New Eastside Square Condominium project is a creative housing effort inside and out

This story is part of Second Wave’s series on solutions to affordable housing and housing the unhoused. It is made possible by a coalition of funders including Kalamazoo County, the ENNA Foundation, and the Kalamazoo County Land Bank.

KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Creative thinking is making hopes for more owner-occupied housing a reality in Kalamazoo’s Eastside Neighborhood.

And — as it happens — some creative people are among the first to move in.

Three of the six condominium units in the new Eastside Square Condominium development have owner-occupants, with two more expected to soon be purchased there in the 1600 block of East Main Street.

Some 1,800 square feet of ground-level commercial space is also set to become a new location for Factory Coffee. That fulfills a vision that area residents had when they were asked more than six years ago what they wanted to revitalize their neighborhood.

“We’ve sold five of them,” Zac Bauer, executive director of the Kalamazoo County Land Bank, says of the condos. They’ve also entered into a Letter of Intent with Factory Coffee for the commercial space. 

Bauer says the Land Bank, which owns the development, is using innovative land contract agreements to help bring the residents into the property “and so we’re working our way through that process right now. But they are off the market. They’re on hold.”

Construction of the two-story development was completed by June of 2024. Then sales were slowed when it became difficult to help prospective buyers with financing. 

“One of the things that has really been helpful for trying to sell these units is that the Land Bank has been amazingly cooperative and creative and innovative in coming up with solutions to get these sold,” says Twala Lockett-Jones, owner of Lockett-Jones Realty Group, the listing agent for the properties.

Because the properties are new and fewer than 50 percent were sold, it was a struggle to secure financing for income-restricted buyers through the Federal Housing Administration or other government-backed programs, she says. The units were designated to be “workforce affordable” housing, meaning buyers’ income cannot exceed certain parameters based on Kalamazoo County’s Area Median Income.

The Area Median Income is an approximation of the midpoint of incomes for area families and individuals, meaning half of all incomes are lower, and half are higher. The Area Median Income in Kalamazoo County for a one-person household is about $55,000 and about $79,000 for a family of four.

Two units are intended for those with an annual income of 60 percent or less of the AMI. Two units are for those with an annual income of 80 percent or less of the AMI. And two are for those who earn up to 120 percent of AMI. 

The six energy-efficient units range in size from 947 square feet to about 1,211 square feet. Each has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Bauer says the occupants are a nice blend in terms of their income levels.

Who are they for?

“These condos are for the Kalamazoo community who want to have affordable housing and the benefit of not having a lot of maintenance,” says Lockett-Jones.

“What’s really cool,” Bauer says, “is that when I was at LISC (Local Initiatives Support Corp.), there was a model about providing housing to artists. And so four of them (the Eastside Square Condo tenants) are artists or art-adjacent individuals.”

They include a musician/musician-tech, a videographer, and an individual who is a poet and spoken-word artist as well as a systems architect. With one exception, Bauer says, “They’re young, young people of color, (and) kind of out for the first time on their own.”

Among them is Marcel Fable Price, who says that since he relocated back to Kalamazoo from Grand Rapids a few years ago, he has been looking for a neighborhood where he could plant roots. Price is an award-winning poet and spoken-word artist as well as the director of Platform and Programming for Kalamazoo Forward Ventures.

“I was looking for a neighborhood that I could help impact, where I could bring my talents to help improve,” Price says. “I was looking for somewhere that was affordable, somewhere where neighbors were a reflection of me; … where when it came to raising children, the people around them would be a reflection of them.”

Price, who describes himself as a biracial Black man, says, “So I was looking for a diverse neighborhood.” He says several people he works with also have roots on the East Side and, “I’m getting ready to be married in August. And my to-be wife, her family is multi-generation Eastsiders.”

The condo development puts back into use a space that was once occupied by two dilapidated houses. Planning for the redevelopment of the Eastside commercial corridor, primarily East Main Street, gained momentum in 2019, anticipating more than $6 million in investments to reclaim property at 1601 E. Main St. as well as a plan to renovate property on the opposite side of the street to create even more condominiums. The effort was slowed by the start of the season COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020.

Like the Eastside Square Condominiums, the cross-street development on land also owned by the Land Bank was expected to have room for one or more commercial tenants in ground-floor spaces. It is adjacent to the East Main Food & Beverage. Bauer says the Land Bank will work with that market to plan for new development.

Harvin Sandhu, a local businessman whose family owns the Kalamazoo City Centre as well as East Main Food & Beverage, says there have been discussions about what may happen on his side of the East Main Street corridor, but there is nothing yet to announce.  

“I’m really excited with what is starting to come in,” says Sandhu. “I think there are a few other projects that I’ve heard about that will really revitalize and make that a much more exciting corridor again.”

Speaking of the East Side and the Edison Neighborhood as pipelines to downtown Kalamazoo, he says, “If we make them their own stand-alone ecosystems and town centers, it’s only going to help the city overall. And that really excites me about being able to really elevate both of those as their own stand-alone neighborhoods that also feed into downtown Kalamazoo.”

Lockett-Jones says area residents should be excited by the Eastside Square project “because it’s what they asked for.”

“The Kalamazoo County Land Bank is addressing needs we heard directly from the mouths of the neighbors in this community,” she says, referring to gatherings that have been held to solicit community input. “They wanted to see more homeownership. The Land Bank heard them, and here we are.”

Bauer says, “We’ve got young people moving into the East Side, which is incredible. If you want to look at a cool neighborhood, you want forward-thinking people, you want creatives there, that’s what we have.”

The Eastside commercial corridor, along East Main Avenue, has seen little sprouts of growth over the last few years. Bauer says. “Now we’ve got Factory Coffee, and we’re working on the second phase of it now in partnership with the Eastside Market, and so this is a critical mass where we’re still committed. …  We’re still focused on prioritizing the neighborhood’s desires and needs. So this is us living into the commitment we made to the neighborhood and also creating housing for a large swath of different incomes and also prioritizing local talent.”