lansing, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids and Detroit to form “our own kind of research triangle” between the I-96 and I-94 corridors across the state, Lambert said.
“It’s understanding what each is really good at and helping to build each other up. We think Lansing’s stronger when Grand Rapids and Detroit are stronger. We see our competition as out of state and (want to) build up more of a ‘super region’ across Michigan that is competitive (nationally),” he said.
“We all have our own specializations and competitive advantages that, from a statewide perspective, it’s important to understand and leverage properly to make a bigger bang against the Minnesotas and the Massachusetts and a lot of the heavy hitters across the country.”
In addition to LEAP, Michigan’s Health Core includes Michigan State University, the MSU Research Foundation, health systems University of Michigan Health-Sparrow and McLaren Greater Lansing, the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and Michigan Biosciences Industry Association (MichBio). Biosci-
Events over the last few years have shifted our work and how people choose to chart their future. A shining spot of opportunity is construction. The Associated Builders and Contractors shared a staggering statistic: beyond the construction workforce recruited today, an additional 501,000 skilled workers are needed in 2024 to meet labor demands.
Feeding this demand is outsized workforce retirement levels, construction mega projects scooping up workers and the lack of support for young people considering construction careers. Recruitment is where Christman sees the opportunity to help our clients succeed.
Attract, Inform, Intern Jobs in construction require transferable skills that include teamwork, communications and attention to detail. Construction is a hands-on industry that supports creativity, problem solving and provides job security. This summer, Christman will
ences companies Emergent BioSolutions Inc., Neogen Corp., and Niowave Inc. also are involved in the e ort.
e partnership behind Michigan’s Health Core hopes to “create economic opportunity” through greater recognition and awareness of the Lansing region’s bioscience cluster that can draw investments in health care and life sciences, medical technology, research and development, and advanced manufacturing in pharmaceuticals and medical devices, Lambert said.
e growth can come from companies already based in the Lansing area, outside rms investing in the region, or startups, particularly MSU spino s and companies started by graduates.
“We’re looking at attracting new market entrants to come in, whether they’re in technology or manufacturing associated with health care, and demonstrate that we’re a great place for them to continue to grow their business,” Lambert said.
e bioscience industry pres-
ently employs about 3,000 people in the Lansing region in manufacturing and medical technology, plus several thousand more at health care providers, he said.
As of 2021, the bioscience sector employed an estimated 44,340 people in Michigan at more than 2,400 companies, according to the most recent biennial economic report from Bio Industry Organization (BIO), a national trade group.
Medical devices and equipment companies accounted for 454 of Michigan’s life sciences establishments — a 22% increase from three years earlier. e state ranks fth nationally, up from sixth in 2018, according to BIO.
Employment in Michigan’s life sciences sector grew by 5.6% from 2018 to 2021, ranking the state among the top 15 in the nation by industry size, according to the BIO report prepared by Columbus, Ohio-
based TEConomy Partners LLC.
“Michigan’s Health Core is an innovative approach to move technologies from the lab bench to the bedside more e ciently and accelerate the growth of the statewide life sciences cluster with the potential to yield new company formation, high-paying jobs, attraction of capital investment, advance the regional economy, and strengthen Michigan’s position as a biosciences leader,” said Stephen Rapundalo, the president and CEO at Ann Arbor-based MichBio.
MSU, which is part of the University Research Corridor (URC) with the University of Michigan and Wayne State University in Detroit, plays a key role in Michigan’s Health Core. In 2022, the URC collectively generated $20 billion in economic activity and accounted for $2.6 billion, or 91%, of academic R&D in Michigan.
welcome more than 40 interns to our nationwide summer program from nearly 20 colleges.
Christman in Action
From jobsite trailers to offices and the field, attracting a workforce is made easier when students experience the thrill of a building rising from its foundations. Another opportunity to highlight the vast array of careers is through involvement in the Lansing area ACE Mentor program. Christman’s volunteers support the ACE program and its focus on solving the challenges industry professionals face each day.
Christman also partners with Junior Achievement, local school districts and community colleges to inform, attract and engage young people, educating them on the rewarding careers awaiting them in construction.
Imagine a future where aging buildings deteriorate beyond use, schools struggle to provide quality instruction or hospitals lack functional space, all because the shrinking workforce can’t fulfill the demand. Christman is dedicated to a different future — one where communities and organizations thrive, and a skilled and engaged workforce is the answer.
Christman provides industry-leading expertise combined with an enduring commitment to local partnership and service.
Headquartered in Michigan, with eight offices across five states, Christman’s stated purpose of uniting people in great achievement is the hallmark of its 130-year history.
A small Indianapolis, Ind.-based medical device company plans to expand its operations in the Lansing area.
Certus Medical LLC will renovate a 6,000-square-foot facility in East Lansing to add a dry lab, expand its reach and pursue new clients. The company will invest $202,000 in the project and expects to create 25 new jobs paying an average wage of $65.30 per hour, plus benefits, nearly triple the local median wage.
Formed in 2016, Certus Medical
workforce training that “would logistically ease the financial burden of establishing the facility in Michigan,” rather than Indiana, according to an MEDC staff memo highlighting the project.
“We are immensely grateful for the support and incentives provided by the state of Michigan,” Zac Gerdts, a principal at Certus Medical, said in a statement from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office. “These resources will be instrumental in accelerating our economic development initiatives, enabling us to expand our operations and create meaningful opportunities for both our company and the community at large.”
“We are immensely grateful for the support and incentives provided by the state of Michigan.”
Zac Gerdts, a principal at Certus Medical
produces components for hip, knee, and shoulder replacement surgeries. The company employs 12 people in East Lansing and 29 at its home base in Indiana.
The Michigan Economic Development Corp. will support the project with a $125,000 performance-based grant to help with
Certus Medical’s new East Lansing office will manage business development and national sales and distribution for surgical implants and knee replacement products. The new jobs will come in administrative support, logistics, production, sales and professional management.
The company plans the expansion as business leaders locally push to expand the bioscience sector by creating a brand identity called Michigan’s Health Core for the industry cluster around the Lansing region that includes com-
Downtown Lansing stands poised for ongoing development, boasting coveted amenities such as a thriving High A’s affiliate minor league baseball team, a picturesque river trail spanning over 20 miles through the heart of the city, just a few minutes away from a prominent Big Ten university.
In 2008, Gillespie Group seized the opportunity to create an energized district just outside the Downtown Lansing main strip, known as “The Stadium District.”
The district was developed to surround the Lansing Lugnuts’ minor league baseball stadium with energy and entertainment.
We saw firsthand how districts enhance the economic growth of a downtown corridor, and we envisioned an experience for all.
Revitalizing the district required more than just erecting buildings — we sought to curate an experiential, walkable environment for residents. Collaboration emerged as the linchpin in our approach, drawing upon the diverse
panies in medical technology and medical devices.
“We really see this as further credence of what we’re building taking hold and demonstrating that Lansing and the broader region is a good opportunity,” Keith Lambert, chief operating officer at Lansing Economic Area Partnership, the economic development organization for Eaton, Ingham and Clinton counties, told Crain’s Grand Rapids Business. “They re-
ally saw a lot of potential in Michigan. They like being centrally located, too. They can tap into metro Detroit and tap in Grand Rapids and be at the center of it all in Lansing.”
LEAP will support the expansion with job training and talent recruitment valued at up to $5,000 per employee.
In the memo to the Michigan Strategic Fund board, MEDC staff wrote that the expansion would
enable Certus Medical to “enhance the functionality, aesthetics, and efficiency of the space” in East Lansing “and enable the growth of the team.”
Statewide, 454 medical device and equipment companies in Michigan employed nearly 12,000 as of 2021, according to the most recent biennial economic impact on the industry nationally from the trade group Bio Industry Organization.
perspectives, skills, and resources of various stakeholders to fuel the transformation of the region.
Our team thrives on collaboration and utilizing pioneering initiatives that help create and elevate experiences. Over 15 years, we partnered with 10 business to establish their inaugural brickand-mortar locations, attracted 15 more businesses, developed five residential buildings to accommodate over 550 residents, introduced the region’s second hotel in over 30 years and opened its first grocery store.
Additionally, we assisted in facilitating the lease extension of the Lansing Lugnuts through a Public-Private Partnership. Over the next five years, more than $120 million in development investment is earmarked to be activated in the Stadium District, building upon the energy and activation of this downtown corridor.
The success of the Stadium District emphasizes the importance of collaboration when fostering innovation and sustained growth. Through strategic planning, this vision is becoming a reality, marking just the beginning of Lansing’s revitalization journey.
1 MEIJERINC. Walker49544
1
616-453-6711;meijer.com
GORDON FOOD SERVICEINC.
gfs.com
3 AMWAY
616-787-1000;amwayglobal.com
4 BARTON MALOW HOLDINGSLLC
Southfield48034
248-436-5000;bartonmalow.com
5 WALBRIDGE
313-963-8000;walbridge.com
6 ILITCH HOLDINGSINC.
7 SERRA AUTOMOTIVEINC.
810-936-2730;serrausa.com
8 MOROUN FAMILY HOLDINGS
9 PLASTIPAK HOLDINGSINC. Plymouth48170 734-455-3600;plastipak.com
10
H.W. KAUFMAN GROUP INC./BURNS & WILCOXLTD.
Farmington Hills48334 248-932-9000;hwkaufman.com
LAFONTAINE AUTOMOTIVE GROUP
11
Highland48357 248-887-4747;thefamilydeal.com
HAWORTHINC. Holland49423 (616) 393-3000;haworth.com
ZEIGLER AUTO GROUP
269-488-2271;zeigler.com
GARBER MANAGEMENT GROUPINC.
989-790-9090;garberauto.com
313-271-8460;carhartt.com
BISSELL HOMECAREINC.
616-453-4451;bissell.com
WOLVERINE PACKINGCO.
