The Creamery
Location: Kalamazoo, Michigan
Year: 2019
Architect: Byce & Associates, Inc.
Construction Manager: Frederick Construction
The Creamery is an aspirational community development project in the heart of Kalamazoo’s Edison Neighborhood. The project will add affordable, high quality urban housing options for extremely low income and workforce households; boost economic development by attracting neighborhood-enhancing, regionally-owned small businesses to new commercial storefronts; provide affordable and accessible childcare to the Edison Community; and achieve a nationally significant, transformational level of sustainable design.
The Creamery will add 48 units of affordable housing to Kalamazoo as well as provide low cost space for local small businesses. The project will redevelop a brownfield with over 300 feet of frontage along the Portage Street corridor into zero setback, mixed-use, pedestrian scale retail, commercial and affordable housing. It will incorporate indoor bicycle parking, rooftop green space, on-site solar energy, and public art. It will interface with Kalamazoo’s multi-modal transportation infrastructure and prioritize neighborhood services in its retail and commercial spaces.
YWCA Kalamazoo will utilize 7,800 square feet of the ground floor of The Creamery to expand their Downtown Kalamazoo Children’s Center. The expansion will offer affordable, traditional childcare services as well as Kalamazoo County’s first 24-hour drop in childcare facility, a nature-based playground, and other family services.
The project is the first in Michigan to pair social impact investors directly with the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) tax exempt bond program. The Stryker Johnston Foundation, Kalamazoo Community Foundation, and others committed to purchase a combined $2.75 Million in state housing bonds at below market interest rates in order to reduce the primary mortgage interest rate. This yielded an additional $800,000 to the project without any loss of principal to the investors. Other financial partners include InSite Capital, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), City of Kalamazoo, and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC).