Inside Track

Mall owner strikes a balance

Nancy Quero Ramirez’s store, Guelaguetza Designs, is a hub of cultural activity.

Paul R. Kopenkoskey

Special to the Business Journal

Baked into Nancy Quero Ramirez’s retail store and online business is the hope that fostering an appreciation and understanding of Mexican culture will arise.

Guelaguetza Designs, 2727 DeHoop Ave. SW in Wyoming, sells handmade, fair-trade merchandise made in Mexico, which includes craft products such as textiles, avant-garde footwear and looms made by more than 30 artisans.

But, as Quero is proud to point out, “Guelaguetza” comes from the Zapotec language that’s typically interpreted as the reciprocal exchange of gifts and services, or to help each other. The Guelaguetza also is an annual indigenous cultural event in Mexico that takes place in the city of Oaxaca, Quero’s hometown.

It’s a celebration that features parades of indigenous walking bands, native food and statewide artisanal crafts, such as pre-Hispanic-style textiles. Each costume, or traje, and dance usually has a local indigenous historical and cultural meaning. While the celebration has attracted an increasing number of tourists, it is primarily one of deep cultural importance for the indigenous peoples of the state and is important for the survival of these cultures, according to Wikipedia.

That is Quero’s heartbeat.

“I like the meaning,” said Quero. “That’s what we’re trying to do: building bridges with other people so we can understand each other. We want to make sure people who don’t have any Mexican heritage appreciate that, understand the culture. What is the meaning of the colors? What is the meaning of the designs? That way we can understand the meaning of culture when you understand your neighbor and the meaning of culture.”

Quero’s customers are a blend of those of Mexican decent and those who are not but have an appreciation for the colors, fabrics, textures and Mexican milieu inherent in the products Guelaguetza Designs sells. But that’s not enough for Quero.

She also hosts workshops, put on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of them are artistic in nature that offer the potential to expand one’s understanding of the world, including a Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) altar exhibition, sugar skull painting and ornament painting.

“The intent is to bring people together to learn about Mexican cultures to the different communities,” said Quero. “We had people from different backgrounds and cultures who were interested in learning about Mexican cultures and we got to meet and learn a little bit about them through the workshops, which is open to conversation for the people who attend them. People love it. We hope we can get back to those workshops again.”

Quero said she hopes to resume hosting the workshops next year that would have people painting Mayan and Aztec calendars made by an artist from Yucatan.

Quero emigrated from Mexico to the United States 19 years ago with her mother, two sisters and a brother. She didn’t speak English, which was initially a drawback in acclimating herself to her new homeland.

“I felt not belonging, and I wanted to go back,” recalled Quero. “I started meeting amazing people and, little by little, I started feeling that I started belonging to this community, especially hearing people speaking Spanish in stores. That’s one of the reasons I started getting involved in different organizations because my community needed that. We need to belong to it and the way to do that is having events and making sure people understand what’s going on. That’s part of why I started to join (community organizations) because I wanted people to know that there is help, there are many things to make them feel part of this community.”

“I came basically without anything, just the clothes I had on, no luggage,” said Quero.

She pauses to collect her emotions.

“It’s a little hard to think about that,” continued Quero. “It was a great journey of growing as a person, as a professional. I’m proud to help my community, in working hard for everything that I have.”

Working hard is a mantra that runs through Quero’s life.

She worked for 15 years for electronics services manufacturer Firstronic, first as an assembler and then — putting to good use the accounting acumen she learned through her associate degree from Grand Rapids Community College — went to work as a buyer in its purchasing department.

“I have these natural skills of business is in my blood,” said Quero. “My father was a businessperson and my whole family is in some kind of business, my grandpa or my uncle, so that is really in my blood. I started working in accounts payable in the company and doing purchasing at the same time. Working in purchasing comes very natural to me and I decided to keep on purchasing 100%. It was tough sometimes working in that field. We had a lot of shortages. I quit before the pandemic but before that we had a lot of shortages, but it was a challenge every day and I did enjoy it.”

In the end, it wasn’t enough.

