With four recent hires to Sun Title’s commercial escrow team bringing its total staff roster north of 60 employees, the Creston-based real estate services company is wrapping up new accommodations this week for its steadily increasing commercial title division with a 3,000-square-foot renovation and expansion project.
“Candidly speaking, we’re just out of closing rooms,” says Tom Cronkright, CEO and co-owner of
Sun Title. “We did not have enough rooms to accommodate all of the closings we have, especially in month-end.”
The new office space is connected to Sun Title’s existing 9,000-square-foot headquarters in downtown Grand Rapids’ Creston neighborhood and accessible from its main entrance at 1410 Plainfield Ave. Cronkright says restorations to the 100-year-old building’s original tin ceilings, oyster-tile floors, and original woodwork dictated the interior aesthetic for the new office space, which features four conference rooms, a private lounge and a large staircase to connect the main office of Sun Title and storefront access.
“It’s a very tasteful expansion and the renovation will flow well with the existing Sun Title building,” he says.
Cronkright opened Sun Title in 2005 alongside business partner Lawrence Duthler, and he says although they’ve been experiencing steady growth ever since, the past 24 months in the growing region have brought some particularly accelerated growth in the commercial industrial market as retail and rents continue to rise and the sale of vacant land and new commercial construction is up significantly.
“A lot of the commercial industrial inventory has been absorbed— the spots along hot retail corridors by Woodland Mall, Alpine. Now, we’re still seeing purchase and sale activity, but we’re also seeing a lot of new construction start,” he says, adding that further activity is coming from the many commercial loans in need of renewal as they hit their five-year maturity dates.
“There’s been so much investment and, I think, good planning that’s taken place throughout West Michigan that we’re really starting to gain traction,” Cronkright says. “We’re hearing about more and more, and experiencing more and more, cases of people from out of the area sending us resumes and saying they’d like to move to West Michigan for work, so from a macro standpoint I think West Michigan is looking good for awhile.”
With offices in Ionia, Grand Haven, Grandville, Cedar Springs and Rockford, Cronkright says Sun Title’s four recent hires all come with strong backgrounds in the industry, adding to the seasoned team of professionals there that have worked in tandem with the rebounding market to see the company through a successful decade of growth.
“The old saying really is true that if you’ve got a good culture and you surround yourself with great people then you tend to grow, and that’s really what’s happening here,” he says. “Growth wasn’t really a goal, it has just been a byproduct of just trying to do the best job on every file.”
Cronkright sees plenty of opportunities for further growth in West Michigan, and moving forward, he says Sun Title will be focused on improving their communications as well as building up both new and existing talent in the area.
“Over the next few years, Lawrence and I will be focused on building a great client base and investing in the people within our organization — building leaders, so to speak,” he says. “We have a philosophy that we treat every deal like it’s our last deal. You can’t take the business for granted, not one day. Not in our industry, for sure.”
Designed by Richard Craig from Craig Architects, Inc. with lead construction/project managers from Karns Construction, final touches on the new space will be completed by the end of this week, with next Monday slated for move in.
For more information about Sun Title, visit www.suntitle.com.
By Anya Zentmeyer, Development News Editor
Images courtesy of Sun Title
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