A DeVos-owned development firm has had to tweak dining and commercial plans for a forthcoming 36-room hotel in downtown Ada, though construction should wrap in the coming months on the yearslong project.
The three-story, 37,000-square-foot Ada Hotel is taking shape at 7415 River St. in the area of Ada Township known as Ada Village. The hotel structure is in place, and the interior is currently being finished from the top floor to the bottom, with a few rooms nearly finished on the third floor.
Hotel construction started in February 2022 after the project was first announced in 2020. The project is now expected to wrap in mid- to late summer after delays prevented meeting an initial target to open this spring.
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The developer and owner of the new Ada Hotel is Baton Collective, formerly known as CDV5 Properties. The firm was founded and is owned by Cheri DeVos Ehmann and Steve Ehmann.
DeVos- and Van Andel-owned AHC Hospitality will operate the Ada Hotel, which will employ 80 to 90 people, according to hotel General Manager Becky Jones.
“I’m just (over) the moon to get this open and be a part of the community in Ada,” said Jones, who’s worked at AHC for 15 years, most recently as food and beverage manager at the JW Marriott downtown. “… The energy, approachability and family-friendliness it’s going to have — I’m just really excited to bring that culture and be a good neighbor to what’s already being built right now in Ada.”
The hotel — located near the global headquarters of the DeVos- and Van Andel-founded Amway Corp. — will begin accepting reservations in May, Jones said.
Jones was one of several project leaders who gave a media tour of the hotel on Tuesday. Elements of the plan have evolved since Crain’s Grand Rapids Business last reported on the project, including the themes and seating capacity of the restaurants and plans for the ground-floor amenities.
When completed, the hotel will offer 36 guest rooms, first- and second-floor lounge areas, a fitness center, two restaurants and three ground-floor retail spaces.
The ground-floor restaurant will be a pub/tavern-style venue called The Post, with seating for 120 people, a 10-person reduction to the seating capacity included in initial plans. The restaurant will feature both a “trading post” and a “post office” theme, allowing guests to participate in a pre-paid drink share program where they can buy their friends a drink and write a postcard to go with it. Both will then be stashed in cubby-holes that will line the back of the bar.
“Guests can pick up their mail when they walk in and get this drink,” Jones said. “It’s going to be a really unique concept.”
The second restaurant, Rix, which is named after Ada founder Rix Robinson, will be on the third floor with indoor and three-season patio seating for 130 people, up from the previous capacity of 110. The concept for Rix also changed from New American fare to small shareable plates and craft cocktails.
Baton Collective CEO Loren Crandell said the Rix concept evolved to better align with “ownership’s overall vision for the restaurant.”
“We’ve switched it to be more of a casual, cocktail lounge with shareable plates and still a full-scale menu … but really trying to celebrate the indoor-outdoor feel because it’s got the outdoor terrace,” Crandell said. “It’s really going to be a super approachable, amazing space.”
The three ground-floor retail spaces replace an earlier iteration of the project design that called for a small meeting room. Crandell said that plan changed in response to community feedback.
“We’re still trying to define exactly what those partners will be for those storefronts,” he said, but suggestions have included a wine retailer, sandwich shop and public gym.
A coffee shop is not being considered for the spaces because the “A6” building that’s under construction on the corner of River Street and Headley Street next to the hotel will house Foxtail Coffee on the ground level and the Baton Collective offices on the second and third floors. That building is owned and is being developed by Baton Collective, as well.
Years ago, the site of the Ada Hotel hosted a venue by the same name that burned down in 1943. The DeVos family office, RDV Corp. bought the property for $680,000 in January 2019 and announced the hotel concept in early 2020.
As previously promised, project leaders said Tuesday the hotel will give a nod to that old establishment — and to historic Ada in general — with the hotel’s design and decor.
Craig Schroeder, vice president of construction management for the project’s general contractor, Gaines Township-based First Companies, said a custom-molded glass fiber reinforced gypsum ceiling in the atrium will be visible from all levels and will depict the elevations, topography and Thornapple River that threads through Ada.
Jones said historic photos will be scattered throughout the facility to evoke Ada’s past.
Overall, the design will have a light-filled, warm, and inviting feel with clean mid-century modern lines, but with contemporary comforts, the project leaders said Tuesday.
The second and third floors will feature nine different room types, including one-bed kings, two-bed queens, family rooms with a bunk bed and a queen, and one-bedroom suites. Most of the rooms will have king beds, Jones said.
Tuesday’s tour took participants through some of the rooms, many of which have balconies overlooking the Thornapple River. A few “executive rooms” will include Peloton bikes and coffee bars.
In addition to First Companies, firms on the project include Ada Township-based Dixon Architecture and the Chicago office of OTJ Architects, which provided architecture and design services.
Baton Collective also is the primary developer behind the Ada Village where the hotel is located. The massive redevelopment effort behind the village started more than a decade ago and broke ground on the first properties in 2015.
The village now includes several restaurants, retail shops, a new library and Wheeler Development Group’s 92-unit luxury apartment project, Village East of Ada.
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