313-259-7500;wolverinepacking.com
18
GENERAL RV CENTERINC. Wixom48393 248-349-0900;generalrv.com
$4.3B
Isaac Van Westenbrugge
Jay Van Andel and Rich DeVos
family members in management with relation to the first-generation owner
Hank Meijer, executive chairman, grandson; Doug Meijer, director, grandson NASupercenters and grocery stores
Dan Gordon, chairman, great-grandson; Jim Gordon, vice chairman, great-grandson; Kara Gordon Warren, board member and US broadline president, great-great-granddaughter; Tommy Gordon, division general manager, great-great-grandson
Aaron Van Andel, senior account manager, grandson of Jay Van Andel; Monreau (DeVos) Stewart, brand marketing associate III, granddaughter of Rich DeVos; Olivia DeVos, associate talent development specialist II, granddaughter of Rich DeVos
$3.6B
$3.6B
Rakolta Sr.
and Marian
M. Serra
P. and
Young
W. Kaufman
SOAVE ENTERPRISESLLC Detroit48207 313-567-7000;soave.com $1.3B
2 Foodservice distributor and grocery retailer
100%Direct selling business
Maibach, president, CEO, grandson; Ben Maibach III, vice chairman, chief community officer, son 73%General contracting, construction management
Rakolta III, president, board member, grandson; Lauren Rakolta, president of DFM Solutions and board member, granddaughter
contracting, designbuild, construction management
Christopher Ilitch, president and CEO, Ilitch Holdings Inc., son100%Food, sports, entertainment and real estate development industries
Serra, chairman, son; Matthew Serra, president, grandson100%Automobile dealership
Matthew Moroun, grandson, holds several executive positionsNAAmbassador Bridge and various trucking and logistics companies
William C. Young, president and CEO, son; William Patrick Young, CIO, grandson. Brittany Muneio, director, corporate development and strategy, granddaughter 94%Manufacturer of rigid plastic containers and recycled plastic material
Alan Jay Kaufman, chairman, president and CEO, H.W. Kaufman Group, son; Danny Kaufman, president, Burns & Wilcox, executive VP, H.W. Kaufman Group, grandson; Jodie Kaufman Davis, executive VP, granddaughter
services
LaFontaine, CEO/dealer, son; Kelley LaFontaine, VP/dealer, daughter 100%Automobile dealership group
chairman emeritus, son; Matthew
chairman, grandson 100%Manufacturing
dealerships and related companies
Bissell Mark J. Bissell, chairman and CEO, great-grandson; Max M. Bissell, president, global markets and wash, great-great grandson 100%Floor care products
Bonahoom, president, son; Roger Bonahoom, VP, son; Jay Bonahoom, VP, grandson 100%Wholesale meat packer and processor; wholesale meat, poultry and seafood distributor
Baidas, chairman and director, son; Loren Baidas, CEO and director, grandson; Chris Davis, president and director, grandson-in-law 100%Recreational vehicle dealership
Soave, VP, daughter; Andrea Soave Provenzano, VP, daughter; Christopher Provenzano, project manager, son-in-law 100%Diversified management holding company
e. Crain'sestimate. 1. FromForbes.com. 2. Companystatesthattheyarefamily-managed. 3. Foundedin1924asC.O.BartonCo.byCarlOsbornBarton.TheMaibachfamilyacquiredmajoritycontrol in 1961. 4. George B. Walbridge and Albert H. Aldinger founded the company in 1916. John Rakolta Sr. bought the company in 1963 with business partner Robert Robillard. 5. Automotive News.
Ranked by 2023 revenue
20 THE DIEZ GROUP
Dearborn48126
313-491-1200;thediezgroup.com
21
22
KENWAL STEELCORP.
Dearborn48126
313-739-1000;kenwal.com
ORLEANS INTERNATIONALINC.
Farmington Hills48334
248-855-5556;orleansintl.com
23 ARISTEO CONSTRUCTION
Livonia48150
734-427-9111;aristeo.com
24
25
SHAPE CORP.
Grand Haven49417 616 846 8700;
BELLE TIRE DISTRIBUTORSINC.
Southfield48075 313-271-9400;belletire.com
26
27
PVS CHEMICALSINC.
Detroit48213
313-921-1200;pvschemicals.com
BARRICK ENTERPRISESINC.
Royal Oak48073 248-549-3737;barrickent.com
28 THE IDEAL GROUP
Detroit48209
313-849-0000;weareideal.com
29 LACKS ENTERPRISESINC.
Grand Rapids49546
616-949-6570;lacksenterprises.com
30
JIM RIEHL'S FRIENDLY AUTOMOTIVE GROUPINC.
Warren48093
586-979-8700;jimriehl.com
31 CLARK CONSTRUCTIONCO. Lansing48911 517-372-0940;clarkcc.com
32 REQUEST FOODSINC Holland49424 (616) 786-0900;requestfoods.com
33
DETROIT LIONSINC.
Allen Park48101 313-216-4000;detroitlions.com
34
35
PROGRESSIVE MECHANICAL INC.
Clawson48017 248-399-4200;progressivemech.com
RONCELLIINC.
Sterling Heights48312 586-264-2060;roncelli-inc.com
36 BOWMAN AUTO GROUP (BOWMAN CHEVROLET)
Clarkston48346 248-795-1841;bowmanchevy.com
$1.2B
$1.1B 1973 Gerald Diez
$940M $1.2B 1947 Sol Eisenberg
$887.6M
$986.6M 1937 Max Tushman
$818.4M
$488.2M 1977 Joseph Aristeo
$800M 1 Gary Verplank and Vicki Verplank
$720M
$557M 1922 Don Barnes Sr.
$661.9M e
$674.1M e 1945 Floyd Nicholson
family members in management with relation to the first-generation owner
April Diez, vice chairman/COO, daughter; Gerald Diez Jr., president, son; Sherry Diez, VP, daughter; Mark Diez, VP, son
100%Aluminum and steel sales, precision processing, warehouse and logistics companies
Stephen Eisenberg, chairman and CEO, grandson 100%Steel service center
Earl Tushman, president/CEO, grandson; Larry Tushman, VP/ secretary, grandson; Reed Tushman, VP/director of operations, great-grandson; Marc Tushman, VP/director of logistics, greatgrandson
Michelle Aristeo Barton, president, daughter; Anne Aristeo Martinelli, chief strategy officer, daughter
100%Meat importing and trading
NAGeneral contractor with selfperform earthwork, concrete, steel fabrication and steel erection services
Tony Verplank and Kyle Verplank, executive chairs, sons NATier-one automotive and industrial component supplier
Don Barnes Jr., chairman, son; Bob Barnes, owner, son; Don Barnes III, president, grandson; Mike Barnes, director retail operations, grandson; Maggie Ratliff, Dir. communications, granddaughter; Kelly Wilson, HR manager, granddaughter
James B. Nicholson, chairman, son; James M. Nicholson, chairman, grandson; David Nicholson, president, grandson; Tim Nicholson, COO, grandson; John Nicholson, VP, grandson
$639.9M e $677.1M 1977 Robert Barrick none
$605.5M
$555.4M 1979 Frank Venegas Jr.
Loren Venegas,CEO, brother; Linzie Venegas, president and CMO, daughter; Jesse Venegas, president, son; Marty Venegas, West Coast sales manager, brother
100%Retailer of tires and automotive services
100%Manufacturer, marketer and distributor of industrial chemicals
100%Petroleum wholesaler and retailer
100%General contracting, specialized miscellaneous steel manufacturing and distribution of protective barrier products, global supply chain management, other
$600M $510M 1961 John P. Lacks and Richard Lacks Sr. (son)
$595.9M e
$575.8M 1987 Jim Riehl Jr.
$563.5M $357.5M 1946 Leon Clark
$515M $518M
Richard Lacks Jr., executive chairman of the board, grandson; Kurt Lacks, executive VP, grandson; Ryan Lacks, General Manager of Lacks Wheel Systems, great-grandson; K.V. Lacks, General Manager of Plastic Plate, LLC, great-grandson
Jim Riehl III, son; Joe Riehl, son; Jeffrey Riehl, son; Robert Riehl, cousin, general manager
100%Injection molding, plating, painting and assembly
100%Automobile dealership
Charles Clark, CEO, son; Samuel Clark, president, grandson85%Commercial construction, general contractor, construction manager, design builder
Jack DeWitt Steve DeWitt, president and CEO, son 100%Frozen food manufacturer
$495M 2 $452M 2 1930 William Clay Ford Sr. 3
$358.1M
Martha Ford, chair emeritus and owner, wife; Sheila Ford Hamp, principal owner and chair, daughter; William Clay Ford Jr., vice chairman, son; Martha Ford Morse, owner and vice chair, daughter; Elizabeth Ford Kontulis, owner and vice chair, daughter 100%National Football League franchise
2006 Randy Hosler Randy Hosler, president; Charles Hosler, executive vice president, nephew 51%Mechanical contractor
$358M $253M 1966 Raymond "Skip" Roncelli
$228.5M $231M 1984 John Bowman
Gary Roncelli, chairman, son; Gino Roncelli, vice president, grandson 85%Construction services, program management, construction management, design and build
Katie Bowman Coleman, president and owner, daughter 100%Auto dealer
ResearchedbySonyaD.Hill:shill@crain.com|Thislistoffamily-ownedbusinessesisanapproximatecompilationofthelargestsuchbusinessesinMichigan.Crain'sdefines"family-owned"asany companymajority-ownedbymembersofthesamefamilythathasreachedasecondgenerationofmanagement.Itisnotacompletelistingbutthemostcomprehensiveavailable.Crain'sestimatesare basedonindustryanalysesandbenchmarks,newsreportsandawiderangeofothersources.Unlessotherwisenoted,informationwasprovidedbythecompanies.Forsomecompanies,thefounders were later bought out by another family. e. Crain's estimate. 1.
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Roughly six months after completing a $40 million expansion at its Sparta facility, adhesive tape manufacturer Tesa Tape Inc. now has moved its North American headquarters to downtown Grand Rapids.
The subsidiary of Germany-based Tesa SE recently opened its new Grand Rapids location at 25 Ottawa Ave SW, replacing the company’s existing U.S.-based headquarters in Charlotte, N.C.
The $1.2 million relocation, which is expected to create 60 new corporate jobs, received state backing earlier this month with a $500,000 Michigan Business Development Program performance-based grant.
Tesa Tape currently employs close to 175 people in Michigan, where it based its first North American operations outside of Europe in Sparta in 1982. In addition to its Sparta manufacturing plant, Tesa Tape also operates a warehouse and distribution facility in Walker.
“Global companies like Tesa recognize the exceptional value and amenities that downtown Grand Rapids offers for their professional
and corporate services employees.
The city of Grand Rapids is thrilled to see Tesa Tape’s continued investment and growth in West Michigan and looks forward to welcoming 60 high-wage jobs to the city,” Jono Klooster, acting director of economic development for the city of Grand Rapids, said in a statement.
