Owner of re.dwell furniture design reimagines warehouse office space at 950 Boston Avenue

With nearly 5,500 square feet of warehouse workspace and 1,647 square feet of personal office space, Dan Chase sees big things ahead for his new collaborative workspace at 950 Boston Street SE in Grand Rapids. 

Owner of furniture design business re.dwell, Chase specializes in giving new life to old materials and has done work for many area businesses, including wood and metal carts for the recently opened butcher shop, E.A. Brady's. So, when he noticed the old building for sale, the idea to buy the space and fill it with other creative entrepreneurs and start-up businesses was a natural extension of his work. 

While Chase is still recruiting committed individuals and businesses for the space, he knows right know that he will be joined by Logan Zilmer of Logan Zilmer Photography and suspects he has room to fit four or five more entities in the shared workspace. 

"The plan my friend and I have – he's the photographer that's going to be sharing the space with me – is to move the walls around to create a bigger gallery space for his photography and my furniture and any other space for whoever else is there to display their work or products," Chase says "Possibly break up some of the bigger offices into smaller, little studios if needed." 

He says he's hoping to hold more art showings in the open gallery space in the hallways, as well as open up an outdoor space next year as the fill the building with tenants. 

Olga Hallstedt, a broker with Results! Commercial Real Estate, represented the investors who purchased the building and said this kind of collaboration makes more financial sense within the context of Grand Rapids development. 

"When a smaller business is able to share the square footage costs with other small businesses, there are economies in terms of splitting utilities, maintenance, etc.," Hallstedt says. 

Chase says 950 Boston Street SE, with re.dwell as an anchor tenant, makes cultural and creative sense, too. 

"It's kind of like what Rockford Development did when they brought Wolverine World Wide (with the Grid70 space), just on a much tinier scale and not with big budgets," he says. "So, a lot of people from diverse creative backgrounds where they can try to help each other even though they're in totally different businesses. I think things have been shifting to the smaller, boutique-type people doing their own thing, making their own way. The space fits the art community here. I think it should do well with that."

Written by Anya Zentmeyer 
Images courtesy of Dan Chase