Wrigley Center turns old grocery into ‘game-changer’

Project aims to draw visitors, create jobs

BY TOM HENDERSON

No one can accuse Larry Jones and Dan Dooley of failing to dream big when it comes to the Wrigley Center and Wrigley Hall in downtown Port Huron.

ey plan to hold more than 200 events there a year, including concerts, festivals and expos.

ey think the events and the wide range of permanent attractions and tenants can draw upwards of 250,000 visitors a year to downtown Port Huron and create about 100 new jobs at the center and hall, which occupy the same block-long structure.

e name “Wrigley” pays tribute to the building’s origins as a Wrigley’s grocery store, which shut its doors some 50 years ago and for years after was an Art Van retail outlet and warehouse. For more than a decade the empty, decaying hulk loomed as a symbol of better times in Port Huron.

It is still a symbol, but after a $15 million total renovation, with design work by Vince Cataldo and his Detroit- and St. Clair-based rm architectural rm Infuz Ltd., it is one of rebirth.

“ is is going to be a game changer for Port Huron,” said Jones.

Saving the old grocery store was Jones’ brainchild when he bought the building in 2020. e 30,000-square-foot “Hall” part of the project is a new and very large wrinkle on the north end of the building that Jones and Dooley say is a result of their becoming instant fast friends.

Construction on the center and hall is nearly complete, with the rst commercial tenant, the Be Je Salon, already in place. Twenty-four of the 36 apartments on the south side of the building have been rented. At 1,400 square feet with two bedrooms and two baths, rents range from $1,200 to $2,200, depending on height and Lake Huron and St. Clair River views.

Dooley hopes to have most or all of the space occupied within two or three months.

He and Jones say they will hit those visitor numbers by o ering, among other things, a 50-foot rock climbing wall, a laser maze, air hockey, SkeeBall, cornhole, pickleball, basketball hoops, golf simulators, three bars, four eateries, including Dona Marina, a Nicaraguan-Cuban fusion restaurant, and Lake Life Cafe, which he will own; a show kitchen that will showcase di erent chefs and their specialties, a large stage and a small stage for live performances, and a 2,700-square-foot whiskey distillery and tasting room.

at will be occupied by Renaissance Man Co., a startup whose U.S. patent-pending distilling process promises to revolutionize the way whiskey is made. (See related story, Page 10).

e large stage will accommodate 500 and the small stage 125. Dooley said he spent about $220,000 on the sound and light systems for the two stages.

Jones and Dooley will hold a job fair in April to aid their hiring. All the kitchen and bar equipment was delivered in February.

“I go from ‘We’re never going to make it’ to ‘We’re going to make it,’” said Dooley. “Now, I think we’re actually going to do it.”

He said by the time construction is done and everything is in place, he and his wife will have invested about $1.2 million into the business.

Dooley is a Port Huron native and graduate of Port Huron High School, as is his wife, Kim.

He was a technician specializing in nuclear medicine at several Michigan hospitals, including Beaumont Health in Royal Oak and Henry Ford Health System in Detroit before joining R1 RCM Inc., a Chicago-based startup providing revenue management services for hospitals, health systems and physician groups, in 2004. e 50th employee, then, when the company went public on the Nasdaq Global Market in 2018, he was was a vice president, one of 35,000 employees worldwide and able to cash out a large equity stake in the company. ough active with the hall buildout and acquisition of tenants, he didn’t formally retire from R1 until the beginning of February.

With money to invest, Dooley said he was enthusiastic about the city’s resurgence in recent years. “If you haven’t been to Port Huron in the last ve years, you haven’t been to Port Huron,” he says.

Dooley said he was introduced to Jones 18 months ago and they hit it right o .

“My wife made the mistake of leaving Larry and me alone for an hour. He was just so infectious. What he was doing checked all my boxes,” said Dooley. He wanted in as an equity investor and operator.