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Rylee's Hardware

BigPlayJ

By BigPlayJ
in Grand Rapids

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  • 1 month later...

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fotoman311 Burg

fotoman311

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Lori Terpstra, owner of Rylee's, will be at the Midtown Neighborhood Assoc. annual meeting on Monday, Oct. 19th at 7pm at the Salvation Army on Fulton and Fuller.

While I don't know exactly what she will cover, I believe she's going to have some finished renderings and will talk about what their process was for building the store and what they will be able to add in the new location. Her talk will be 10-15 minutes, followed by an annual report on what the Midtown Neighborhood Assoc. and our community organizer have accomplished this year and what has gone on in the neighborhood (thrilling, I know!). There is sure to be some information thrown in about the newly formed Fulton St. Farmer's Market Development Committee as well.

Should be fun!

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  • 2 weeks later...
fotoman311 Burg

fotoman311

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Just a reminder. The Midtown Neighborhood Association annual meeting is tonight, 7pm at the Salvation Army Center @ Fulton and Fuller. Use the back entrance off of Evangeline St.

Lori Terpstra of Ace Hardware is the first scheduled guest. She is allotted 20 minutes and will be followed by an annual report on the activities of the Midtown Neighborhood Assoc.

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fotoman311 Burg

fotoman311

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GRDadof3, Midtown's community organizer Kelly Otto has a present from Lori Terpstra for you that she brought to last night's meeting.

It's a piece of split face block (I think?). :) Lori said there will be a cornerstone made with the granite facing from the original store, and that she would have loved to put in more granite and other fancy materials, but she couldn't afford it, especially considering the price she had to pay to get the land, despite favorable interest rates at the time.

She also said:

She has had talks with a potential leasee for the current building, but did not mention who it was.

They are looking to sell or lease the old building.

There have been no negotiations thus far with Spartan.

The new building will be approximately 31,000 sq ft, vs the current 12,000 sq ft.

There will be a functional kitchen in the housewares section where they hope to have cooking demos.

There will be a greenhouse/garden center and they plan to purchase from local growers to supply it.

There will be bicycle parking and benches near the northwest corner of the store between the retail fronting Michigan and the main store entrance on the parking lot on the west side.

She has a meeting with a potential leasee of one of the three retail spots today, and hopes to sign soon.

She said that Rylee's was willing to pay for all the upgrades to the physical infrastructure for the access road to Fuller Ave which is currently on city park property, but the city also wanted additional compensation and they could not come to an agreement on the amount. Rylee's will assess the traffic situation once the store is open and decide if the need for that Fuller Ave access necessitates reopening the discussion.

I think that's about it! I hope I got it all correct.

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  • 5 months later...
Ted Whistle-Stop

Ted

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Went searching for a longer bolt (for a bike mod I was working on this weekend) at the new Rylee's. Very impressive. Great addition to the neighborhood. Very cool that they decided to stay. Very excited to use the hell out of it!

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  • 3 months later...
dbrock1046 Unincorporated Area

dbrock1046

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NOOOOOOOOO!

All of the Family Dollars in GR are DUMPS! They are ghetto-looking boxes with huge bars over the windows!

Even the one on Wealthy, which is surrounded by boutique shops with huge picture windows, selling more expensive stuff, looks like it is protecting itself from a potential LA riot!

A Dollar Tree would have been much nicer. Their stores are clean, friendly, full of useful stuff, and they actually sell stuff for 1.00.

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jwazzz Whistle-Stop

jwazzz

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NOOOOOOOOO!

All of the Family Dollars in GR are DUMPS! They are ghetto-looking boxes with huge bars over the windows!

Even the one on Wealthy, which is surrounded by boutique shops with huge picture windows, selling more expensive stuff, looks like it is protecting itself from a potential LA riot!

A Dollar Tree would have been much nicer. Their stores are clean, friendly, full of useful stuff, and they actually sell stuff for 1.00.

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fotoman311 Burg

fotoman311

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Couldn't agree more - it will add nothing to the area. And don't get me started on the Wealthy St. store - it is an eyesore. (That's the nicest thing I could think of saying, all of my other thoughts on that dump involve language that I'm pretty sure would get me in trouble here.)

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jwazzz Whistle-Stop

jwazzz

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It will add more to the area than an empty storefront.

I'm not super excited by this, but it's also not a surprise. Living in the neighborhood, this will give people another place to buy some items for daily use without requiring a trip out to Meijer. I can easily ride my bicycle there in about 5 mins, just like I used to go to Rylee's.

And not EVERY Family Dollar looks like a dump. Just most of them. :) We drove by the one on Leonard west of Ball and it is brick and actually looks decent, although I have not been inside. And the Family Dollar at Leonard and Ann was not noticeably disgusting the last time I was inside it.

The store on NE Leonard is better than the ridiculous CVS store with blocked up windows and an emergency exit fire door facing the street at Leonard and Fuller. Opening up the cement ramps to the sidewalk will be a good improvement, and at least the doors to the store will face Michigan, unlike the Omelette Shoppe and El Barrio in the new buildings up the street.

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fotoman311 Burg

fotoman311

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If Rylee's had closed up shop, leaving the area altogether, I may have agreed with you. There can't possibly be ANYTHING that FD offers for sale that you can't get at the new Rylee's less than two blocks away. I would prefer seeing the store sit vacant until a more suitable business comes along - a Family Dollar at that location serves no purpose that I can see other than siphoning away customers who would have otherwise gone to Rylee's. It's a bad fit for the neighborhood.

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jwazzz Whistle-Stop

jwazzz

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I really don't think you've been into a Family Dollar recently. The one on South Division has nearly 3 aisles of dry food goods that Rylee's has none of (I went to the store on Division for a bag of sugar a few months ago). They also have basic everyday type clothing, including baby clothes.

They might siphon some customers away from Walgreens on that end. They may take also take a few customers from Rylee's. But, since Lori Terpstra, the owner of Rylee's, is the one leasing the building to Family Dollar she must be pretty confident the amount of business she'll lose is not more than what she'll make from leasing the building.

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fotoman311 Burg

fotoman311

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You're right, I haven't been to a Family Dollar recently nor do I intend to shop at this one. When I see one of their stores, I see trash filled parking lots and bunker mentality design that says (at least to me) neighborhood in decline. And while I understand the owners of the property in question not wanting to sit on an empty, non income generating building, I personally was hoping for something other than a convenient spot to buy Hamburger Helper and Pampers.

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jwazzz Whistle-Stop

jwazzz

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ME TOO! But, I would still rather have a business there than an empty building that already has a bunker mentality design and a trash filled parking lot. By tearing down the cement walls on the ramps in the front, they've already improved on that bunker mentality.

So, I have to ask, what were you hoping would move into this space? Would you have been happy with anything less than tearing down the bunker mentality designed building that exists? Do you really think that a developer would be able to get a loan to do that with the Checker's right next door, the abandoned once-upon-a-time D&W 75 feet away, and such a small footprint for parking?

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