By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Bear Manor Properties
is wrapping up construction on its 10th development project in a
four-block stretch of Wealthy Street SE in Grand Rapids. A new $500,000
mixed-use building at 1015 Wealthy is home to the Electric Cheetah restaurant on the main level and two market rate apartments above.
The property sat vacant for several
decades. The development company consisting of brothers Barry and
Jackson VanDyke and their sister Heather VanDyke-Titus first thought
they’d build a surface parking lot for Bear Manor’s offices and Brick Road Pizza Co., both located next door. Concerned neighbors convinced them to invest in a new infill building, instead.
The two 1,000-square-foot apartments have floor-to-ceiling windows. The goal is to achieve LEED core and shell certification; tenants can choose to go for LEED status on the interiors.
“We’re going to do some pretty unique stuff up there that will take a while to finish,” says Barry VanDyke. “A farmer in Grattan Township
lost a couple of cherry and hickory trees last year. He milled them
himself, and I’ll make the kitchen cabinets out of that wood. The
flooring will be inch-wide maple strips we salvaged them WMU’s gymnasium; they redid the gym and tore out all the flooring.”
In each apartment, the studio-style
floor plan includes a sliding wall that secludes the bedroom from the
rest of the apartment. Atop the building the green roof features a
10-by-6 foot observation pad.
VanDyke is enthusiastic about plans to landscape around the building and throughout the rear parking area.
“We’re planting switchgrasses,
Rudbeckia, wild onions, butterfly weed and Michigan prickly pear
cactus, which has bright yellow flowers,” he says. “We had to take down
a couple of trees during construction so we’re planting maple trees,
pin oak and redbud bushes—three trees for every one we lost.”
Source: Barry VanDyke, Bear Manor Properties
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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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