The Kalamazoo Eastside Neighborhood Association and the Kalamazoo County Land Bank are excited to announce a Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs (MCACA) grant for Eastside Sunrise Plaza, a public pocket plaza on East Main that will feature local artists, resident stories through haikus, and highlight the neighborhood motto, “The sun always rises [...]

Ten years in the making, The Creamery, a nearly 60,000 square foot community-envisioned, mixed-use development in Edison, promises to help revitalize the neighborhood by providing affordable housing and much-needed 24 hour quality drop-in childcare. As the Kalamazoo County Land Bank celebrates a decade of reusing, repurposing and reconnecting blighted property with the community, the agency [...]

Eastside Voices Book Link Buddy Hannah and Sid Ellis coordinated the Eastside Voices intergenerational storytelling project by training youth to speak to older residents and find out what life was like for them when the grew up in the neighborhood. Gerald King, Eastside artist, then designed a mural based on those interviews. [...]

During the Eastside Gateway Project, the Kalamazoo Land Bank board made a five-year commitment to support revitalization efforts on the Eastside of Kalamazoo.  The new project, dubbed Eastside Square by residents, will involve the renewal of 9 vacant and abandoned Land Bank properties on the 1600 Block of East Main.  The redevelopment concept includes a [...]

About the Eastside Gateway Project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGXNgTSwRbo&feature=emb_title The Kalamazoo County Land Bank is pleased to undertake the Eastside Gateway Project with the Eastside Neighborhood Association and more than 50 other community partners and stakeholders.  The project arose through a community visioning process to create a unique sense of place.  It will be seven [...]

Fare Games was a project of the Kalamazoo County Land Bank, organized to create community engagement in the revitalization of 1301 Portage Street – a historic but blighted building in Washington Square. The concept was to bring together a group of local food entrepreneurs to compete for the opportunity to launch their business in [...]

Washington Square In its heyday in the 1940s and ‘50s, Washington Square was a vibrant streetscape with a wide variety of local stores — a bank, pharmacy, ice cream parlour, theater, and grocery, among others, made the block a hive of activity. The Kalamazoo Public Library established a branch in Washington Square in [...]

Riverview Launch is a community space, designed to highlight the impact of transforming blighted spaces, the beauty of sustainable design, and the power of community engagement. It offers an opportunity for community partners to provide programs and services that promote healthy lifestyles, and creates a hub of activity for people from around Kalamazoo to [...]

The Marketplace The Marketplace development began as parcels of vacant land on 7 acres located in the Edison neighborhood across the street from the Kalamazoo Farmers Market. The Edison neighborhood was one of the City’s hardest hit areas in terms of blight, vacancies, crime and lack of redevelopment. But the market was a thriving [...]

Prairie Gardens The site of the Prairie Gardens senior cottages development is one of the highest points in the city of Kalamazoo, sitting on a hill in Kalamazoo's Fairmount neighborhood. When the Land Bank became involved in the property, it was the former Southwestern Michigan Tuberculosis Sanitarium and Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital complex, which was built [...]