Imagine a world where the dream of owning a home, once a cornerstone of the American Dream, is slipping away. Today, many families find themselves caught in a cycle where the opportunity to build wealth for future generations is disappearing right before our eyes. It's a troubling trend that begs the question: Are we making the American Dream impossible for the next generation?
Today’s guest on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast is Jenifer Acosta, a community revitalizer and incremental developer working in the Tri-Cities region of Michigan, near the shores of Lake Huron. Her focus is on adaptive reuse projects—taking historic structures like old bank and newspaper buildings and turning them into updated housing and commercial spaces. She finds that sweet spot between preserving history while also modernizing and allowing these old buildings to take on new life so they can last another hundred years, even as the needs of a community change.
William Zank has a conversation with Jenifer Acosta, founder and President of Jenifer Acosta Development. Building dynamic communities and creating a sense of place are just two of Jen’s favorite things. Combine them and add a dash of determination, and you have one of the region’s most sought-after “matchmakers” in real estate.
Downtown Restaurant Investments, Jenifer Acosta Development and Mission Partners are launching a new beer garden and food truck park called Drift Shoreside Beer Garden located at 1019 N. Water St. in Bay City.
You know your downtown is hiding them everywhere. No need to be ashamed. Mine is too. It can be hard enough to get an owner to make the windows look simply presentable from the street view and here I am asking you to do more.
It’s time to get serious about the levels above your Main Street.
It's easier than ever to find great leaders and mentors in business today. But I've never had to look elsewhere for inspiration.
My father has always inspired me -- especially the way he’s redeveloped the building where he grew three companies. His building in Bay City is where my brothers and I played in the air handler and rode our bikes throughout while he worked on Saturday mornings.
Our occupations affect the way we see the world. With the eye of a real estate developer, selecting your next project can be like finding a needle in a haystack -- or is sometimes right in front of you.
Whether I’m driving my kids to the pool or traveling to a distant city, I’m always visioning -- that’s the technical term for seeing a property’s potential development. Many folks love to play this imaginary, wouldn’t-it-be-cool-if-they-did-this-or-that game and brainstorm ideas for their downtowns or neighborhoods.
In selecting 2017's Michigan Change Makers, we encountered promising leaders whose work has the potential to make tremendous change, transform places and take their organizations in exciting new directions. We're watching them to see what they'll do next.
No matter how hard I try finding balance and “feng shui-ing” my life, eventually I get burned out. Don’t we all?
A friend recently re-posted an Inc. article about finding life balance as entrepreneurs. The heart of the story came from a 2011 tweet by Randi Zuckerberg suggesting we have to choose between work, sleep, family, fitness or friends – but can only effectively pick three.
Bay City is a city of about 35,000 people in Bay County, Michigan, located near the base of Saginaw Bay on Lake Huron.
Now, the Michigan Historic Preservation Network has given the first completed project of a local redeveloper, Jenifer Acosta, the Tax Credit Project Award.
The award is given to “an outstanding building preservation completed within the past three years,” for her preservation of the old Bay City Times office and flipping it into The Times Lofts, a set of 31 completely different-looking luxury apartments.
You know how people think of ships and cars as female? That’s the way I think of buildings.
So my heart was broken a year ago when I first stepped out onto the catwalk suspended three stories above Center Avenue between the former Chemical Bank’s “cheese grater” facade and the beautiful, 1890s architecture.
All I could think about was how her original beauty, no longer valued, had been covered up and hidden away. How she hadn’t felt the sunlight on her face for over 50 years.
BAY CITY, MI -- Working at home one day, Jenifer Acosta saw her phone light up. She answered the call, hears the good news and is rushed with excitement. Acosta ran to her mother who was watching her children while she was working to tell her the news she just received.
Acosta and her company, Jenifer Acosta Development, had just won an award for preserving a historic building in Bay City.
