Celebration Cinema heir J.D. Loeks is so excited about the city views and amenities that Studio Park Tower will offer that he’s leaving East Grand Rapids to live on the downtown tower’s 21st floor.
Rockford Construction crews continue to work on the new 16-story, 212,000-square-foot residential tower rising above the six-story Studio Park(ing) garage at 144 Oakes St. SW in downtown Grand Rapids. However, the broker and leasing agent for the condos and apartments are now taking reservations for all 200 housing units.
Loeks, CEO of the family-owned, Grand Rapids-based movie theater chain Studio C and a partner with the Studio Park project leader Olsen Loeks Development, said he cannot wait for tenants to start moving into the tower this coming September. That’s when construction on the first units is expected to wrap.
For now, all 16 floors are an active construction site, with some of the lower floors drywalled and painted and the upper floors in framing stage.
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“The amenities that we have in this building are going to knock the socks off of anything else that’s downtown right now,” Loeks told Crain’s Grand Rapids Business on an exclusive hard hat tour of the tower on Friday, April 26.
He said he is especially thrilled about this phase of the Studio Park project because he plans to make one of the larger units on the 21st floor his primary residence.
“I’ve been dreaming about this building and how it functions, what the amenities are, the location and how it connects to the overall neighborhood through the lens of, ‘Do I want to live here?’” Loeks said. “The more of the details that come together with this project, I get more and more excited about leaving East Grand Rapids and being able to walk to all my favorite restaurants, entertainment and the riverfront.”
The $62 million tower project is the second residential phase at Studio Park following construction of the $135 million, phase-one mixed-use development.
The first phase included 106 apartments (Studio Park Lofts) and 350,000 square feet of commercial space anchored by insurance brokerage and fintech firm Acrisure LLC. The project also is home to the nine-screen Celebration Cinema Studio Park movie theater, One Twenty Three Tavern and other restaurant/retail space, a courtyard for live music and events, the Midtown music venue and the Canopy by Hilton hotel.
Kate Bylsma at East Grand Rapids-based Patriot Realty listed all 25 condominiums under construction on floors 19 through 22 of Studio Park Tower on April 22. As of Friday, nine of the condos were reserved, with 16 left to sell.
“It’s probably the most unique project that’s been started in downtown Grand Rapids in the last 20 years,” Bylsma said. “I also think the amenities, like J.D. said, that we’re bringing to the market are so unique. … The location, in this part of town with what’s happening with the amphitheater and all the other up-and-coming projects, also makes it unique.”
Emilee Krish at KMG Prestige, the property management and leasing company for Studio Park, opened apartment leasing for the project on Friday. She said she’s excited for the opportunity to impress new tenants with the city views. To her, there’s something special about working at a development that takes up an entire city block.
“I have worked for Studio Park for two years, so I know a lot of the individuals that live in the lofts already, and I just kind of feel like their steward, which is a really cool job,” she said.
The condos
Prices for the condos start at $595,000 for one-bedroom units, $715,000 for two-bedrooms, and $1.15 million for three-bedrooms. Condos on the 21st and 22nd floors are being marketed as “white box,” or unfinished units that can be built to buyer specifications, with pricing between $695,000 and $1.25 million.
Of the condos, four are one-bedroom units that range from 989 to 1,257 square feet, 15 are two-bedroom models that range from about 1,300 to more than 1,600 square feet, and six are three-bedroom units ranging from about 1,800 to more than 2,400 square feet.
All of the condos will have their own balconies.
The top two floors of condos will have the larger units, with just five condos on the 21st floor and four on the 22nd, compared to the eight condos apiece on floors 19 and 20. The top floor has a slightly smaller footprint due to the building setback.
Loeks’ excitement was palpable when showing off the seventh floor, which contains all of the tenant amenities. It is considered the “base floor” of the residential tower because it’s built on top of the six-story parking garage that will be shared by condo owners, tenants, hotel guests and moviegoers alike.
