Third Coast In The News

Michigan Hill renaissance transforms neighborhood, Medical advance on neighborhood spurs construction, renovation. Editorial, The Grand Rapids Press, Grand Rapids, Michigan, March 28, 2007

You cannot see any cranes from Michigan Street NE outside Kent Novelty Co., Nancy Connell's half-century old business.

She is on the east side -- the "other side" -- of Michigan Hill, the Medical Mile, Pill Hill or whatever the new media and PR flacks are calling it these days. It excites her, but also weighs on her.

"I'm kind of hoping somebody offers me big money for the property," she said as she stamped 50-cent price tags on dozens of paddle ball sets.

The well-worn, wood-planked floors of the store, 659 Michigan St. NE, are a stark contrast to the gleaming new medical buildings a few blocks away-- creaky reminders of the changing working-class area between a billion-dollar medical boom and a hard place.

"If the offer were right, I probably would sell," she said, admitting such a decision would be easier said than done.

Changing faces

The east side of Michigan Hill is in the midst of a renaissance that many expect will change the neighborhood over the next five years.

While nurses and doctors looking for a place to unwind have long mixed with factory workers at Bob's Sports Bar, 725 Michigan St. NE, their ranks have been growing. Bob's Manager Sharon Stack sees opportunity in all those potential customers zooming by on their way to and from work.

"I see it being a little like Ann Arbor," she said. "I see Michigan Avenue being a big campus for the medical field."

Bullish investors, such as Keith Cannon, president of Cannon & Co. and a partner in LaCati Development, have been buying properties and are starting to fix them up.

Cannon's Moxie's ice cream and hot dog stand on the back of a Victorian-style house at Michigan and Union is one of the latest businesses hoping to catch a piece of the city's medical renaissance.

"Obviously, it's an area that is growing very fast -- 31,000 cars go by there every day," he said. "I already owned the building but basically was trying to find a higher better use for it."

Across the street, LaCati Development is preparing to overhaul a long vacant city-owned building and tearing down an adjacent house for a retail project set to house an Urban Mill coffee shop and other tenants.

Asking too much

While Cannon said he is confident in the area's prospects, the asking prices on some properties have been inflated by prices Spectrum Health and Michigan State have paid for properties at the crest of the hill recently.

"I think the biggest problem on Michigan now is everyone thinks DeVos is going to come and build a hospital on a 3,000-square-foot lot," he said.

Expectations were raised higher by people looking at MidTowne Village, a development where construction crews are putting up a $23 million women's health center, a new retail and office building and 34 townhome-style condominiums.

MidTowne was assembled four years ago when commercial real estate agents Brad Rosely and Dave Levitt bought and leveled dozens of working-class homes between College Avenue and Union Avenue near Int. 196.

When complete, the demographic of those in the MidTowne area will be decidedly different.
"It really is turning out to be the magnet that we thought," said Joe Ross, a partner in the company developing the 34 Park Row Condominiums.

"I've got a young doctor, a specialist, she just bought a three- bedroom unit. I have a guy coming in from England involved in biotechnology."

They will live next door to the Women's Health Center of West Michigan, but not far from more homes such as the ones their condos replaced and businesses such as Debesai Mogos' and Abun Zegta's tiny Salem Store.

Inside, the husband and wife team from Eritrea sell a mix of North African food, exotic spices, lottery tickets and snack foods. Nearby development has not been good for their business.

"Business has been down," said Mogos, who has owned the store for about three years. "I hope that when the buildings (at MidTowne) are done, the people will come."

Signs of transition and gentrification are everywhere.

A short walk from MidTowne are low-rent homes, where paint is peeling and faded old sheets are hung as curtains.

Modest, but rundown retail buildings such as the one housing Tina Schoonmaker's Vito's On the Hill Pizza sit between the construction trucks and old homes with porches where grown men hang out all afternoon.

By next week, the decaying building at 601 Michigan St. NE will be torn down as part of the MidTowne project. With the demolition, Door Hardware Service owner Louis Stora, 82, loses his business's home of the past 35 years.

He said he tried for years to convince his landlord to fix his building, but his complaints did not carry the weight of Levitt's checkbook.

Stora said he plans to operate out of his van for a while and eventually open a new store.
And, while he's not happy about leaving the neighborhood, he thinks what is happening will be an improvement.

"They'll get rid of most of the dope business, I hope," he said. "There's so many dope addicts around there. I don't know how it's going to look, but I hope better."

Connell said some of the signs point to good things.

"I think we'll know in three or four years whether it is going to be any different," she said. "Once the med school and all that stuff get done, we'll know what's going to happen on this end."

The east side of the hill represents a great opportunity but not at the prices most people are asking, Levitt said. "I think as people's expectations get in line with the values of their property, deals will continue to happen," he said.

He points to the spot where Spectrum is building its $78 million Lemmon Holton Cancer Pavilion for changing the property-value equation on the hill.

But developers look at prices such as the $500,000 sought for the closed Wing On Lau restaurant as unrealistic. The 28-year-old restaurant closed after its owner, 62-year-old Cheuk Wong, died Jan. 11 after being punched in a Dec. 23 dispute over a parking spot.

"When Mr. DeVos paid $6 million for the Burger King, it set everyone's expectations in a different direction," Levitt said.