“It was a paycheck, but it’s not the same because it’s not doing what I love the most,” said Quero. “Every immigrant is looking for a better life. I overcame the language barrier by educating myself and growing within the company, from the production floor to front office work. I helped to change the perception of my team members about Latino employees through my hard work and dedication to the company. This grew into an environment where they accepted my language, my culture and myself as a valued employee. As immigrants, we live every day trying to fit into this new American culture.”

The draw to be an entrepreneur herself proved too irresistible. She credits family members for paving the way.

“Multiple members of my family in Mexico have built small businesses from the ground up with very little money and lots of hard work,” she said. “They inspired me to one day be an entrepreneur and make a difference in my community.”

Quero took the plunge two years ago to open a brick-andmortar store thanks to a friend who connected her to SpringGR, a 12-week training program that helps people develop their business plans.

Then she bought a 10-unit strip mall for $320,000 (asking price was $345,000) where Guelaguetza Designs is housed as well as her other tenants. She intends for her store to soon occupy a second one of those storefronts.

“We are expanding because we just keep growing,” said Quero. “We were just running out of space, so we just decided to expand into the next unit, but we’ll be in the same building, which has windows because right now, we’re like hidden. We’re excited for the growth. We’ll have more room to sell more items. Sometimes people will come in for items that we don’t have so we are going to bring new items that people have been looking for.

“The other units are occupied, which is a huge help financially,” added Quero. “I’m not so much worried as I would be if I was by myself trying to cover all my expenses at the end of the month.”

Quero said she has ingratiated herself into the American way of life, yet she remains true to herself.

“I know my accent would never go away,” she said. “I’m just proud of my accent. I’m proud to be a bilingual person. I had to go to classes for many years.”

For Quero, “to thy own self be true” is not a banal phrase.

“To do what you love the most because when you’re doing something that you love, you feel happy,” she said. “Do what you love the most because for me what I’m doing, when I come to my shop happy every day ready for what’s coming, I love it. I used to work in the factory and that’s OK, it was a paycheck. But it’s not the same because it’s not doing what I love the most. In my business I’m helping people through my business. That fulfills me, and I think that’s very important.”

NANCY QUERO RAMIREZ

Organization: Guelaguetza Designs and 10-unit plaza Position: CEO/owner Age: 38 Birthplace: Oaxaza, Mexico Residence: Grand Rapids Family: Husband Gerardo, sons Damien, Ethan and Caleb Community/Business Involvement: Wyoming Community Enrichment Commission, Mexican Heritage Association and Lanzita Community Center, and former board member of Holy Name of Jesus Parish. Biggest Career Break: Purchasing a 10-store plaza, which includes my very first brick-and-mortar store. I am very happy with that because now I can have this goal where people can come and build this connection with Mexico and not only with the Latina community but build those cultural bridges.

Being part of an entrepreneurial family convinced Nancy Quero Ramirez to eventually start her own business. Courtesy of Nancy Quero Ramirez

Disability Advocates looks ahead to new $2.5M HQ

Kent County nonprofit kicks off $750K public phase of fund drive to move to Special Olympics campus.

Rachel Watson

rwatson@grbj.com

Disability Advocates of Kent County has raised more than $1.75 million to build its new headquarters and accessibility showroom at the Special Olympics campus in Byron Township and is asking the community to chip in another $750,000.

The Grand Rapids-based nonprofit that works alongside people with disabilities is currently based at 3600 Camelot Drive SE and is planning to move its headquarters to the new Special Olympics Michigan Unified Sports & Inclusion Center at 160 68th St. SW in Byron Township in April 2022.

Disability Advocates’ new, 8,600-square-foot space technically will be smaller than the 10,000 square feet it currently occupies at Camelot Drive, but according to Executive Director David Bulkowski, the current HQ spans four separate suites linked by a hallway, lacks storage space for medical equipment and a place to demonstrate and sterilize it, and is in an off-the-beaten-path residential neighborhood —which makes the location less than ideal for seeing clients and maintaining and developing partnerships.