Tesa Tape manufactures self-adhesive solutions used in various applications for industries such as appliance, automotive, building supply, electronics, industrial, paper and print, and transportation.
Franklin Partners after a major renovation. More recently, Greenleaf Trust more than doubled the size of its office in the building, while Zeeland-based Tier 1 supplier Gentex Corp. opened a technology hub for up to 100 workers in the building.
In September, Tesa Tape announced the completion of its 40,000-square-foot expansion project in Sparta that added manufacturing space, a product and technology development lab and a customer solution center for product testing.
“We’re coming from a solventbased line that’s about 40 years old, and instead of investing in older equipment … we decided to invest and go make a big step in sustainability.”
Armin Hagenloch, plant manager for Tesa’s Sparta facility
Tesa Tape’s new corporate headquarters downtown also brings another boost to 25 Ottawa, which Kalamazoo-based Catalyst Development Co. acquired in 2016 from
At the time, company officials touted the “stable business” and ease of attracting talent in West Michigan as key reasons to continue to expand and invest in the region.
“It’s a nice area to live (and) it’s good to attract talent,” Armin Hagenloch, plant manager for Tesa’s Sparta facility, told Crain’s Grand Rapids Business last year. “From the business side, from the infrastructure side … it’s a great place.”
The recent Sparta expansion, which added 25 new jobs, also involved the replacement of aging production lines with new solvent-free production lines for more sustainable manufacturing.
“We’re coming from a solvent-based line that’s about 40 years old, and instead of investing in older equipment … we decided to invest and go make a big step in sustainability,” Hagenloch said previously. “We’ll actually be the second Tesa plant that’s solvent-free.”
Hagenloch also told Crain’s last year that the company’s ultimate goal is to manufacture in the U.S. as much as possible to avoid overseas shipping and freight costs from
Germany.
The company worked with The Right Place Inc. as well as state economic development officials to help relocate its headquarters.
“By choosing to relocate their primary U.S. corporate function to Grand Rapids, Tesa is playing a pivotal role in fostering a more prosperous region for families and individuals in our community,” Brent Case, vice president of business attraction at The Right Place, said in a statement. “We’re grateful for their continued investment in our region.”
The recent investments in West Michigan follow Tesa’s previous $20 million investment in a 24,000-square-foot expansion in Sparta in 2016.
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After nearly a year and more than $1 million in renovations, Railside Golf Club is opening a new restaurant, Alder & Iron, on April 30 in the former Railside Bar & Grill space.
The 5,000-square-foot restaurant, located on the golf club grounds at 2500 76th St. SW in Byron Center, will offer elevated dining open to the public, with a focus on local and seasonal ingredients.
Alder & Iron replaces the former Railside Bar & Grill, which, according to General Manager Tammy Augustoni, “didn’t have a great reputation.”
When she joined the Railside team in August 2022, Augustoni’s goal was to completely overhaul the existing restaurant.
“It was just kind of like an amenity,” Augustoni said, noting that the restaurant offered a limited menu. “We wanted (the new restaurant to be) a place that people want to go have a really nice dinner. There’s not a lot of that in Byron Center. We wanted it to be more of that upscale feel but not stuffy.”
With that in mind, the restaurant team launched an overhaul of the space in May 2023. While Augustoni had only planned renovations to the kitchen and minor changes to
the dining areas, a burst pipe flooded the building unexpectedly, necessitating a more thorough revamp.
“There’s not a light or ceiling tile or floor that has not been renovated,” she said. “It didn’t look like a restaurant before, so we added some booths and banquettes and we really focused on lighting and all of the pieces that make it feel more like it was an intentional restaurant.”
The restaurant seats 160 people indoors, with room for an additional 120 guests on 1,400 square feet of outdoor patio space.
Grand Rapids-based Carbon Builders was the general contractor on the project, which added a third patio and outdoor bar, renovated kitchens in both the restaurant and adjacent banquet hall and installed new flooring.
The restaurant also boasts an entirely new feel designed by Holland-based Kristine Kay Interiors LLC. Augustoni said the new look was intended to invoke an “oldschool club feel” while retaining modern touches.
“We just wanted it to be more of a boutique-looking club that kind of set itself apart,” she said.
The restaurant also now boasts a private dining room, which is available for reservations from the public.
As well, the restaurant also features a new computer system and ordering capabilities, allowing guests to order from the golf course or pool.
Augustoni estimated the renovation cost Railside Golf Club more than $1 million.
“It was like a domino effect,” she said of the renovation project. “It’s been a labor of love, but it’s been a lot bigger than many of us intended.”
In addition to revamping the restaurant space, Augustoni also wanted to create a new, elevated menu, for which she turned to chef Ricky Lund, formerly executive chef at Wolfgang Puck at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel.
Augustoni and Lund previously worked together when she served as director of food and beverage at the hotel.
“I knew he could pull it off,” Augustoni said, adding that she “wanted somebody who could handle pleasing the members and then knowing that the public is looking for something different as well.”
Alder & Iron’s menu ranges from lunch salads, burgers and flatbreads to dinner entrees like grilled salmon, tomahawk pork chops and wagyu meatloaf.
Augustoni described the menu as focused on local ingredients while still being approachable.
“We are dedicated to fostering relationships with local farms and continuously evolving our menu to offer options suitable for families and date nights alike,” Lund said in a public release. “Our approach ensures a blend of classic flavors with modern twists, creating a dining experience that is both approach-
able and elevated.”
Alder & Iron will be open for service 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. on Sundays. Only bar service is available on Mondays, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
“We’re ready with a whole new look and a whole new feel, a new chef and everything that we needed to make (the restaurant) new for the community,” Augustoni said.
Leaders of communities bordering the city of Grand Rapids are working to create more public spaces as a way to drive economic development and population growth.
Officials from the city of Walker, Kentwood, and Plainfield Township shared their placemaking efforts — such as pushing for more residential development in denser areas, libraries and community centers — April 16 during a panel discussion at the Grand Rapids Policy Conference. The Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce hosted the event at Frederik Meijer Gardens.
Creating more vibrant places is a “win-win” because it will lead to more housing supply and community development, Josh Lunger, vice president of government affairs for the Grand Rapids Cham-
ber, told Crain’s Grand Rapids Business.
“These projects are going to bring housing and other amenities that attract people to the area,” Lunger said. “That stuff has a huge impact on quality of life.”
Walker Mayor Gary Carey, Kentwood Mayor Stephen Kepley and Plainfield Township Superintendent Cameron Van Wyngarden shared the same sentiment during the panel discussion.
Walker, which borders Grand Rapids to the west with a population of about 25,000 people, is in the early design stages of renovating its existing 8,000-square-foot library branch building and constructing a new 19,000-square-foot addition. Early plans include expanding programming and community engagement spaces.
City officials also are discussing
“building a community center of some type,” in the Standale neighborhood, Carey said.
“We have a great trail system … but we don’t have these places to gather, these hubs,” he said. “We know we have to keep up with other cities and offer these types of amenities to attract new residents and keep the ones we have.”
For Kentwood to the south, with a population of about 55,000 people, Kepley sees placemaking as a way to bring the community’s diverse residents together. The city is home to East Kentwood, one of the largest and most diverse high schools in the state, he said.
Kentwood voters in August 2022 approved a permanent millage to improve the city’s parks, trails and recreational facilities. Funding from the millage will be used in part for constructing a community center and making major improvements to Covenant Park, including adding sports fields, Kepley said.
The hope is that surrounding restaurants and hotels would benefit once the project is done, he added.
“We are creating ‘get to’ places to live, not ‘got to’ here in West Michigan,” Kepley said.
Meanwhile, Plainfield Township has been working for years to encourage more residential and mixed-use projects, especially along Plainfield Avenue north of I-96, which is designed mostly for auto-centric transportation and is not walkable, Van Wyngarden said.
“It’s about pleasing residents who are there today while trying to address the needs of the residents who will be there tomorrow,” Van Wyngarden said.
Carey also noted that the growth of Grand Rapids’ downtown also benefits the surrounding communities, referencing Grand Action 2.0’s two skyline-changing projects that could accompany the group’s Acrisure Amphitheater and proposed soccer stadium. Construction work is expected to begin this year on the 12,000-capacity Acrisure Amphitheater and an 8,500seat soccer stadium in downtown Grand Rapids.
Dr. Norm Beauchamp, who led efforts to create the medical research campus in downtown Grand Rapids, plans to depart Michigan State University this summer to join the School of Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Beauchamp, a Spartan medical school alum and a neurointerventional radiologist, “made an indelible mark” during his tenure at MSU, first as dean of the College of Human Medicine beginning in 2016, and then as executive vice president for health sciences since late 2019, MSU President Kevin Guskiewicz said in a statement.
Henry Ford Health in Detroit “and has laid out a successful collaboration with our partners in Detroit for decades to come,” Guskiewicz said.
“As those who know Dr. Beauchamp can readily attest, his overarching care for people and drive to make a difference in the world propels everything he does. His vision for health, hope and healing and his ability to inspire teams of supporters and talented Spartans to create high-impact solutions will leave a lasting legacy,” Guskiewicz wrote in an email addressed to the “Spartan community.”
Guskiewicz praised Beauchamp for providing “visionary leadership and execution in expanding our medical footprint in the Flint and Grand Rapids communities.” Most recently, he led the formation of MSU’s 30-year partnership with
“While sad to see Dr. Beauchamp leave MSU, I am also happy for him as he feels strongly called to the mission at Georgetown as the nation’s largest and most prominent Catholic academic health center with a focus on caring for the most vulnerable among us,” he said. “Located in our nation’s capital, there is a unique opportunity to hasten the pace of delivering compassionate health and health care locally, nationally and internationally.”
Beauchamp departs MSU on June 30 to become executive vice president for health sciences and executive dean at Georgetown University’s School of Medicine. Guskiewicz wrote in his email that he will “take the coming weeks to assess and determine a succession plan.”
In announcing Beauchamp’s hiring, Georgetown University President John DeGioia wrote that he “brings tremendous leadership and energy and has demonstrated a deep dedication to our vision for the future of health sciences at Georgetown and the mission of our university.”
Beauchamp starts at Georgetown University on July 1.
