Will downtown Kalamazoo arena finally happen?

Business leaders have wanted such a facility for years

By Rachel Watson

An arena 26 years in the making is expected to ease a longtime crunch for event space and positively impact Kalamazoo’s downtown and tourism workforce for decades to come.

Catalyst Development Co. in April spent $4.27 million to acquire several parcels of downtown property from Kalamazoo County. The parcels are mostly empty, save for parking lots.

The land will be for Catalyst’s planned $300 million, 320,000square-foot Kalamazoo Event Center, which has been in the making since 1997.

Catalyst is part of Greenleaf Companies, which is chaired by William Johnston, husband of Ronda Stryker, who is director of Kalamazoo-based Stryker Corp. (NYSE: SYK), a $113 billion medical devices and health care technologies business founded by her grandfather. Stryker also is the second-richest person in Michigan, according to Forbes, behind De- troit real estate mogul Dan Gilbert.

The Kalamazoo Event Center, which will be privately funded from as-yet-unnamed sources, will be built on two city blocks bounded by North Westnedge Avenue to the west, West Kalamazoo Avenue to the north, North Park Street to the east and Eleanor Street to the south.

It is expected to host more than 230 events, shows, concerts and community sporting events per year and will be the future home of Western Michigan University men’s hockey and men’s and women’s basketball, as well as Kalamazoo Wings hockey.

Kalamazoo City Manager James Ritsema was not available for an interview, but he said in a statement to Crain’s that the city is thrilled to see the development coming to fruition after so many years.

“Just as the Arcadia Creek project years ago spurred resident and economic development in the north section of downtown, so, too, will the arena and event center, through drawing residents as well as visitors from far and wide to watch the Broncos and K-Wings in action or catch a concert or exhibit,” he said. “We believe the arena and event center will become a rousing success that will trans- form downtown Kalamazoo and surrounding neighborhoods — in particular, through the partnerships and initiatives supporting the city’s Northside — and provide a positive social and economic impact for decades to come.”

Southwest Michigan First is the economic development organization that’s helping to coordinate the project with Catalyst. CEO Jonas Peterson said the new event center will help “revitalize” downtown.

“It will give us the ability to host hundreds of events for our region, to shape perceptions ... with visitors as they come to come to our market, and it will help us attract and retain talent by establishing another really attractive community amenity,” he said.

Representatives from Greenleaf and Catalyst did not return calls for comment about the project.

Peterson said that now that the land assembly is complete, the project partners will work to more finely hone the concept design.

“Everybody is excited to move forward as quickly as possible, but we don’t have an overall timeline to release just yet,” he said.

Tourism, economic impacts

The new arena — which will be able to seat 8,000 people for sporting events — is expected to generate more than $54 million in annual economic impact regionally from an estimated 236 events bringing in 548,000 visitors, according to a feasibility study conducted in 2021 by Conventions Sports and Leisure International for Discover Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo Downtown Partnership and Southwest Michigan First.

In Grand Rapids, the 12,000seat Van Andel Arena opened in 1996, and it has been widely recognized as playing a key role in making downtown Grand Rapids a destination. The Grand Rapids-Kent County Convention/Arena Authority in 2020 hired Michigan Sport Consulting Group at the University of Michigan to study the arena’s economic impact for the 2019 fiscal year. The study, published in 2021, found that the CAA’s three facilities, Van Andel, DeVos Place and DeVos Performance Hall, generated more than $82 million in local economic impact and led to the creation of 1,265 full- and part-time jobs. There has not been another study reported since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Jane Ghosh is president and CEO of Discover Kalamazoo, the destination marketing organization for Kalamazoo County. She said she is “positive and enthusiastic” about the arena project, given its potential to move existing events that don’t currently spur additional visitor spending to downtown, which has nearby restaurants and retailers including La Familia Café and JungleBird that could benefit. She is also looking forward to it bringing in new events that the city currently can’t attract.

Ghosh said the Conventions Sports and Leisure study found that the new arena wouldn’t impinge on the business of existing meeting and events spaces such as the Kalamazoo Expo Center, which hosts events including the

United Kennel Club Dog Show and National Street Rod Association meet-ups that need indoor and outdoor space, which the expo center has.

The new arena, with its emphasis on indoor concerts, family shows, boxing/mixed martial arts, professional wrestling, ice shows and motorsports, would bring in a lot of new business, she said.

Ghosh said she believes downtown Kalamazoo is already a vibrant place, but the two-block area on the west side of downtown where the arena will go is largely underutilized.

Joe Borgstrom is a principal at East Lansing-based Place + Main Advisers, a consulting firm with expertise in downtown redevelopment, community and economic development, Main Street and placemaking.

Borgstrom said the economic impact of an arena is dependent on several factors, including programming of the site — how many event nights per year it will have, with 200 as a good baseline number — what “spillover” into the community it will cause before and after events, how easy it is to access transportation to and from the site, and how well it connects to the rest of the downtown business district, including hotels and restaurants.

“People have a tendency to think about the building itself as the big thing, and obviously, it is. ... But to me, it’s going to be, how does it tie to the rest of the community? How does it flow?”

Borgstrom said Little Caesars Arena in Detroit is an example of a time a major new venue didn’t live up to the promise of spin-off development.

“That has never really materialized as (the Ilitch family) originally pitched, so even though it’s a successful venue, the leverage opportunity wasn’t maximized in that particular case,” he said. “These are two different scales, they’re two different communities and two different developers. ... But it just underlines the importance of the development of the surrounding areas, as well.”

Borgstrom said it’s unlikely the Kalamazoo Event Center will be able to draw huge musical acts like those that would stop at the larger Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, but events like Disney on Ice, circuses, RV shows and hockey are good candidates.