The seventh floor interior will offer co-working space and private “Zoom rooms,” a full-size kitchen and community room with a large flat-screen TV, a fitness center, sauna, golf simulator, dog wash and commercial laundry.
Bridging the gap between indoors and outdoors, an approximately 12-foot-by-75-foot, competition-length pool with an exterior glass wall will open onto the outdoor entertainment deck. The deck will have a grilling station, seating areas with firepits, green space for lawn games and a pickleball court.
Since the developers wanted residents to have a space that feels like an outdoor “oasis,” the seventh-floor deck will be shielded from view by a tall fence to create a sheltered, private feeling and reduce the noise of highway traffic.
“Everybody will have great views of the city from their units, so this space is just kind of an escape for them,” Loeks said.
The apartments
Krish said the 11 floors of apartments will include 22 studios, 99 one-bedroom units, and 44 two-bedrooms. They’ll range from just more than 500 square feet up to about 1,200 square feet.
Rents will start around $1,500 for a studio up to approximately $3,200 for the largest two-bedroom unit. Many, but not all, of the apartments will have balconies and walk-in closets.
Krish said as of Friday, KMG was still working to push floor plans and renderings to the Studio Park Tower website, but for now, she is fielding questions from people interested in pre-leasing.
She said the Studio Park Tower leasing office also will be open daily at the tower’s street-level entrance off Oakes Street SW. Currently, it’s set up as a sample floor plan to give prospective tenants a sense of the finishes and amenities.
Part of a bigger dream
Loeks said he first began dreaming of a downtown movie theater around 2008, when the family closed the Studio 28 cinema on 28th Street in Wyoming. It was the first of the 11-location chain’s multi-screen theaters. Built in 1965 by Loek’s grandfather John D. Loeks, it was believed to be the first multiplex in the country.
The younger Loeks saved bricks from that building when it was demolished. They sat on his desk for more than a decade and now grace part of a wall in the indoor lobby of Celebration Cinema Studio Park.
Back then, he said he couldn’t have imagined the years it would take to realize the family’s vision to bring the silver screen downtown.
He also had no conception of the essentially self-contained neighborhood that it would become. But conversations with the Downtown Development Authority and Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. during the master planning process for the Arena South District revealed a desire for more than just the movies.
“We had started with a much smaller idea of just putting some parking and a movie theater downtown,” Loeks said. “They were the ones that originally came to us and said, ‘Hey, what do you think about doing this much larger mixed-use project?’ and we kind of took it from there and talked to others I knew in development, and the idea really snowballed wildly out of control.”
Now that all 22 stories are framed, the Studio Park Tower is officially downtown Grand Rapids’ fifth-tallest building. By total stories, it ranks behind Plaza Towers (34 stories), River House Condominiums (34 stories), Amway Grand Plaza Hotel (29 stories) and the JW Marriott Grand Rapids (23 stories).
Krish, the property manager, said she’s not a Grand Rapids native, so when she first moved to the area, she pictured Van Andel Arena as the hub of the city. Now, when she gives people directions to Studio Park, she tells them, “We’re right behind Van Andel.”
Loeks quipped: “We’re working on changing the narrative from ‘We’re right behind Van Andel,’ to ‘Van Andel’s right behind us,’” he said, laughing.
In all seriousness, though, Loeks said the development was always intended to build off the buzz that started with the creation of the Arena District.
That’s why Loeks said he was one of the people “at the tip of the spear” when it came to working with the city and DGRI to envision the forthcoming “Heartside Linear Plaza” that will convert an alleyway along the east side of Van Andel Arena into a public greenspace and social district and park that will connect the arena to Studio Park.
“One of their considerations that they had and their objectives for Studio Park was to create a psychological connection between the north and south parts of downtown,” he said. “Now, five years later, they’ve kind of hit the green button on a renovation that … will fulfill the long term vision of connecting north and south.”
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