Large Business
BDO USA, P.C.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan
Brio Living Services
Bronson
Cascade Die Casting Group
Choice Schools Associates
Consumers Credit Union
Davenport University
DFCU Financial
Feyen Zylstra
Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing
Greenleaf Hospitality Group
GT Independence
Gun Lake Casino
Hastings Mutual Insurance
Company
Holland Hospital
Honigman LLP
Hope College
Lake Michigan Credit Union
Life EMS Ambulance
Mill Steel Company
MSU Federal Credit Union
PADNOS
Service Express, Inc. (SEI)
SpartanNash
Suburban Inns
The Kendall Group
Tommy's Express Car Wash
Total Quality Logistics
University of Michigan Health-West
Zeigler Auto Group
Medium Business
4Front Credit Union
Air Lift Company
Armstrong International Baker College
Behler-Young
BHS Insurance
Butterball Farms Inc.
C-4 Analytics
Cherry Republic
DeWys Manufacturing Inc.
Fifth Wheel Freight
Fleis & VandenBrink Flexco
GMB Architecture + Engineering
GNS Holland, Inc.
Greenleaf Trust
Herbruck's Poultry Ranch
Hungerford CPAs + Advisors
Koops Inc.
Macatawa Bank
Mercantile Bank
Metal Flow
Motion Dynamics Corporation
Northpointe Bank
Progressive Companies
Rehmann
RENK America
Rockford Construction
RoMan
Schupan & Sons, Inc.
Seelye Auto Group
St. Ann's Home
Sunset Senior Communities
Terryberry
Total Fire Protection
United Bank of Michigan
Wedgwood Christian Services
Windemuller
Wolverine Building Group
Yeo & Yeo CPAs & Advisors
Small Business
5THGEN Inc.
Adventure Credit Union
AEBetancourt
Ally Logistics
Altus Inc.
Andy J. Egan Co.
Auxo Investment Partners
Baker Holtz, P.C.
BAMF Health
Baudville Brands
BizStream
BlueOx Credit Union
Brink, Key & Chludzinski
C2 Experience
Calder Capital, LLC
CarbonSix Construction
CasterDepot
Charter Capital Partners
CHOP Tree Service
ClickBid Comfort Research
CQL, Inc.
CWD Real Estate InvestmentGrand Rapids, MI
DeHamer Landscaping
DeNooyer Chevrolet - Kalamazoo
DeNooyer Chevrolet - Marshall
DeNooyer Ford
Display Pack
Doeren Mayhew
Driesenga & Associates
Easterseals MORC
Eckert Wordell
EHTC
EQI, Ltd.
EV Construction
Express Employment Professionals
Family Promise of Grand Rapids
Flow-Rite Controls
Foresight Management
Forest Area Credit Union
Foundation Systems of Michigan
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park
Garrison Dental
Ghafari Associates, LLC
Grand Rapids Metrology
Harbor Industries, Inc.
Highpoint Community Bank
Hill Island Financial
Humanex Ventures
Hutcherson Construction
InsITe Business Solutions, Inc.
ITC Incorporated - Elkhart
ITC Incorporated - Hudsonville
ITPartners+
Jireh Metal Products, Inc.
Kalamazoo Community Foundation
KALSEE Credit Union
K-Line Industries, Inc.
Lakeshore Advantage
Haviland Enterprises, Inc.
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Lakewood Construction
Legacy Trust
Legal Copy Services
Lighthouse an Alera Group Company
LRS
Mel Trotter Ministries
Metro Toyota Michigan
First Credit Union
Michigan Software Labs
Micro-LAM, Inc.
Motivation Excellence
Nugent Builders Inc.
Nulty Insurance
NuWave Technology Partners
OMNI Community Credit Union
OptiMed Health Partners
OsborneKlein
Packaging Compliance Labs
Pella Windows & Doors by Horne Pennell CPA
Plasan North America
Procare Landscape
Management Inc.
Revel
Ritsema Associates
Robroy Industries
Russells Technical Products
S.Abraham & Sons, Inc.
S.A. Morman & Co.
Seaman's Mechanical
Senior Resources of West Michigan
SJA Solutions
Southwest Michigan First
The Right Place
The Urban You
The Windquest Group
TowerPinkster
Town & Country Group
Triangle Associates, Inc.
Trillium Staffing Solutions
UFP Technologies, Inc.
US Staffing Agency
Vanderwall Brothers
Concrete Products
Veneklasen Construction
Weather Shield Roofing Systems
West Michigan Transport, LLC
Workforce Strategies, Inc.
Worksighted
A local developer is suing a Grand Rapids suburb over the denial of its long-planned townhomes project, arguing the city had no legal right to block the plan and should reverse its decision.
East Grand Rapids-based Jade Pig Ventures LLC, which is led by developer Scott Wierda, filed a lawsuit last month against the city of Walker for denying its preliminary area site plan for the River Ridge Townhouses project in February.
Jade Pig had eyed 49 acres it owns at 330, 350 and 740 Greenridge Drive NW in Walker for townhomes since 2021. The latest version of the plan — refined several times in response to city feedback — called for 162 multifamily rental townhomes.
The developer filed the lawsuit March 8 in Kent County 17th Circuit Court. Walker has a petition pending to move it to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan because the complaint invokes state and federal, rather than county, statutes.
Jade Pig Ventures is arguing that the city “engaged in a scheme to unlawfully obstruct” development of the property in violation of state law, the city’s ordinance and the developer’s constitutional rights.
The complaint contends that the city’s actions have caused “significant financial damages” and amount to illegal takings of Jade Pig’s property by the city.
The developer is asking the court to reverse the city’s decision by ordering it to approve the latest site plan. It also is seeking unspecified financial damages and relief, and to cover attorney’s fees and costs.
Jade Pig is represented in the case by attorneys at Honigman LLP, who declined to comment.
In the court filing, Jade Pig said the city’s actions “have caused (Jade Pig) to suffer irreparable harm, effectively depriving (it) of the right to engage in the development of its property and threatening the economic prospects” of the developer.
Walker’s attorneys at Plunkett Cooney PC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Walker Mayor Gary Carey declined an interview, referring to
the city’s policy not to comment on pending litigation.
After Jade Pig Ventures formally submitted plans for 186 units of townhomes on the site to the city in 2022, the Walker Planning Commission tabled a vote on the plan four times between June 2022 and January 2024 over an ever-evolving list of concerns brought by neighbors, city staff and planning commissioners.
These included density, traffic, the site’s topography, stormwater drainage, effects on well water, endangered species and whether the plan complied with Walker’s master plan, which is currently under review.
In September 2023, the city enacted a six-month “emergency moratorium” on high-density residential development projects while it continued master plan revisions. The developer alleges the pause was not based on any real emergency but was specifically designed to block the River Ridge Townhomes project before the next scheduled vote in October.
At each step of the process, the development team maintained that Wierda owns the land and has a legal right to develop the property, as the site was rezoned to the requisite residential planned unit development (RPUD-2) in the late 1980s.
The developer also consistently has argued that the project complied with the zoning ordinance across all categories of concern, and that it also complied with the master plan, although master plan compliance is only required for rezoning requests, not for preliminary area site plan approval.
Ultimately, the board rejected the plan in a 5-4 decision in February.
The developer said in the court filing that it refined the plans seven times in response to the city’s concerns, but “the city repeatedly moved the goal posts by requiring new information and reports.”
Jade Pig also said the city’s decision contradicts its own precedent, as larger and “significantly higher density” projects like the redevelopment of the former English Hills Golf Course and Lincoln Country Club into hundreds of units of housing were not held to the same standards.
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A Muskegon-based developer has acquired a vacant century-old bank in downtown Grand Rapids that it hopes could attract a variety of potential new tenants.
Parkland Properties recently closed on the First Community Bank building downtown at 60 Monroe Center St. NW for $670,500, according to city property records. The prominent Greek Revival-style structure with an ornate interior design at the corner of Ionia Avenue and Monroe Center dates back to 1916, and for decades served as a bank before it was listed in March 2020.
The property deal also comes with naming rights that could adorn the building’s facade.
“We definitely bought it partly because we love the building and have great memories here,”
Parkland Properties President Jon Rooks told Crain’s Grand Rapids Business. “It’s one of the most beautiful buildings in Grand Rapids. The history is interesting and it’s a Greek Revival-style building.”
For Rooks, the latest deal comes full circle and ties into portions of the building he’s held for more than two decades. The bank office — a 17,000-square-foot space that includes a basement, first floor, mezzanine and second floor — is at the bottom of an overall 13-story building. (Historically, the building was referred to as 12 floors because of superstitions around the number “13” when it was built in 1916.)
Parkland Properties previously owned the whole 13-story building for a time in 2002 when it was 75% vacant, and ended up selling all of the floors except for two floors directly above the former bank offices. The building also contains 25 luxury residential condo units on the upper floors.
The sale price was significantly lower than what previous owners Select Bank and First Community Bank paid for the space. First Community Bank acquired the bank space in 2004 for $1.78 million. Select Bank then acquired the space in 2009 for $1.58 million, according to property records.
Rooks said he envisions a wide
range of tenants that could make the space work. Those tenants could potentially include a food court, law firm, call center, luxury residential unit, real estate office, or a mix of several uses based on how the space is laid out over multiple levels, he said.
The recent sale also includes the basement of the building, which features a 110-year-old round vault door and a series of nine private rooms that could serve as an interesting office, residential condo or bar, Rooks said.
Parkland Properties is the developer behind two of the biggest projects in Muskegon right now that involve repurposing the 122acre former Sappi paper mill site and redeveloping the former Shaw Walker Furniture Co. building. Both mixed-use projects propose adding hundreds of housing units along or near Muskegon Lake.
The development firm has also built prominent apartment and condominium projects in Grand Rapids, including Boardwalk Condominiums, Union Square Condominiums, Cityview Condominiums and Monroe Terrace Condominiums.
The bank at 60 Monroe Center had been on the market since March 2020 and was listed by NAI Wisinski of West Michigan. The brokerage decided to use an online auction to market the listing in an attempt to draw some potential buyers from outside the area, which resulted in the sale.
“It takes a really unique user to make use of the ground floor space and it just didn’t fit a lot of potential users,” said Doug Taatjes, partner and broker at NAI Wisinski of West Michigan.
The late U.S. Sen. William Alden Smith led the construction effort of the building in the early 1900s as the president of the Grand Rapids Savings Bank. The building was designed by Osgood & Osgood and used to be the tallest in Grand Rapids at 13 stories until it was topped by the 16-floor National Bank building in 1926.
