Why a hospital wants to help develop housing near downtown Kalamazoo

This story is part of the Southwest Michigan Journalism Collaborative’s coverage of equitable community development. The SWMJC is a group of 12 regional organizations dedicated to strengthening local journalism. To learn more, visit here.
KALAMAZOO, MI — Having a stable and affordable place to live is a key to a healthy lifestyle.
The folks at Bronson Healthcare Group recognized that in 2016 when they partnered with Kalamazoo Valley Community College to open the KVCC/Bronson Healthy Living Campus in downtown Kalamazoo.
Now, Bronson has it’s next mission.
The company has teamed up with local developer Jamauri Bogan to build housing that its employees can afford and, at the same time, improve the quality of life just west of its main campus in downtown Kalamazoo.
“There are several different components that are the social determinants of health, and one of them is housing,” Bogan said. “Health experts have said that having somewhere to stay helps improve folks’ outcomes.”
That is especially true, he says, if the housing is high quality and affordable.
So he is partnering with Bronson to build an 85-unit, mixed-use residential complex that helps address the critical shortage of housing in Kalamazoo County and helps redevelop some vacant or underutilized parcels owned by Bronson.
Called The B on Burdick, the $40 million development is expected to include a grocery store, a child care facility and a fitness center along with upscale yet affordable one- and two-bedroom apartments.
The development will replace the now-closed FoodMaxx Party Store and four vacant houses that bracket the southwest corner of Burdick and Vine streets.
A groundbreaking ceremony is anticipated in June, with AVB Inc. as the construction manager and Tower Pinkster as the architect.
Thirty-three percent of the construction work is being earmarked for minority and women-owned firms. The development is expected to open during the first quarter of 2028.
For Bronson, the lack of adequate housing is an ongoing health care issue, but a practical issue as well. Twenty of the new apartment units are intended for use by Bronson employees.
“Housing. It’s one of those primary needs in life,” said Gregory Milliken, director of Bronson Properties and Building & Real Estate. “If you don’t have quality housing, you’re not going to be thinking about your doctor’s appointment or your physical therapy appointment or your diabetes medicine. Making sure people have quality housing choices ensures that they can then make quality health choices as well.”
Bronson and KVCC worked together to invest more than $40 million in the Healthy Living Campus. When that wrapped up, leaders wondered how they could leverage the investment to inspire further improvements.
“We looked at this block (bordered by Burdick, Burr Oak, Rose, and Vine streets) and said this is a block where we’d like to catalyze housing,” Milliken said.
The overall idea has been to maximize property Bronson has amassed over the last nine years just west of its downtown campus to create workforce housing. That is housing affordable to middle-income households — those with annual earnings between 60% and 120% of the Area Median Income for Kalamazoo County. AMI represents the halfway point between the highest and lowest earnings in a county.
The 60% mark for AMI in a one-person household is $40,280, or $57,480 for a family of four. The 120% mark ranges from $80,520 to $114,960 for the same household sizes.
Milliken says working with Bogan fits Bronson’s vision for working with emerging developers so they can grow and take their skills into the wider community.
The B on Burdick won’t be the partnership’s only project in the immediate area.
“There will probably be a Phase II, a Phase III or something. So we’re creating different housing types, different structures, different models and then those can be copied and pasted in other parts of the community,” Milliken said.
Speaking of Bronson, Bogan says, “Since 2016, they’ve been doing a lot to ask their employee base: What are their needs? How far away do they live from their jobs?”
Bogan acknowledges Bronson’s dedication to including minority- and women-owned subcontractors and contractors, allowing them to play a role in revitalizing the area. “That vision is shared by us,” he says.
Bogan is a 29-year-old African-American entrepreneur who dove into real estate development after receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Business Administration from Western Michigan University in 2017 and 2019, respectively.
This will be the third large housing project for which he’s received Kalamazoo County Housing-For-All Millage funds. The project has been approved for $2 million from that housing millage and $2 million from MSHDA’s Employer-Assisted Housing Program.
“Traditionally, there’s low-income housing, and then there’s market-rate housing,” Bogan said. But he says very little housing has been built to target folks making $40,000 to $80,000 — called “the missing middle.”
Since its start in 2020, Bogan Developments LLC has focused on building mixed-income, affordable housing and luxury affordable housing for the missing middle.
Rents at the five-story, 101,000-square-foot B on Burdick complex will range from $957 per month for a studio to $2,400 per month for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom corner unit. According to current plans, there will be:
18 studio apartments, leasing for $957 per month
48 one-bedroom apartments, leasing for $1,400 per month
19 two-bedroom units, primarily leasing for $2,100 per month
But is that affordable?
“That always gets people tripped up,” Kalamazoo County Housing Director Mary Balkema said about “affordable” housing. “What’s ‘affordable?’ If you’re a 30 percenter and you’re looking at what the AMI is (at The B on Burdick), it’s not affordable for you. If you’re looking at workforce housing or people who are working at the hospital, hopefully it’s affordable for them.”
Balkema pushes to have developers include at least one or two units that are affordable for lower-income families. But she says it is difficult for builders to structure plans that cover construction costs and ongoing maintenance in lower-rent projects.
“But if you’re super-super low (income), can you move there?” Balkema said. “Well, I don’t think he has super-super low units. So it’s affordable, but obviously not for everybody.”
Balkema welcomes the new development because she says it’s a good project that will eliminate some blight, it will provide housing for hospital employees and take demand off parking.
“I think people should be happy,” Balkema said.
The state’s contribution is part of a $10 million pilot program giving funding for 10 projects that help employers who want better housing options for employees, said MSHDA spokesperson Katie Bach.
“We were trying to tackle one of Michigan’s most pressing economic challenges,” Bach said. “Which is ensuring that workers have access to affordable homes near their jobs. … It was an issue that employers had been trying to tackle themselves for quite some time. And we heard it enough from employers that they weren’t able to solve this issue on their own.”
The program brings together employers, governments and housing professionals to find solutions.
“It has been a pretty universal problem if you look at where we (granted funding),” Bach says. “Traverse City, Grand Rapids, Petoskey, Royal Oak, Flint, Wyoming, Battle Creek, Newberry, Kalamazoo, and Detroit were all recipients.”
For each place, the target is the missing middle, Bach said.
“Those are your teachers, your firefighters, your nurses, your professional workforce,” Bach said.