Special Olympics Michigan purchased the former South Christian High School in Byron Township in 2019 and is amid a $20 million construction project to transform it into the organization’s largest Special Olympics facility in the world. Besides Disability Advocates, the other organizations that will lease space at the campus include Autism Support of Kent County, Brody’s Be Café, Down Syndrome Association of West Michigan, Far Out Volleyball Club, Mental Health Foundation of West Michigan/be nice, MOKA and Thresholds.

Bulkowski said being part of the new campus will increase his organization’s internal and external collaboration and its community visibility, while at the same time allowing it to build the area’s first Occupational Therapy Home Accessibility Center, which will be an 800-square-foot dedicated area separate from the offices, meeting rooms and other features of the HQ.

“The Home Accessibility Center

The new Home Accessibility Center is designed to help users learn ways they can be safer or more independent in their homes. Courtesy Disability Advocates of Kent County

(will be) built for people to come in and check things out and learn about ways that they can be safer in their home or more independent in their home,” Bulkowski said.

The center will serve as a “test space” showroom where people with disabilities, their families, health care professionals, and design and building contractors can explore options for a safer home, including models and adaptive equipment — something that is not currently offered anywhere else in the region.

“The Home Accessibility Center is a response to a demonstrated need,” said Peggy Helsel, development director for Disability Advocates. “Often, people ask, ‘What does that mean?’ when we talk about universal design and the home. We are giving people a real-life model home to experience what a universally accessible space can look like.”

The center will include features such as a bathroom with a 5-footby-5-foot universal design-accessible shower, but also a bathroom next to it that is inaccessible, which will allow Disability Advocates’ staff to demonstrate to clients how to use adaptive equipment in their homes without retrofitting their bathrooms to universal design, Bulkowski said.

The showroom also will contain moveable walls so that architects, builders and developers can see the difference in accessibility between various widths of rooms, so they can keep it in mind as they design and construct future commercial and residential buildings.

Bulkowski added Disability Advocates also will use the space to host occupational therapy students from local colleges and universities as they go through their training.

He said being located steps away from other organizations that serve the disabled community will have built-in benefits, including being able to send clients to cooking classes and independent living

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Baseball, softball tournaments lead sports tourism rally

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if you want a little bit of open land or open space, Rockford has that as well, in addition to the complex. And 20-30 minutes away you can get to Lake Michigan and you can see everything that the state of Michigan has to offer. So, when we pick venues, we look for family-friendly destinations and Grand Rapids is exactly what we are looking for because it has something for a 7-year-old baseball player to do. It has something for his little brother or sister to do and it also has things for the parents to do — to have a night away from their children or go out with other parents on the team and ultimately that is exactly what we are looking for.”

USA Softball played five tournaments at Meijer Sports Complex this year, including two national USA Softball tournaments — the USA Softball Men’s Open East Fast Pitch National Championship and USA Softball Men’s Slow Pitch Class D National Championship — that welcomed 372 participants and garnered 600 spectators who booked 300 hotel room nights. It all resulted in more than $500,000 in estimated direct spending. USA Softball also hosted three state tournaments in 2021.

Darrin Duistermars is the Northern Territory Region 6 Vice President of USA Softball and a commissioner for USA Softball of Michigan. He said the pandemic did not affect the organization’s ability to bring teams to the complex, unlike other states where they encountered some difficulties.

“The facility was available,” he said. “We, per the guidance of state and county regulations, were able to have tournament play there when many places, especially in the Midwest, were not able to do so. Illinois had some hurdles to go through but in West Michigan, if there was a tournament going on, teams were playing, especially on the youth side. It is one thing to have a tournament to just play in, but when you are offering a quality event and you are playing at a place like Meijer, quite frankly, the pandemic really whetted people’s appetite to play and we had a lot of success with that.

“We ended up playing (adult) national tournaments and state tournaments. These individuals wanted to play so badly that it was not a problem getting them to go there. Even with the pandemic, the facility was inviting. The facility had rules and regulations in place, we followed them, and they communicated them very nicely to all the people involved and we had no issues. Despite the pandemic, we had great tournament play last year and it carried over to this year.”