The building has served as offices for various financial institutions over the years, including The Peoples National Bank, Old Kent Bank, Select Bank and First Community Bank.
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As Grand Rapids maintains the lowest vacancy rate for industrial real estate in the United States, one local construction firm is partnering with a large pre-engineered building manufacturer to quickly ramp up supply.
To help meet persistent industrial property demand in West Michigan, Grand Rapids-based Construction Simplified has become an exclusive contractor for Butler Manufacturing, a Kansas City, Mo.-based builder of pre-engineered metal buildings with six manufacturing plants across North America.
Construction Simplified functions as an owner’s representative that provides construction and development management services, and executives sought a better solution for a building manufacturer on industrial projects, said Construction Simplified founder and President Brent Gibson.
Construction Simplified started working with Butler Manufacturing in October and is now considered one of hundreds of Butler’s official builders in the commercial market.
“We’ve put up industrial buildings of different types before and we just couldn’t build a relationship with a pre-engineered vendor, and they are a huge component (of projects),” Gibson said. “We were pursuing a project using a different manufacturer and then kind of hit it off with Butler.”
About 25% of Construction Simplified’s work is in the industrial sector, ranging from smaller improvements and renovations to expansion projects and new builds. In its nearly 10 years in business, Construction Simplified has been involved in about $60 million worth of industrial projects in West Michigan, said company Partner Chad Veldkamp.
“We have clients from the development side that don’t know how to take advantage of (industrial) properties they have,” Veldkamp said. “As part of that growth, we decided it was important to have a new partner to match that growth.”
Through a mixture of property ownership and partnerships,
Construction Simplified has access to about 150 acres of industrial property in and around the city of Grand Rapids, Gibson said.
“We’re trying to hit different markets and bring things together,” Gibson said. “This has been a planned approach: How do we really build a larger backlog in industrial? We needed Butler because we’ve been assembling the land and have the expertise, and just needed to bring that together.”
Grand Rapids has the lowest vacancy rate of the 50 largest industrial markets in the country, according to real estate research firm CoStar Group Inc. Grand Rapids’ 2.5% industrial vacancy rate is less than half of the 5.7% average among the 50 biggest markets. Grand Rapids also has nearly 200 million square feet of industrial space, which is larger than the Las Vegas and San Antonio markets, according to CoStar.
Butler Manufacturing works on projects through its exclusive distribution network known as “Butler builders.” Partnerships with firms across each of Butler’s service regions allow for more longterm partnerships, said Julianna Lieber, business development manager at Butler.
For Construction Simplified, securing the partnership with Butler helps cut down on variables in the construction process on industrial projects. Pre-engineering is generally the most economical way to go for warehouse builds, which is Butler’s specialty, Veldkamp said.
“If there is one thing COVID taught us, it’s that building the backlog for industrial (projects) became 9 months, almost a year to get a pre-engineered building,” Veldkamp said. “It didn’t matter, you were just a number in line with the larger conglomerates. But in talking with Butler, they worked at it differently and purposefully kept their builders online and didn’t take on additional builders until they could satisfy their clients.”
Butler’s size also allows the company to have strong purchasing power nationwide and globally, Lieber said. They are also ramping up steel recycling plants that will allow for more vertical integration in the company, she added.
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A new report projects Michigan homeowners will see one of the highest percentage insurance cost increases in the nation this year, largely because of more severe weather and inflation.
An Insurify report published April 1 found Michigan is projected to have the third-highest homeowners insurance rate spike in the nation on a percentage basis in 2024, with a projected increase of 14% and an average premium of $2,095.
The first- and second-highest percentage increases are expected in Louisiana (23% to $7,809) and Maine (19% to $1,571).
Insurance rates are regulated at the state level.
The Insurify report is based on a real-time database of insurance quotes and aggregated rate filings from Quadrant Information Services. To project how much the average homeowner will pay in insurance by the end of 2024, Insurify data scientists analyzed how often and by how much insurance companies implemented rate increases throughout the second half of 2023 and into 2024. They used that information to project rate change frequency and magnitude in every state through the end of the year.
Michiganders are still expected
to pay less than the national projected average premium of $2,522, with 26 other states paying more for home insurance. However, experts say the state likely will continue to experience increases as the pace of climate change accelerates.
“Michigan has been having more severe weather over the years, and that does impact insurers filing more for rate increases to help cover their losses,” said Jessica Edmondson, director of media outreach for Insurify.
According to the National Weather Service within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Michigan had 10 severe thunderstorms and tornadoes last year, up from an average of 6.9 incidents each year during the previous decade.
Severe weather last year included tornadoes that ripped through Michigan last August, causing severe damage in Kent County and other parts of the state.
There also were six severe winter storms in 2023, up from 2.4 per year on average the previous decade, according to NOAA data.
Of the severe weather incidents in Michigan last year, three were generated by storm systems that caused a combined $1 billion or more in damage in the affected regions, according to the National
Centers for Environmental Information housed within NOAA.
Mike Jager, growth leader for personal lines in the Great Lakes Region of Grand Rapids-based insurance brokerage Acrisure LLC, observed that Michigan fits into the broader national trend.
Nationally, NOAA reported 28 separate weather and climate disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage in the U.S. last year, up from 18 in 2022. The 1980-2023 average for billion-dollar disasters was 8.5 events per year, while the annual average for the most recent five years (2019-2023) was 20.4 events. In its year-end 2023 report, NOAA attributed the increase in high-cost events, in part, to climate change “supercharging” the intensity and frequency of storms.
“The weather events are more severe than they used to be in the past, and so that’s a big deal,” Jager said.
Experts Crain’s spoke with for this report said another piece of the equation is inflation in the construction sector, with continued elevated costs of building materials and labor shortages driving up the price tag to rebuild a home.
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data reported by the National Association of Home Builders in 2022 and 2023, residential building materials costs rose 1.3%
last year after jumping 15% in 2022 and spiking about 35% between 2020 and 2022.
Edmondson noted that because materials inflation appears to be leveling off, rebuilding costs may contribute less to the equation in the future.
But Jager added many insurers may have filed for rate increases in 2024 to decrease the gap between the amount of premium revenue earned and the increased cost to cover claims due to higher rebuild costs during the pandemic.
“You’re seeing insurance carriers, especially regionals and nationals, they’re all having loss history,” he said. “Their loss ratios are just not like they used to be, and so
that’s a big piece of it.”
Anita Fox, director of the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services, said DIFS reviews every insurance company rate filing in accordance with Michigan law, which states that rates can’t be “excessive, inadequate or discriminatory.”
“If we see anything out of the norm, we will even engage outside actuaries to double check, so we can then come back and question the carrier about why that might be,” she said.
Fox said there’s not been anything excessive about this year’s rate filings, given the historic factors driven by the pandemic and climate change.
Find out more about a risk
to come at
May 1 | 11:00am - 1:30pm
Economic development is the lifeblood of thriving communities. It is the work that drives community and business growth, creating jobs and enhancing the quality of life for residents. From May 6-10 more than 1,000 economic development professionals throughout the U.S. will celebrate Economic Development Week.
It isn’t easy to define the work of an economic developer. At its core, economic development is about identifying and nurturing the primary employers that form the backbone of a region’s economy. These are the companies that export goods and services out of their region, and they come in all stages and sizes, from start-ups to mature-stage employers. In the two counties Lakeshore Advantage serves, Ottawa and Allegan, there are more than 600 employers that fit that definition.
We work to keep our base strong so other businesses can benefit from the purchasing power of our primary employers, and all continue to thrive. How we do that is both an art and a science.
The art is connecting the dots that others cannot see. Through hundreds of oneon-one visits and outreach each year, we see patterns of challenges, opportunities and potential connection points. We bring
resources provided by our state, federal and nonprofit partners right to our employers’ doorsteps. Essentially, we serve as an easy button for our primary employers.
Our team also works to grow the next generation of primary employers by supporting start-ups with big ideas that could become future major employers. Each start-up’s needs are different, and we serve as their nocost business coach to help them scale quickly or fail fast. Currently, Lakeshore Advantage is supporting approximately 30 early-stage employers that could be our next Gentex, MillerKnoll or Haworth — all started by entrepreneurs with a grand vision.
The science is that we work behind the
scenes to avert barriers to growth and make a compelling value proposition to growing companies outside of the region that fit within our current business landscape. Each challenge is different and complex. Each project we support has unique needs. We work as confidential consultants providing vast amounts of community-related data, site information and regulatory requirements seamlessly.
Our work is a true team sport. We collaborate daily with our state partners at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, federal and state elected officials, local units of government, educational institutions and an array of other
nonprofits that stand ready to be part of our team when one of our employers has a need. Learning is a daily occurrence — we must be able to provide a CliffsNotes version of hundreds of programs, services and tools that could benefit our employers. Together, we create investment momentum, generate trust and mitigate risk.
As we celebrate Economic Development Week, let us recognize the vital art and science of the role economic developers play in strengthening our communities. Through innovative approaches and a collaborative spirit, proactive economic development builds a brighter future for us all.
While our country remains divided on solutions to manage the crisis at the southern border, there’s one immigration issue Michigan business leaders should agree on: It’s time to raise the caps on the H1-B and H2-B visa programs for guest workers.
Local employers cannot get the talent they desperately need, so they apply for workers under this annual lottery for a chance to secure coveted work permits. H1-B visas give skilled foreign workers with specialized knowledge in STEM and other technical fields the opportunity to work in the U.S. for up to six years. The H2-B program provides opportunities for seasonal workers in hospitality and other industries to work in the U.S. on an annual basis. Both are national programs — and both have ridiculously low annual caps: 85,000
total for H1-B and 66,000 for H2B. That means 75% of the time, employers looking for engineers, computer specialists and other skilled workers came away empty-handed. For seasonal workers, employers were able to get only 1 in 3 workers they sought.
These arbitrary caps are not adjusted for actual demand, the availability of U.S. workers or any other meaningful circumstance. This is stifling growth for no good reason.
In the larger context of immigration, this issue is so easy to overlook. While attention is focused on the southern border, we shouldn’t lose sight of this critical element of American competitiveness.
Proposals to increase the limits of guest workers remain unpopular on both sides of the aisle. Some reflexively argue for no more immigration, saying our country is
full. Others claim we need to protect American jobs and simply try harder to hire Americans.
