Grand River Project Seeking Identity

Located at the corner of Grand River and Greenfield, the three-story building is the former Federal's Department Store, until that company went under in the 1960s, said Josh Grenadier of Strather and Associates.The building became a small mall, but Herb Strather wants to add a new flavor to the area, to encourage youth to come and shop, Grenadier said.

"This will be a mall dedicated to the younger crowd," Grenadier told GlobeSt.com. "It will have some specialty urban clothing stores, an entertainment complex with video games, clothing stores and some service tenants, like mortgage companies."

Strather is also in negotiations to get big-wow stores, such as an automotive dealer to open a new "virtual realty showroom," where consumers could test drive a vehicle without leaving the store, and a digital music store where customers can have songs of their choice burned onto a compact disc.He said marketing is just beginning, and letters of intent have been signed with a jeans store, a cellular phone store and a sports-orientated barbershop.Other larger retailers are being courted, Grenadier said, but nothing has been signed.

The building will be redeveloped both inside and out, according to Grenadier."We'll do the exterior first, and plan to install two Jumbotron TV screens on the outside. The inside is already gutted. We're going to do a facelift to the inside as well and do the build-out of the stores as they come online."

Granadier said he expects the project will be complete by the end of this year.The intersection has already seen some signs of redevelopment. The 120,000-sf Tower Center to the north has retail stores, a technological school on the second floor and many tenants on third-floor offices. Another 50,000-sf of retail uses, as well as a Rite Aid Drug Store and a future Walgreens site, are nearby.

According to Strather's marketing materials, rents would start at $22 per foot NNN for suites from 1,200-sf to 12,000-sf.