MUSKEGON, Mich. — The biggest development under construction right now in Muskegon's downtown is the new VanDyk Mortgage Convention Center.
The convention center naming rights agreement is a 10-year commitment by VanDyk Mortgage generating $1,500,000 in new revenue to complete the construction of the $22 million facility.
Once completed in the spring of 2021, the VanDyk Mortgage Convention Center will offer more than 33,000 square feet of meeting and event space.
The convention center will offer groups one large room or up to 13 individual breakout spaces, and extensive pre-function space – both indoor and outdoor.
Initial events held at the facility will likely be small due to ongoing restrictions on indoor gatherings.
"We're probably in a good place to start with some smaller events and work our way into the larger events as we move through 2021 and into 2022," said Muskegon City Manager Frank Peterson.
The convention center has the potential to give Muskegon's downtown a new identity. And while Muskegon city leaders like Peterson are excited about the opening of the convection center, they also have great faith smaller developments under construction or planned along Western Avenue will be equally impactful in shaping the city's identity.
"When you look downtown on Western Avenue a couple blocks from city hall you'll see the Lenard going up, which is a six-story building," Peterson said.
The Leonard includes retail space, residential apartments and office space. It's a $9 million development scheduled to open in the fall of 2021 at the corner of Western Avenue and Second Street.
Lakeview Lofts Phase Two will go up starting in the spring of 2021 on another corner of the same intersection.
The $8 million six-story apartment building includes a first-floor restaurant and will fill up the last vacant lots in the city's urban core along Western Avenue.
The Leonard and Lakeview Lofts phase Two offer high-end market-rate apartments while just blocks away at 1021 Jefferson Street, 73 apartments for moderate-rate income residents are being built.
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City Manager Peterson says affordable housing was identified several years ago as something Muskegon's downtown urban core was missing.
For years those types of developments were passing on the city of Muskegon for other West Michigan cities.
"There was a lot of disinvestment in Muskegon over the last 50 years," Peterson said. "It's going to take more than one or two good summers to rebuild us to the level that we need to be to be sustainable as a community. So I think you'll continue to see single family homes and multi-family homes throughout our neighborhoods and you'll continue to see the downtown redeveloped."
When Peterson looks back and reflects on 2020 and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, he's happy that at least when it comes to construction and development in the city, it slowed but didn't stop.
"It was difficult, but when you look back at the investments that people are making I think while some things slowed down nothing that was planned for 2020 disappeared from the development landscape," he said. "The project we thought were going to happen continued to happen especially the residential stuff which continues to be in strong demand in Muskegon."
Over the next decade, Peterson believes development will begin to shift away from the city's urban core and move to underdeveloped parcels along the Muskegon Lake shoreline.
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