As an immigration attorney, I know it’s not so simple. I have clients ranging from publicly traded international manufacturers to family-owned tool and die shops who have done everything they can to fill open positions to no avail. No rational business owner would go through the time and expense of trying to hire a foreign worker if they could locate a qualified and willing domestic employee.
These caps are hurting our ability to be competitive.
foreign seasonal workers to staff hotels, ski resorts and other venues where we love to recreate — and which contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to our state’s economy. Many of our northern counties have far too few residents to staff the many temporary positions for the summer. As a result, these businesses must compete nationwide against businesses like Disney, Six Flags and other larger venues.
Many H1-B applicants have obtained a degree from a U.S. university and then stay in hopes of employment.
Many H1-B applicants have obtained a degree from a U.S. university and then stay in hopes of employment. If they don’t get chosen in the spring lottery, many of these STEM professionals return to their country of origin, which drains valuable talent from the U.S. Michigan’s hospitality industry relies on
Doubling the quotas for each program would be a good place to start to alleviate some of the strain on Michigan businesses. This would provide our businesses with a key talent advantage and help keep some of our best and brightest workers right here where we need them.
Tourism officials across Michigan are hoping for a boost this year following Detroit’s success on the field and in playing host to major sports events.
Gathering April 10 at the 2024 Pure Michigan Governor’s Conference on Tourism in downtown Kalamazoo, tourism leaders from across the state noted spinoff opportunities following the success of the Detroit Lions and the city’s hosting of NCAA March Madness games and the NFL Draft.
“I like what’s happening in the state,” said Trevor Tkach, president and CEO of Traverse City Tourism. “Energy’s high, and when Detroit does really well, we all do really well. When they’re getting the March Madness games, and they’re getting the draft, that’s sweet. It brings more attention to the state, so we try to capitalize on that.”
Overall, tourism leaders expressed a mixed outlook for travel spending in the state coming off a softer year than usual in 2023 that was slowed by inflation, a record warm winter and visitors delaying travel bookings until the last minute.
But in light of the Lions’ winningest season since 1991, March Madness Sweet 16 games played at Little Caesars Arena last month, and the 2024 NFL Draft in downtown Detroit April 25-27, a big focus of the conference was how the state can capitalize on sports tourism in the coming year.
As Crain’s Detroit previously reported, East Lansing-based Anderson Economic Group LLC projects
the NFL Draft could have a net economic spinoff of about $161 million for Detroit, driven by an estimated 255,000 visitors, though those forecasts can vary widely.
Kelly Wolgamott, interim vice president for the state tourism office Travel Michigan housed within the Michigan Economic Development Corp., said the national spotlight from the NFL Draft will be “for the greater good” of all Michigan.
“What’s happening in Detroit and the NFL Draft is going to lift the state,” she said. “The national (and) international presence and visibility that Detroit is getting for the NFL Draft is amazing … and that’s going to put the spotlight on the state and the consideration for people not only to visit Detroit, but also to visit Michigan as well.”
To stoke that national attention, Travel Michigan partnered with Visit Detroit to roll out a new Pure Michigan ad featuring Detroit Lions legend Barry Sanders and comedian and Detroit native Sam Richardson. The 6-minute spot takes viewers on a tour of some of the city’s best amenities, from food to sports and entertainment to retail.
Tkach agreed that Detroit’s sports momentum will be good for the whole state.
Traverse City, which has about 16,000 residents in Northwest Michigan, has had a hard time over the past few years drawing in group youth sports business as summer hotel rates rose higher than what most players and families could afford. The former Cherry Bomb La-
crosse Tournament that used to be held annually there never came back after 2014, and eventually moved to metro Detroit.
However, Tkach is hopeful this year that visitors to Detroit sporting events will extend their stay and head north, or perhaps come back later in the year after discovering what the state has to offer.
Traverse City Tourism is also being proactive.
The visitors bureau began “actively marketing” Traverse City to locals and visitors via billboards it placed in Detroit after the Lions had their best season since 1991 and made it to the NFC Championship game.
Kalamazoo is also looking to tap into the excitement around sports tourism through nascent efforts to become more of a destination for college, youth and amateur sports,
according to Dana Wagner, director of marketing and communications for Discover Kalamazoo.
The organization reported sporting events held in the area generated an estimated $28.5 million in visitor spending last year, drawing more than 30,000 youth, amateur, college and professional athletes, resulting in nearly 3,000 hotel room nights last year.
To gauge how it can tap into the sports economy even further, the organization hired Convention, Sports & Leisure to conduct a feasibility study last year on potential growth opportunities.
CSL found Kalamazoo County could use an indoor, tournament-ready hardcourt facility that can accommodate at least eight basketball courts and 16 volleyball courts for local and regional use.
CSL projected such a facility could
host 372,000 local and 223,615 non-local attendee days, generate 36,000 hotel room nights, and deliver $48 million in annual economic spinoff.
That’s apart from the ongoing work to build the $300 million Kalamazoo Event Center, which will be the future home of the Western Michigan University men’s hockey team and men’s and women’s basketball teams, as well as the Kalamazoo Wings minor league hockey team. That facility, which is expected to bring up to 800,000 visitors per year downtown, is slated to open in 2028.
Wagner said the basketball and volleyball facility is still a dream, and likely would not come online sooner than the Kalamazoo Event Center.
‘We’re going to be OK’
Jim Powell, executive director of the Petoskey Area Visitors Bureau, said unlike early predictions suggested, winter tourism in his area of the northwestern Lower Peninsula “did not fall off a cliff” this year because of the warmer weather.
“We ultimately did not do that bad,” he said. “… And I will give all that credit to the ski resorts — Boyne Highlands, Boyne Mountain and Nub’s Nob — their snowmaking, their commitment to providing a quality product, really kept people coming. Even though you might not have been able to take your snowmobile out or go ice fishing or go cross-country skiing or fat-tire biking or whatever was non-ski resort-based, they kept it going very, very well.”
A new food hall in Kentwood is offering a trio of women chefs the opportunity to bring their authentic Asian cuisines to market in a cost-effective shared kitchen space.
The Amazing Food Hall at 3740 28th St. SE features three separate concepts: Brunch N’ Rice, which offers Thai street food and drinks; Amazing Myanmar, a Burmese and sushi restaurant; and Adobo Boy, which focuses on authentic Filipino foods.
Founded by Ace and Jackie Marasigan, Adobo Boy is the most recent addition to the hall, which opened in December. At Adobo Boy, Jackie Marasigan serves up a variety of Filipino dishes that rotate weekly.
“Our goal is to offer authentic dishes that our grandparents (and) our parents would give us. We don’t want to alter any of the recipes,” Ace Marasigan, who also serves as founder and executive director of the Grand Rapids Asian Pacific Foundation, told Crain’s Grand Rapids Business. “Basically, the taste we’re about to serve people is exactly the same taste that we’re accustomed to.”
Previously, Amazing Myanmar
occupied the entire space. The restaurant was a venture of Min Min Tun and his wife, Aye Soe, who serves as executive chef.
Tun put the formal restaurant on hiatus as he pursued other business ventures, but still wanted the space to be used. That’s when he turned to Mai Thao at Brunch N’ Rice and the Marasigans.
Together, the Marasigans and Thao pitched him the idea of a food court, where all three businesses could share space and lower costs.
Thao said the two families have been friends since 2017, when they worked together to launch the Grand Rapids Asian Pacific Foundation, which drives cultural awareness and economic growth for Asian communities in West Michigan.
“We just basically came up with this idea and said, ‘What if we turn into some restaurants inside your restaurant and then you take a break. When you’re ready to come back, let’s build upon this idea,’” Marasigan said. “The three of us can share the costs, giving us a leg up to see if we can succeed together and in a way that’s not going to be costly.”
The Marasigans initially formed Adobo Boy as a festival vendor and
catering business in 2019. In the years after the pandemic, Jackie Marasigan, who had worked as a nurse for 25 years, needed a change of pace. Together, she and her husband built out their first food truck in 2021, which helped her find her calling.
“She really needed a break, and this is something that she loves to do,” Ace Marasigan said. “She’s so passionate. When I see her cooking, it just gives me so much joy.”
Meanwhile, Thao was inspired to start Brunch N’ Rice after traveling in Asia a few years ago. She also got her start as a food vendor at West Michigan festivals and hatched a plan to offer Asian-style breakfast
street foods.
Marasigan said the food hall came together rather quickly after the partners pitched the idea to Tun. The plan for Amazing Food Hall called for the three concepts to share a single kitchen and serve from multiple counters, food hall style.
The restaurant seats 60 people indoors, but a plan to add outdoor seating during warmer weather could bring capacity to 100.
Thao said the food-court style restaurant has created a place for her and her restaurant to call home.
“What we’re offering here is hard to find in West Michigan,” she said.
Together, the three businesses
share expenses, clientele and a kitchen, helping mitigate costs and drive business to one another. So far, Thao said the business model has proved successful, building a base of repeat customers.
“We share ideas, we help each other out because we’re just starting,” she said. “If Jackie is too busy, I help them out. If I’m busy, they help me out.”
All three restaurants offer only three to five menu items each, focusing on authentic dishes with rotating flavors.
While Adobo Boy focuses on Filipino cuisine, Brunch N’ Rice offers a range of beverages, small plates and entrees that Thao rotates biweekly, swapping out items to add variety and focusing on Hmong, Laotian and Thai flavors. With Soe at the helm, Amazing Myanmar currently is open on Sundays and Mondays, serving Burmese and Thai cuisine and sushi.
“We want to see if we can succeed together as friends,” Marasigan said. “We’re building something for the family, and we’re building something with our friends. I think it’s just so beautiful to see three female chefs (and) business owners taking charge. We’re all just trying to support them.”
Macatawa with a focus on customers, communities and employees,” Postma said.
Under the deal valued at $510.3 million that was announced on April 15, Rosemont, Ill.-based Wintrust Financial (Nasdaq: WTFC) will acquire Holland-based Macatawa Bank (Nasdaq: MCBC). They expect the transaction to close in the second half of the year.
For Macatawa, the key to the deal is Wintrust Financial’s model as an operator of 15 community banks that combined have more than 175 offices in the Chicago area, southern Wisconsin, northwestern Indiana, and southwestern Florida with $56.3 billion in total assets. The deal allows Macatawa to continue to operate as a separate, state-chartered bank under Wintrust Financial’s ownership with a local board of directors.
