Lumberyard Lofts

Lumberyard Lofts is the rehabilitation of the two-story brick warehouse behind the former Miller-Zylstra Lumber building on the Michigan Street NE corridor, at 411 Houseman Ave NE (also known as 855 Michigan St NE). Its roughly 15,000 square feet hold eight loft-style apartments upstairs and three retail spaces below, home to Snap Fitness, an Indian restaurant, and Polly’s Wine Experience. It was paired with the adjacent 833 Michigan Street commercial redevelopment, and together the two buildings made up a mixed-use project of about $6 million that brought a long-overlooked block back into productive use.

Since opening in 2013, Lumberyard Lofts has remained fully leased — a quiet but telling result for a building of this scale in a transitional location. The conversion of 833 Michigan into medical offices earned a Best Re-Use of a Building award, and the two buildings were supported by Tax Increment Financing from the City of Grand Rapids and a Community Revitalization Program award from the State of Michigan, layered together to bridge the gap between what a small adaptive reuse can pay for itself and what it actually costs to build.

The Lumberyard / 833 Michigan pairing is one of the earlier examples of Third Coast Development’s preferred approach to the Michigan Street corridor: take two adjacent properties, fix them together, and use the combined scale to justify the level of architectural and operational care that neither building could support alone.