Gregory Gilmore, CEO of the Gilmore Collection, closed the company’s Ada restaurant, The Thornapple, but has plans for a new one in Ada.

Urban market alters The BOB expansion
David Czurak

Although the Gilmore Collection has just closed a longstanding suburban business, the firm is moving forward with its plan to expand its downtown entertainment center. But the urban market that the Grand Action Committee and the Downtown Development Authority want to build at Wealthy Street and Ionia Avenue has caused the company to adjust its expansion plan for The BOB, which is about a mile away from the market at 20 Monroe Ave. NW.

“Actually, the urban market took about six of our components that I wanted, so I just refocused. We’re excited about the urban market and we think it’s a great location for it,” said Gregory Gilmore, CEO of the Gilmore Collection.

Gilmore said his firm submitted its brownfield application to the city for expansion of The BOB on Aug. 20. The site is the parking lot at Ottawa Avenue and Fulton Street NW, which the Gilmore Collection bought from the city for $1.9 million. The lot gives the firm about 24,000 square feet of expansion space.

“We continue to tighten up the design and the numbers, so we’re still moving forward. We still have some agreement with the city on timeframes and we’re meeting all those timeframes. We think at the end of 2012, we’ll have a project built,” he said.

The original plan called for development of a five-story festival marketplace with space for up to 90 food, beverage and retail kiosks, along with areas for food business start-ups, concerts, events such as auto shows, and a farmers market. The investment into the project has to be at least $5 million and a minimum of 20,000 square feet must be developed, according to the agreement with the city.

The project is being developed by the 20 Monroe Building Co. LP.

“It will probably be the middle of October, at the latest, before we’re ready to release the actual project to the media. I’m introducing it to my partners in the middle of October, and it should be pretty tight by then. That will be the actual project we’ll go after, and if we can pull it off, it would be in 2012,” he said.

When news of the plans for an urban market first leaked out, the rumored site for it was a parking lot owned by Amway Corp. on the southwest corner of Monroe Avenue and Fulton Street. That site is right across the street from The BOB — The Big Old Building, a former warehouse that the Gilmores renovated in 1996.

“Well, actually, I was hoping that was the location because that is such a wonderful, valuable site and it’s kitty-corner to our property, so the synergies would have been tremendous. But I still think we have those synergies with what we’re planning, which is more entertainment-based. With what the urban market is planning, there is going to be a focal point downtown that hasn’t existed before, where you could spend two to three hours at either spot and have a fun afternoon downtown,” said Gilmore.

“Had it been a little closer, on the Amway property, it would have been tremendous. But I can understand why they put that where it is, and I’m sure that something great will happen across our street, as well,” he said.

The Gilmore Collection closed its Ada restaurant, The Thornapple, last weekend. The popular spot had been a part of the company for more than three decades. Gilmore Collection Chairman John Gilmore, Greg’s father, built the building that housed the restaurant, along with a few other structures on Ada Drive, in 1978. The Gilmores sold those buildings years ago and had been leasing the space The Thornapple occupied “for quite some time.” The company prefers to own the buildings its restaurants are in.

The Thornapple was the first restaurant Greg managed, beginning in 1981. He said managing it was sort of a “baptism under fire” for him, and that he learned the business there “by the seat of my pants.”

“From my perspective, it’s a pretty heavy heart in some respects, but actually it’s just time to move on,” he said of the restaurant’s closing.

“This building was never designed to be a restaurant. It’s below the water table and the river for six to eight months of the year. It had a lot of challenges. What we had to do for the last 32 years was we had to manage the building as much as we had to manage the business. We were fighting a flood coming out of the elevator shaft in the spring and almost every single day, and that had been a difficult situation for every member of our management team.”

Gilmore said business at The Thornapple was “as strong as it’s ever been,” and the restaurant was still turning a profit when it closed. But the Gilmores want to open another eatery in Ada and plan to meet with township officials by next spring. Until then, the firm will focus its efforts in the area on two of its other restaurants: the Blue Water Grill on Northland Drive in Grand Rapids and the Flat River Grill on East Main Street in Lowell.

“My father has 12 acres next door (to The Thornapple) and 5.5 are buildable, so we’ve talked about building a new restaurant there, along with developing the property. So it’s time to get going on that. I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do, but I don’t want to put it in print because I have the right to change my mind. But we’ve been working with some potential tenants on that property.

“It’s a good time of year (for the closing) because we’re able to absorb all the staff at other entities and the kids are going back to college and such. So it’s good timing because no one has to lose their job. It also is kind of a kick in the pants to start moving on next door because I’ve been saying I’m going to build over there for a long, long time, and now I’ll get a little more serious about it. We’re still committed to the Ada market.”