“The board was really committed to maintain a community bank, and this vehicle allowed us to maintain that,” Postma said. “The board thought that this partner in particular would allow us to maintain our community-based focus with community-based people operating it with a community-based fiduciary board, while at the same time providing expanded services for our customers, which is important.”
Postma cites international banking, wealth management and equipment financing as services that Wintrust Financial will bring to Macatawa Bank in the deal.
If shareholders and regulators approve the transaction, Macatawa
Bank would become Wintrust Financial’s 16th community bank and the first acquisition since 2019.
In a summary of the transaction, Wintrust Financial noted that the acquisition would expand the corporation’s Midwest footprint “into economically attractive, contiguous West Michigan markets.” As well, Wintrust Financial can continue “to capitalize on favorable underlying economic trends and expected growth profile in West Michigan.”
“Macatawa is a high-performing commercially focused community bank that can be leveraged to drive future Wintrust growth into complementary Michigan markets,” according to a summary that accompanied the announcement.
Macatawa Bank operates 26 offices in Ottawa, Kent, and Allegan counties. At the end of 2023, the corporation reported $2.74 billion in total assets, $2.41 billion in deposits and $1.3 billion in loans. The corporation recorded $43.2 million in net income for 2023.
With the deal, Wintrust Financial would get a community bank that started in the late 1990s and has solid market positions in rapidly growing Ottawa and Kent counties.
In the 2023 FDIC Summary of Deposits, Macatawa Bank ranked third out of 15 banks in its home market of Ottawa County, behind Huntington Bank and Fifth Third Bank, with a 10.43% deposit market share through 15 offices.
Macatawa ranked sixth out of 24 banks in Kent County with a 4.64% market share as of June 30, 2023, according to the FDIC.
The deal with Wintrust Financial drew praise from brokerage analysts.
Dan Cardenas of Janney Montgomery Scott LLC wrote in an April 15 note to clients that Wintrust Financial “paid a fair price” for Macatawa Bank “given the company’s history of solid performance, strong capital base, clean credit quality, and solid presence in the Grand Rapids and Holland” markets. Cardenas maintained a buy rating on Macatawa Bank’s shares with the expectation that they will “react positively to the merger announcement”
“We like this transaction as it pairs (Macatawa Bank) with a high-performing regional player that shares the company’s community banking philosophy while bringing a diverse set of product offerings to the (Macatawa Bank) platform,” Cardenas wrote.
In a report to clients, analysts for Truist Securities called the price that Wintrust Financial will pay “somewhat reasonable,” given Macatawa Bank’s “strong profitability metrics.”
Analyst Jon Arfstrom at RBC Capital Markets LLC wrote in a research note on the deal that the West Michigan market is “very attractive demographically with high incomes relative to the Midwest, low unemployment, modestly faster growth, and a culture at (Macatawa Bank) that is similar to Wintrust.”
The merger “aligns well with Wintrust’s history of successful, easily digestible M&A opportunities, which the company combines with steady and solid organic balance sheet growth. While Western Michigan represents a new market for the company, it is a logical ex-
tension of the company’s well-established Chicago and Milwaukee footprint,” Arfstrom wrote. “Further, given management’s long track record of successful M&A, we are optimistic about management’s ability to efficiently and successfully integrate Macatawa in a timely and accretive manner.”
The proposed merger sent Macatawa Bank’s shares soaring after closing April 15 at $9.93 per share, off 5 cents for the day. In the first hour of trading April 17, Macatawa’s shares spiked by nearly 40%.
Under the terms of the definitive agreement, Macatawa Bank shareholders will receive $14.85 for each share of common stock they own. Macatawa shareholders can convert their shares into Wintrust Financial shares based on the trading price when the deal closes. The acquisition is subject to approval by Macatawa Bank shareholders and other closing conditions and could close in the second half of this year.
Macatawa Bank has long been the subject of deal speculation, with executives in the past saying that the bank was not for sale.
Industry forces altered that position, largely from the high costs of regulatory compliance and costly investments in technology for mobile banking and cybersecurity.
“You’ve got mobile banking and everything, and the smaller the institution, the more difficult it is to compete with larger institutions on retail, mobile banking and other retail things,” Postma said. “I also think that because of cybersecurity and a lot of other external factors that affect banks today, it’s very difficult for smaller banks to have the back-office staff to be as robust as it would need to be to handle threats and everything else “It’s just a different world.”
In an annual survey on bank M&A by the industry trade publication Bank Director, the need for scale to drive technology and other investments ranked as the top reason among responding executives for why they were seeking to buy or sell their bank.
introduced PA12S nylon material from HP that smooths coated or finished components.
Marvin said the partnership will give ADS more visibility as well as engineering support if needed on their own projects.
“Our goal is to bring them complex projects that would entail using them to bring products to market, and with that grow our company and also give us visibility with them on the projects we are doing,” Marvin said.
François Minec, head of 3D polymers at HP’s personalization & 3D printing business, said in a statement that the company is eager to see the projects and applications ADS will undertake through the new partnership.
“Accel Digital Solutions is at the forefront of 3D printing innovation, leveraging our PA12 Smooth material to explore uncharted territories in manufacturing,” Minec said. “Their enthusiasm and pioneering approach are exactly what the industry needs to propel forward.”
For Teets and Marvin, who previously worked together at Cascade Township-based ADAC Automotive, launching ADS stemmed from a goal to offer an efficient solution
to a common challenge: supply chain disruptions.
“What started Accel Digital Solutions is the evolution of manufacturing, and one process that kind of sparked further interest for us was supply chain issues and constraints through COVID,” Teets said.
Combining decades of experience in manufacturing and product development, Teets and Marvin said they are familiar with common challenges engineers face related to design and launch.
Teets, the son of former ADAC President and CEO Jim Teets, worked at ADAC for more than a decade in various roles, focusing more recently on additive manufacturing prior to the launch of ADS.
Additive manufacturing allows companies to design and produce components in a timelier fashion
than through traditional processes like tooling, which tends to take weeks or months for larger programs, the founders said.
The technology also generally allows for more consistent costs and pricing compared to fluctuations involved in other processes.
“A lot of people are not wanting to invest heavily in capital right now, so using additive as a starting point to prove your products to the market is a good way to do it,” Marvin said.
Teets said ADS brings to the table more timeliness and efficiency to produce or replicate parts for prototyping or production.
“As additive manufacturing continues to grow and evolve, we wanted to be on the front end of that,” Teets said.
Looking ahead, Teets aims to grow ADS through local partner-
ships with larger manufacturing companies as well as potential talent recruitment from area colleges and universities.
The founders also said ADS intends to function as an incubator for businesses in the area to help develop and launch products, either through additive manufacturing or traditional processes.
“We are willing to review projects with customers and tell them if there’s a fit or not or help them through that path, help them get to a goal,” Marvin said.
Meanwhile, organizations across Michigan are working to make manufacturers more comfortable with additive processes.
Troy-based Automation Alley recently released an additive manufacturing playbook on how manufacturers can incorporate those systems into traditional processes.
“At Automation Alley, we believe it is imperative for manufacturers to integrate 3D printer applications into their manufacturing process to stay competitive in the Industry 4.0 future,” Tom Kelly, executive director and CEO of Automation Alley, said in a statement.
As a World Economic Forum Advanced Manufacturing Hub, Automation Alley’s goal is to help small, mid-sized and large companies launch into the digital age of manufacturing. The organization has
more than 2,300 members across Michigan, including nearly 400 in West Michigan.
The additive manufacturing playbook was created in partnership with the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center and Michigan State University and was sponsored by Israel-based additive manufacturing company Stratasys Ltd.
Despite the capabilities, Automation Alley has noticed that manufacturers are often reluctant to adopt 3D printing technology because it vastly differs from traditional processes and the costs can be difficult to justify.
Key topics from the playbook include the importance of design in additive manufacturing, how the technology works with artificial intelligence and integrating additive manufacturing programs in education.
“The additive process continues to redefine the way factories approach and think about how products are made. 3D printing provides manufacturers with the ability to be more precise and rapidly customizable than traditional machining and assembly lines,” Kelly added.
“Pair that with generative design AI and distributed manufacturing and the possibilities for efficiency and flexibility are endless,” he said.
conversion to 111 Lyon,” Sam Cummings, managing partner at CWD Real Estate, told Crain’s Grand Rapids Business. “The location is a 10 for that conversion, but the brownfield plan is a critical step toward that feasibility.”
Fifth Third Bank will remain in the building as its anchor tenant, Cummings said. “We’re happy that Fifth Third is going to stay;
restaurant owners say they’ve come to rely on these extra spaces for increased business and feel the decision to end the program came unexpectedly.
Bob Johnson, owner of Apartment Lounge at 33 Sheldon Ave. NE, said he was “blindsided” by a February email from the DGRI announcing the end of the program, which came after the company spent more than $25,000 to turn its parklet space into a year-round space.
“I’ve been working for almost a year to figure out the path forward and then they changed their mind at the last minute in February,” he said. “That’s not acceptable for any of us. It screws over every downtown business that depends on that extra revenue.”
In an interview with Crain’s Grand Rapids Business on April 3, Johnson stated that his structure remains in place while he attempts to work with the city on the issue.
Miller acknowledged to Crain’s Grand Rapids that there “probably hasn’t been a lot of communication” with businesses leading up to the decision to remove and no longer fund the parklet spaces. However, he noted that “we have always told people that this is something that is being evaluated.”
“Maybe the communication
this is (their) home,” he said.
CWD’s plan would convert about 95,025 square feet of existing commercial space into residential use. The 140 residential units would be a mix of one- and two-bedroom units, with 28 of the units earmarked for income-qualified households earning no more than 100% of the area median income, according to plans CWD filed with the city.
Construction work is expected to begin this fall and take about 18 months to complete, CWD in-
could have been better,” he said, adding that “in general, (the city) has had a very positive relationship with even the folks who are going through some of this stuff.”
The parklet issue is mainly concentrated along Monroe Center Street, a narrow one-way street lined with retailers and restaurants, many of whom used parking spaces for outdoor seating — in some cases even beyond the bounds of their storefronts.
“In order for you to have (a parklet) in front of another business, you need to have written support from that business,” he said.
Superior Watch Repair owner Chuni Raniga had been one of the more vocal supporters of removing the parklet spaces, Miller said.
