Grand Rapids sells property to Gilmore for proposed $5M festival marketplace

The Gilmore Collection recently closed on a $1.9 million purchase from the city of Grand Rapids of a parking lot adjacent to Gilmore’s The B.O.B., positioning the company for development of a proposed marketplace and concert venue.

The four-story project includes a concert hall with seating for  thousands, 45 concert suites, an exhibition kitchen and 60 retail-ready kiosks for food and beverage sales. Spaces for a bakery, coffee shop and newsstand would provide options for those businesses to anchor the complex with regular daily hours.

“By this time next year, we’ll have the construction plans done and will start to market the 45 suites for lease to corporations or individuals,” says Greg Gilmore, general manager of The Gilmore Collection. “We’re building it as a flex space to ebb and flow with whatever is happening downtown.”

Gilmore envisions the exhibition kitchen as a place where local chefs, celebrity chefs and citizens might test their skills in “iron chef” style cook-off competitions. The concert space, which features a roof that will open, will double as a cinema, offering the occasional movie as a special event.

“We see a large need for a venue of this type to bring more people to the city,” Gilmore says. “There’s not a venue for concerts between the sizes of those at the Van Andel Arena and Saint Cecilia, except DeVos Hall, and then you have to sit in a seat and be formal.”

The agreement with the city requires completion of the $5 million project by fall 2012. Gilmore hopes to have it open a year sooner.

A contest to name the project, currently dubbed “Bobville,” is on The B.O.B.’s web site. Top prize is a trip for four to Gilmore’s Redstone Inn in Redstone, Colorado.

Source: Greg Gilmore, The Gilmore Collection

Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at deborah@rapidgrowthmedia.com.