Outgrowing its former fourth-floor offices located in the old Grand Rapids Furniture campus at 560 5th St., creative firm
Extra Credit Projects (ECP) has upgraded its workspace with new offices located at 1250 Taylor Ave. in north Grand Rapids.
On the cusp of Grand Rapids’ N. Monroe and Creston districts, ECP’s new space is located across the street from the former Display Pack, Inc. building at 1340 N. Monroe Ave., which was
acquired last year by Franklin Partners for redevelopment.
Rob Jackson is the CEO of ECP, which launched about 10 years ago on Grand Rapids’ west side, and he says though his firm tends to seek business areas home to more “blue collar” companies, they didn’t target the up-and-coming neighborhood on purpose — it just worked out that way.
“We were just looking for the right space, and it happened to be here,” Jackson says. “The Creston-North Monroe area is an up-and-coming business district, and we do kind of like the upside of that.”
At about 4,200 square feet, ECP’s new home affords its team around 1,000 extra square feet of floor space to work with, including a central kitchen and fireplace, shower/lockers, bike storage, a dedicated workshop, on-site parking, and garage space for some of its larger projects. All of this new space is a huge help for a firm that does some seriously diverse work, from corporate branding and television ads to book and cover design — and a whole lot more.
“At our old space when we’d have a large project, like carving out some big 20-foot foam prop, it was hard as a fourth-floor renter to find space around the property to work in,” says Jackson, who used to have to rent a separate workshop on Front St. alongside its old 5th St. loft offices to accommodate those big undertakings. “We’re more spread out here. We have a little bit of outside space, and we just feel like there’s all kinds of alternative workspace we can utilize.”
Alongside its offering of easier access from surrounding highways and more bike-friendly proximity to home for many members of its 11-person team, Jackson says the move to the growing neighborhood — in all of its simplicity of space — just makes sense for ECP as a larger brand.
“Everything we do is based on simplicity,” he says. “From outdoor projects to websites to logos and brand identity, everything we do is based in simplicity and one big idea.
Jackson says he looks forward to ECP’s continued growth as both a brand and an operation in its expanded offices, thinking of the new Taylor Avenue digs as a sort of long-term investment in the overall growth of the city of Grand Rapids.
“We’re invested. We want to be a part of this. We’re in it,” Jackson says. “We always hope to be a little bit of a creative draw of Grand Rapids, to lore in blue-chip clients looking for a little more value, for something different from New York or Los Angeles — and we have had wins in that area, which is cool to do from here in Grand Rapids.”
To see some of ECP’s work or for more information on the creative firm, visit www.extracreditprojects.com.
Written by Anya Zentmeyer, Development News Editor
Images courtesy of Extra Credit Projects
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