Sandwiched between Cinco De Mayo and Uccello’s Ristorante, Superior Watch Repair lacked street visibility as both restaurants’ seating extended in front of his business, Miller said.
“Not only doesn’t he have any parking out front, but he also doesn’t have a lot of exposure,” Miller said.
Raniga declined to speak with Crain’s Grand Rapids Business about the issue.
As well, DGRI heard from many downtown residents along Monroe Center who have expressed frustration about their inability to park on the street in front of their homes, Miller said.
dicated in the filings. Grand Rapids’ office market has had more leasing activity throughout the first quarter of 2024, with a total vacancy rate of 12.7%, down from a peak of 13.6% last year, according to brokerage firm JLL’s most recent market report. The market also had about 95,400 square feet of absorption so far this year, the highest level of positive absorption since the second quarter of 2022, according to the report.
CWD purchased the two-build-
ing Vandenberg Center complex from Fifth Third Bank in 2016 for $31 million.
Vandenberg Center was constructed between 1965 and 1970 by Michigan Consolidated Gas Co., a subsidiary of DTE Energy, and Old Kent Bank, which was later acquired by Fifth Third Bank.
CWD sold the adjacent former six-story building at 200 Monroe to a subsidiary of RDV Corp., the DeVos family office, in 2019 for $15.3 million.
At 111 Lyon, CWD invested
“These are things that we haven’t really heard a lot of, because there was quite a bit of grace in the community about a lot of this stuff for a few years,” Miller said. “But I think that now we’re seeing (people say), ‘OK, COVID is over and you guys need to do something to get this cleaned up.’ There’s probably some frustration behind some of it.”
Alex Benda, owner of boutique gift shops Courage and Soar and Oh, Hello Co. Paper and Gifts, located adjacent to one another on Monroe Center, told Crain’s Grand Rapids Business he believes the on-street parklets were “the right answer” for restaurants during COVID. However, he thinks they
are no longer being implemented in a way that fits the neighborhood.
Benda noted other concerns, such as restaurants storing seating in the parking spaces and not maintaining them, indicating that he would like to see more structure around the program.
“I really think the issue here is because the problems that this creates are not as impactful as the problems it’s solving,” he said.
Laine Van Dyken, general manager and managing partner at Uccello’s Ristorante Downtown, said in an email that the restaurant is currently working with the city regarding the future of its parklet space.
about $9.7 million in groundfloor commercial and retail renovations, which were completed in May 2021, according to filings with the city.
The now-defunct University Club previously occupied the 10th floor of the building before the social club disbanded on Nov. 30, 2023, because of low membership. The University Club also formerly operated an athletic club in the basement and sublevels of the building before it shuttered in October 2023.
Van Dyken said that the announcement that the restaurant would be required to go back to sidewalk-only seating “raised some concerns,” noting that “sales from the patio last year made up nearly 70% of our total sales for the summer including the sales from The Atrium, our private event space.”
She added that Uccello’s also is working with neighboring businesses to formulate a plan to continue to operate outdoors on Monroe Center.
“We do know that at minimum, the space will be cut down in size, but have hopes of holding on to as much of our current footprint as possible,” Van Dyken said. “With the support of our neighbors we hope to be able to give our team the summer sales volume that they have been looking forward to, but only time will tell what that will look like.”
Miller said DGRI sees the change to parklet funding and implementation as a way to look at the success of downtown from a wider lens, focusing on businesses as an ecosystem.
“We really have to begin to look at all of the businesses and (ask): ‘How are we benefiting the larger community?’” Miller said. “Are we benefiting some of these other businesses, or are we really focused on six or seven of these installations that are, from the other businesses’ perspective, potentially undermining some of their activity?”
organizations and corporate partners in the region.
Behler said the idea is to foster collaboration both informally as well as formally with businesses coming to Blue Dot to work with university staff and students to advance their tech-focused initiatives.
“We see it as a space that’s formalized and informal for, again, that intersection of technology, economic development and education,” Behler said. “And at the center, frankly, of all that is our students. We see them being in that space (and) taking advantage of those intersections, those collisions that happen with the business community as well as faculty and staff.”
Behler said GVSU hopes the overall project cost will come in at less than the projected $140 million. The university will continue to fund the remaining $107.5 million or less through its own investment as well as with support from the business
and philanthropic community.
“Hopefully, our business community will see the benefit of that investment,” Behler said.
Along with Blue Dot, the GVSU Board of Trustees in November approved a plan to form an as-yet unnamed college focused on computing and advanced technology, which will expand and separate the computing program from the existing Padnos College of Engineering and Computing.
The change, which is expected to go into effect this coming fall, calls for the establishment of programs for each college and the hiring of deans as well as creating a transition for current students, whose programs will not be affected by the creation of the new college.
Behler said details about the official name as well as the inaugural dean selected for the college of computing are still forthcoming.
As well, construction plans and specific timelines for Blue Dot will likely be available in the coming months, Behler said.
For local economic development officials, the Blue Dot project and
college of computing underscore the importance of developing and retaining tech talent for the region.
Randy Thelen, president and CEO of The Right Place Inc., said education partners like GVSU and other schools in the region have been integral for helping advance a 10-year tech strategy aimed at positioning Grand Rapids as a tech hub.
“There’s been some great momentum, and Grand Valley launching the college of computing and the Blue Dot initiative is really sort of the tentpole within our education community about (how) we build a bigger, more robust talent pipeline,” Thelen said. “Across the region we enjoy great partnerships with educational institutions, and I think we’re all pulling in the same direction.”
Almost two years into the strategy, Grand Rapids has added close to 3,500 tech jobs across various companies and industries, supporting a goal to create 20,000 new tech jobs in the area over the next decade and bring tech to 10% of all regional employment, according to a progress report released in Sep-
tember 2023. The job growth data are measured by a methodology developed by the Computing Technology Industry Association, an industry trade group.
Besides growing the talent base, Thelen highlighted the importance of retaining existing talent for the tech strategy, which is where partnerships between universities like GVSU and local employers come into play.
“As a general rule, greater Grand Rapids retains a higher percentage of college grads than most markets you see across the country, but we can always do better,” Thelen said. “That really comes down to partnerships between universities and the employers and making sure students get a connection to a job for an internship or co-op and then ultimately get an offer to stay in the region.”
“I think education partners touch across all elements of our tech strategy, and at this stage of plan execution, I couldn’t be happier with our education partners,” he said.
The Grand Rapids-based Frey Foundation entered its 50th year in operation in 2024, with third-generation family member Tripp Frey in his second year chairing the organization’s board of trustees. Under Frey’s board leadership, the foundation’s charitable giving continues a focus on local projects, including programs that support housing solutions for low- and moderate-income residents. Founded in 1974 by Frey’s grandparents Edward and Frances Frey, the foundation has awarded more than $187 million in grants over the past 50 years. At the end of 2022, the organization had $132 million in total assets, according to the most recently available tax filings. Tripp Frey’s father and trustee emeritus, the late David Frey, was a fixture in Grand Rapids’ business community and played an instrumental role in the city’s downtown development over three decades, including as co-chair of Grand Action. As the local philanthropic landscape changes and newer generations from power broker families disperse from West Michigan, Tripp Frey said he feels a sense of relief and happiness that the Frey Foundation “isn’t going anywhere.” | Kate Carlson
Have operations at the Frey Foundation changed much in recent years coming out of the pandemic or as the third generation becomes more involved?
It’s important to know that while there’s been a change in our governance to the third generation, to my generation, our core mission stays the same. We’ve always been a place-based funder, so most of our giving is here in Grand Rapids, in West Michigan, and we also support causes in Charlevoix and Emmet County.
The Frey family has been a part of these communities for a long time and we care deeply about them. I feel a sense of relief and happiness from folks in the community who are glad to know that we’re here and we’re not going anywhere.
COVID certainly presented its own set of unique circumstances and we were a little more proactive with our grants. We don’t tend to fund a lot of operating grants, but we were doing some more operating grants just to kind of keep people afloat. We’re back to, I would say, pre-COVID operating norms both internally and as a nonprofit sector.
You sit on the executive committee for Grand Action 2.0, which is leading the soccer stadium and Acrisure Amphitheater projects downtown. How does the Frey Foundation determine how to support large projects like those?
We will support large projects and we’re supporters of Grand Action and have in the past given to those larger capital projects. We have made a commitment to the amphitheater at this point. We have not made a decision on (funding) the soccer stadium yet, but I suspect an application requesting funding will be submitted to us for the soccer stadium.
In terms of larger projects, we’re typically involved in most, but to varying degrees in terms of dollar amount. We have an incredible staff including six folks who work day in and day out and are really tapped into the community and understand
what the needs are. So the trustees such as myself meet quarterly and rely heavily on staff to provide insight and analysis and we do due diligence on any organization to which we give.
Does the Frey Foundation and other legacy families around town collaborate to get big projects across the finish line? How do you work together?
There is a group of folks from the foundations and families that kind of get together on a regular basis to talk about what’s going on, but it doesn’t mean we’re lockstep with everything we do.
The foundations and families in town that can write big checks are important, but we’ve got to cast a wide net. We’ve been a little more proactive with our grants.
What do you mean by proactive?
Typically we want to be part of a larger group of funders, and if we’re out front and more proactive
we might be among the only funders to try to be more catalytic in nature. And as opposed to someone coming to us with a grant request, we might approach a group and say we’re getting a sense there is a need here.
What is a cause that the Frey Foundation has been proactive about giving to and supporting?
An example of this is housing, and it’s been a focus for the past about 10 years and I think it will continue to be a focus of ours, and that’s housing for all, across the spectrum of market rate and affordable and different kinds of housing.
We have made grants to organizations and projects across the spectrum, but I would say maybe if there is one area we’re kind of focused on is helping the ALICE population, which is Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. So the folks who are kind of right on the edge of being in a house where they would like to be or some kind of residence.
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What is something you’ve learned in the past couple years leading the foundation?
The biggest thing is a constant reminder of the important role that the foundation plays in the community and that people are grateful for the great work that this foundation has done in its first 50 years. I view my role as a steward to ensure that it keeps doing great things for a long time going forward.
What have you found to be the most effective strategy for giving to organizations?
I think we’re somewhat unique in the sense that we do more than just cut a check — we are partners with organizations we give to. We have an office space that we let community groups use and we offer things beyond just the check. We also help connect them with other funders that they might not have relationships with and try to be creative and provide more than just money, and I think that’s really valuable.
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