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Bridge Street development would have 148 apartments, roof deck, cafe

Posted By: woodtv on August 6, 2024.  For more information, please click here to read the source article.

A development planned in Grand Rapids could bring around 150 housing units to the Bridge Street corridor.

The Bridge Street Apartments project — set to be renamed later — is planned for 648 Bridge St. near Gold Avenue, where the empty Duthler’s Family Foods building sits. Previously, a proposed permanent food truck court was set to go in that spot. That project is now planned for 616 Bridge St. just down the street.

The $31 million Bridge Street Apartments proposal before the Grand Rapids Planning Commission Thursday would include 148 housing units with a a mix of studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms. It would also have amenities like a fitness center, a resident movie lounge and a dog wash.

The apartments have been planned to be as sustainable as is feasible, developer Ryan Talbot told News 8. The building would be all-electric, with solar panels on the roof to offset energy usage in the common areas. The windows would be heavy-duty triple pane, which helps with energy efficiency and to quiet street noises, and there would be on-site electric vehicle charging.

“I think it’s the right thing to do,” Talbot told News 8. “The technology to build in a bit more sustainable way has never been as affordable.”

A WEST SIDE CONNECTION

On the ground floor, the podium-style construction would have parking underneath the apartments, plus the café and common areas. There would be a roof deck with views of the city skyline — including the nearby planned soccer stadium — and a ground-floor café facing Bridge Street.

“(The soccer stadium) felt like a cherry on top,” Talbot, the developer, told News 8. “The building location is primarily focused on the Bridge Street corridor, where you’ve got Bridge Street Market right across the street, you’ve got all the cool bars and restaurants up and down Bridge, you can walk to downtown if you want to. It’s a very connected part of town, but it also maintains a really great like neighborhood character, especially as you go west on Bridge Street. It feels really authentic.”

Talbot said he is excited to be working in the West Side, where his grandparents grew up. They met at West Leonard Elementary School 80 years ago and grew up blocks away from the project site, Talbot said.

“It’s cool to come back and be in those same neighborhoods and hear stories from folks who have lived in the neighborhood for a long time,” he said. “And just add a small piece to that story.”

FROM APPLE TO HOUSING DEVELOPMENT

After growing up on the West Side, his grandparents moved to Detroit, where his grandfather worked for Ford Motor Co. for several years. Talbot himself was born and raised in the Detroit area, before attending the University of Michigan, where he met his wife. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 2008 and the couple moved to the West Coast.

After getting a MBA, Talbot got a job working for Apple, eventually working on product development for the iPad. He helped balance the product’s costs and features, he explained, joking that some called him the “cost police” or a “wet blanket.”

While he enjoyed working there for a while, he said he eventually started looking for the next big challenge. His brother-in-law, who had started a development company in Portland, Oregon, invited Talbot to join the team.

“I decided to take the plunge,” he said. “(I) ultimately realized that … developing products and developing real estate have at least some corollaries with them. So again that balancing the best product you can put out there while staying within the practicalities of the market and the budget.”

Talbot worked on developments in Portland from around 2018 to 2022, mostly focused on housing projects with around 70 to 150 units.

‘THIS PLACE IS INCREDIBLE’

Ultimately, he and his wife made the decision to move back to Detroit with their four kids to be closer to his parents.

It was a trip to Grand Rapids for his brother’s wedding in 2021 that inspired his current work, he said.

“I remember hitting the ground in GR and going like, ‘Whoa, what happened here? This place is incredible.’ … Grand Rapids is clean, there were cranes in the sky, they were young people in restaurants. The city was growing. Everything felt optimistic, and like it was going in the right direction. I was blown away,” he said.

After the moved back to Michigan, he said he traveled to Grand Rapids frequently, falling in love with the city’s cool neighborhoods, history and size. Things started to fall into place as he learned about the area’s housing shortage and available incentives, and in 2022 Talbot started working on The Current, a 72-unit mixed use development set to open in the Creston neighborhood this fall.

Talbot said the new Bridge Street project is an extension of The Current.

“It’s meant to copy and paste as much DNA as I can from The Current to Bridge Street Apartments,” he said.

Both have almost identical project teams and a similar mix of unit types, though the Bridge Street Apartments project is bigger and would have more amenities. Both are very detail-focused, down to the door handles on the apartment units. Talbot said right now he’s working on picking a custom scent for the common areas of The Current.

Talbot is aiming to open Bridge Street Apartments by mid-2026. He’s still working to get final approvals and hopes to get a Community Revitalization Program loan from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

As The Current project starts to wrap up and he works to get construction on Bridge Street Apartments underway, Talbot is already looking toward the next project.

“I remain very optimistic about West Michigan’s future,” he said. “I’m looking at deals beyond this as well, other housing projects around Grand Rapids and further into West Michigan.”