WYOMING — Advantage Solutions plans to consolidate two Grand Rapids-area offices and move about 450 employees to a vacant retail site along 28th Street SW, multiple sources familiar with the plans confirmed to MiBiz.
The California-based consumer products-oriented marketing and customer service firm is the prospective tenant for the former Klingman’s Furniture, a 169,000-square-foot, “functionally obsolete” building at 1001 28th Street SW in Wyoming.
Earlier this week, MiBiz first reported that Portage-based real estate firm The Hinman Co. was eying the site for redevelopment. Before Klingman’s, Roger’s Department Store occupied the site.
Hinman COO Rich MacDonald declined to comment for this story. Local executives at Advantage Solutions — an assumed name of Advantage Sales & Marketing LLC — did not respond to requests for comment as this report went to press.
Advantage Solutions lists two Grand Rapids area offices on its website: one location downtown at 44 Grandville Ave. SW and another on Charlevoix Drive near 28th Street and I-96 in the Centennial Park office complex.
The company made headlines in 2014 when it cited the increasing cost of parking in Grand Rapids’ core business district as the reason it planned to move about 300 employees out of its downtown location to the Centennial Park office, according to reports at the time.
That move came after Orion Construction Co. Inc. built the new mixed-use Arena Place development on a surface parking lot near Advantage Sales & Marketing downtown office.
For its part, The Hinman Co. plans to acquire the land and building and make an unspecified “significant” investment in redeveloping the building to make it suitable for office use, according to Mike Murray, a senior vice president in the Grand Rapids office of commercial brokerage Colliers International Inc.
Murray represents the building’s owners, Holland-based Coastal Real Estate Holdings LLC, a holding company for Macatawa Bank.
The building was listed for $4.975 million.
Murray said the sale of the building to Hinman has yet to close, adding that the building sets up well for a tenant who needs ample parking, although he wouldn’t confirm Advantage Solutions as the proposed tenant.
“If you look around the greater Grand Rapids area, it’s tough to make that come together,” Murray said, referring to the parking. “(Plus), it’s a great building with great bones. It has a large parking lot. It’s close to a major highway with easy access. It’s a great shot in the arm for the city of Wyoming.”
Wyoming city officials also believe reopening the facility could serve as a catalyst for other development on the high-traffic 28th Street corridor.
“Our issue is economic activity on 28th Street,” Wyoming City Manager Curtis Holt told MiBiz for the initial report. “That’s what we’re trying to drive. Bringing that number of employees, they’ll utilize our restaurants and our businesses. That’s what’s important for us.”
Holt had no comment for this report.
Earlier this week, the Hinman Co. asked the Wyoming City Council to set a public hearing on a Commercial Redevelopment Act (CRA) district and a 12-year exemption on certain personal property taxes on the site.
In a letter to the city of Wyoming, Hinman executives write that granting of the CRA is “critical to development moving forward.”
The city of Wyoming will hold a public hearing on the request on June 5.
The Wyoming City Council could then consider establishing a CRA district on both sides of 28th Street SW from Division Avenue just east of U.S. 131 to Michael Avenue, about a mile to the west.
