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By Nathan Peck | MiBiz
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Cheryl Beard and Anmar Atchu see renewal coming to Battle Creek’s city center with jobs, people and investment moving downtown. PHOTO: NATHAN PECK

BATTLE CREEK — While the redevelopment in Battle Creek’s downtown streetscape snarls traffic and creates headaches as customers make their way in for a pint, Tim Suprise is taking the long view.

Suprise, president of Arcadia Brewing Co., said that the roadwork has tossed his business a few curveballs, but the benefits of a redeveloped downtown outweigh the short-term costs.

The redevelopment is part of the $85 million Downtown Transformation Project that Battle Creek Unlimited and W.K. Kellogg Foundation say will breathe new life into the challenged downtown.

“This is transforming an economically depressed, marginal downtown, into a vibrant, very pedestrian friendly environment. I feel it will attract people to come downtown and engage with downtown businesses and it will be enough of an aesthetically pleasing environment to bring people from outside the area,” Suprise said.

While creating its challenges, the redevelopment project comes as new investments are being made downtown. The Kellogg Co. moved 600 employees from its Porter Street location into space at 67 W. Michigan Ave., now known as K2. Two blocks away, Covance Inc. invested $14 million to place a microbiology and food chemistry lab in the center of a growing food safety industry. The influx of more than 700 workers into downtown has blunted the impact of the construction and proved a boon to Arcadia’s lunchtime restaurant business.

“The K2 relocation coming online and the additional workers in the Battle Creek Tower has been tremendous for us,” Suprise said. “It has helped drive a very healthy increase in our restaurant business and has been a salvation to us during the last 120 days.”

The responsibility for keeping those workers around for dinner and entertainment into the evening falls to the Downtown Partnership, a BCU initiative that draws on public and private partners to revitalize downtown. Alyssa Jones, communications and events manager, and Cheryl Beard, director of commercial development, are working to create events that will attract visitors to the revitalized downtown when it is complete. Beard has moved downtown into space along West Michigan Avenue to be close to the businesses she is supporting.

“Being onsite downtown is more effective than being in our headquarters in the industrial park. It is helpful for us to be onsite and across the street from the people we’re serving,” Beard said. “We are walking the streets to lunch, to meetings. You begin to recognize issues as you are in the middle of the area you serve, rather than an office across town.”

Anmar Atchu, VP of marketing and leasing for the Hinman Co., sees interest in the downtown region picking up, but there are still challenges to address.

“There’s some momentum. Battle Creek has caught the eye not just of local people, but the peripheral communities as well. There has to be continued investment in downtown,” Atchu said. “We are taking more of a proactive approach, rather than what was once reactive.”

Blight remains a problem, still.

“It has been a detraction from what we’re trying to do here. It is frustrating that these are absentee landlords and they don’t put money into it because it is ‘out of sight, out of mind’ to some degree,” Atchu said. “That is a big challenge, whether it is investment or some cleanup of some of the blight. The city will be better off with those being handled.”

Beard is working to strengthen those businesses that are downtown, while trying to drive redevelopment of some of those troubled properties.

“It is attraction and retention of what you have. Continue to focus on that on a regular basis,” Beard said. “We are working on an exit strategy for the properties we’ve acquired. As we attract businesses, we have to have locations for them to build on.”

Atchu remains optimistic.

“I think we are getting a critical mass. We’ve made a giant leap toward that by bringing people in from 8 to 5,” he said. “Now the question is how do you keep them here longer? How do you make downtown more of a destination?”

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TAGS:

• alyssa jones
• anmar atchu
• arcadia brewing
• battle creek
• cheryl beard
• downtown transformation project
• hinman
• kellogg