New owners of downtown office building unveil $3.5 million rebranding and facelift project

Jim Harger | jharger@mlive.com By Jim Harger | jharger@mlive.com MLive.com

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – The new owners of the six-story office building at 25 Ottawa Ave. SW announced on Wednesday, Aug. 27, they will rebrand and refresh the 124-year-old structure across the street from the Van Andel Arena.

Formerly know as Arena Station, the building will be rebranded as “Twenty 5” by Frankin Partners LLC, the Chicago-based investment group that bought the building for $6.18 million in March.

Franklin Partners said they plan to invest another $3.5 million to transform the 107,500-square-foot building.

Plans call for a four-story glass exterior façade, a two-story atrium in the lobby, a state-of-the-art fitness center, high-end finishes in the elevators, common areas and conference rooms. The building is connected to the Van Andel and other downtown hotels and office buildings via a skywalk.

Plans also call for the addition of a new retail space on the ground floor facing the Van Andel Arena.

The project marks the second downtown acquisition and facelift for Franklin Partners, which purchased the former Campau Square Plaza Building in 2012 and spent $4 million to rebrand it as “99 Monroe.”

“With the success of our first project at 99 Monroe, we saw a lot of opportunity at 25 Ottawa,” said Don Shoemaker, managing partner for Franklin Partners in a statement. “We are adding the same level of design and amenities that will re-position this location for both office and retail.”

Franklin Partners also owns several suburban industrial buildings in the Grand Rapids area, Portage and the Chicago area. Franklin Partners recently announced a 10-year lease with Booking.com at a former Siemens-Dematics facility at 4147 Eastern Ave. SE.

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Owen-Ames-Kimball Co. and Wright Heerema Architects will begin work on the remodeling project this fall and with a scheduled completion of June 2015.

The building, which was remodeled into offices in 1997 to coincide with the opening of Van Andel Arena, is losing one of its largest tenants next year, when Hanon-McKendry/DoMoreGood moves across the street into the new Arena Place development.

The property also has struggled in recent years to find a tenant for the ground-floor restaurant space. Two restaurants have closed in recent years after the city closed the Margarita Grill in 2008 after the bar generated 136 police calls in 18 months.

The six-story brick building was built by the Worden Grocery Co., a wholesale grocery, tea importer and coffee roaster. It also was used by Morley Brothers, carpet and furniture retailers, before Williams Distributing used the building as a warehouse and retail space until the mid-1990s.

Jim Harger covers business for MLive/Grand Rapids Press. Email him at jharger@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter or Facebook or Google+.

Source: http://www.mlive.com