CWD Real Estate plans big renovations for Calder Plaza Building in downtown GR

CWD Real Estate Investment, owners of the downtown Grand Rapids Calder Plaza Building, has announced renovation plans that include both an interior redesign and facelift to the building’s facade, located in the city’s central business district near Calder Plaza at 250 Monroe NW. 

Sam Cummings, managing partner at CWD, says the current redesign plans for the Calder Plaza Building mark the first significant renovation the building has seen in 30 years. 

“The front of the building was built in a more urban-renewal period, when everything was to become auto-friendly and mimic vehicular access as much as possible and that was really the design thought that people were after,” says Cummings, adding that the north side of the building — the side currently facing the main stretch of street — was designed to be the back of the house. 

“We want to not only better engage the street, but also, from a financial perspective, increase the amount of revenue-contributing space to the building economically,” Cummings says. “It’s a super fun project because the fundamentals of the building are extraordinary — it just suffers from a very outdated design, which hasn't stood the test of time.”

Interior renovation plans include the relocation of the lobby’s central staircase — which Cummings refers to in its current state as “that space-eating stairway” — where the original design plans called for an escalator that never came to fruition. 

“It just sort of stayed there…it doesn’t, in and of itself, provide enough architectural interest to hold the space,” he says. 

He says CWD, alongside Detroit-based Hamilton Anderson, will gut both the first and second floors of its lobby to create a more open space, relocating the staircase to the south end of the building. Exterior redesigns include an overall update of the facade to let in more natural light through the addition of a floor-to-ceiling window on the north corner that will also be mimicked on the east side of the building. 

“The whole idea is that you actually have a view of corridors from a public area, or when you are in a public area or first come into a suite, that there will be a ‘wow space,’ or the opportunity to have something like that where the natural light just fills the space,” Cummings says. 

The renovation of a 160,000-square-foot building is consistent with CWD’s existing portfolio of projects, says Cummings, saying its redevelopment as a centerpiece in downtown Grand Rapids is part of the company and the city’s shared vision of sustained economic viability in the coming years. 

“Our goal is, in the long term, sustainability,” he says. “I mean that economically, I mean it in every sense of the word. Right now, everything we have is really on the back of philanthropy. The past 25 years we have been blessed by (the fact that) every major project has had a secondary or tertiary goal central to it as the revitalization of the city. The goal of that was not to perpetuate philanthropy, but to be an anchor and to be a catalyst for long-term economic sustainability, and that’s really what we’re after.”

Written by Anya Zentmeyer, Development News Editor
Images courtesy of CWD Real Estate 


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