Meijer Sports Complex was filled to capacity in June as all four weekends were booked with more than 50 teams playing per weekend. Some of the tournaments that were held were three Game Day USA events (including the Game Day USA State Championships) and the Meijer State Games of Michigan.

Aquinas College’s baseball team also played a full season including all its home games at the complex, after its season was delayed in 2020.

Guswiler said the calendar of sporting events is almost full for next year. After this year’s sizable increase in travel teams compared to 2020, he said he believes the number of travel teams will continue to increase in 2022.

“The 2020 ratios we saw 15% travel and 84% local participation,” he said. “People weren’t comfortable going too far outside of their local area and we saw about 50/50 this year — 50% of people traveling — which is what we’d like to see again. So, I think that is where we will see that growth in 2022, where we could get back to our average, which is about 60% of teams traveling from outside the area and 40% local participation, and I feel pretty good about that. Things continue to move ahead. In the world of the pandemic, where there is the booster shot and younger ages being eligible for it, those things are going to make a difference in terms of seeing more travel parties.”

Disability Advocates looks ahead to new $2.5M HQ

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coaching or to have the other organizations send their clients to Disability Advocates to get help with their government benefits.

Disability Advocates also will have access to shared spaces at the campus such as community rooms and an auditorium.

“The (Disability Advocates) Home Accessibility Center is a response to a demonstrated need. Often, people ask, ‘What does that mean?’ when we talk about universal design and the home. We are giving people a real-life model home to experience what a universally accessible space can look like.” Peggy Helsel

Launched earlier this year, Disability Advocates’ Building Opportunities, Creating Independence capital campaign has raised more than $1.75 million over the past several months, thanks to lead gifts from contributors such as Dr. Kimberly Y. Barrington, the Kate and Richard Wolters Foundation, Meijer Foundation, Mike and Sue Jandernoa Foundation, Wege Foundation, John and Nancy Kennedy Family Foundation and Frey Foundation.

The public campaign, announced Sept. 14, aims to raise another $750,000 to help cover construction and campaign costs, new programming and the organization’s Home Accessibility Center.

Disability Advocates has allocated 40% of its construction budget to hire local minority-owned contractors, which so far include DHE Plumbing, Monte Christo Electric and Grand Rapids Fire Suppression. Wolverine Building Group is serving as the general contractor, and Mathison | Mathison Architects is the architect.

“Wolverine Building Group is honored to lead the build out of Disability Advocates of Kent County’s new headquarters and occupational therapy showroom,” said Curt Mulder, president, Wolverine Building Group. “For 40 years, the staff and volunteers have worked tirelessly to serve people living with disabilities. They all deserve a world-class space, so we are eager to showcase our craft and provide them with a new environment that they can be proud of.”

At the public announcement of the fund drive, co-chairs Cameron Young, digital marketing specialist at Behler-Young, and Angela Nelson, vice president of multicultural business development at Experience Grand Rapids, invited the public to join in the fundraising effort, which will continue through the end of the year.

“The invitation to join the Special Olympics at this new campus was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Young said. “As we work to help those with disabilities, I am pleased to be part of an effort that truly gives local residents a strong support network in a space where we can continue to build partnerships with like-minded organizations.”

Nelson added: “Demand for our programs is increasing, and we know we can serve more people in this new space as West Michigan grows.”

Bulkowski emphasized his gratitude for the local and regional foundations, area businesses and community donors.

“We have been so fortunate to receive gifts to this important campaign,” he said. “Our campaign cabinet joins me in thanking the community for their meaningful gifts. We now invite the broader community to help us complete this campaign effort.”

Those interested can donate to the campaign at dakc.us/donate. Exalta Health serves the West Michigan community with compassionate, safe., equitable, accessible healthcare demonstrating our Christian mission.

We are committed to serving individuals and families of any ethnicity, language, gender, disability, religion or creed.

We specialize in providing primary care to the uninsured, underinsured and refugees.

We have a staff of 26 members and 200 volunteers committed to serve a community with NO adequate healthcare, living below Federal poverty level, and in crisis when something bad happens.

68% of our patient population has NO insurance. 70% of our support comes through our fundraising efforts.

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