Developer secures $2.4M from state for historic Bay City bank building

BAY CITY, MI -- The final piece of financial incentives were approved this week for the developer investing $12 million into the 125-year-old Crapo Building in downtown Bay City, allowing construction to begin in the coming weeks.

Officials with the Michigan Economic Development Corp.'s Michigan Strategic Fund on Tuesday, June 27, announced that developer Jenifer Acosta, who most recently redeveloped the former Bay City Times newspaper building at 311 Fifth St., secured a $1 million Michigan Community Revitalization Program performance-based grant and a $1.4 million performance-based loan, for a total of $2.4 million in incentives.

My Mentor | My Father

My Mentor | My Father

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.

What's next?

What's next?

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.

BAY CITY, MICHIGAN REDEVELOPER WINS HISTORIC PRESERVATION AWARD FOR HER FIRST PROJECT

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.

A quest to bring this Romanesque lady back to life

A quest to bring this Romanesque lady back to life

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.