By: Deborah Johnson Wood
The lion’s share of the 70,000-square-foot former Kindel Furniture factory at 818 Butterworth St., will soon be transformed into the new headquarters of Eastern Floral, complete with a 10,000-square-foot showroom of tropical plants and working water features. That showroom will double as space for conferences, parties or wedding receptions.
Eastern’s current headquarters at 28th Streeet and Broadmoor Avenue will remain open as retail location, but operations will move to Butterworth Street to take advantage of downtown’s growth and the easy access to the highways, which will cut time and costs for floral deliveries.
“Fortunately enough, we are growing in spite of the struggling economy,” says owner Bing Goei. “We’re providing flowers for more events downtown, conferences at DeVos Place, and we do floral arrangements, interior plantscapes and maintenance for corporations downtown. With the new hospitals going in there are more beds and more patients, and that increases opportunities for us to send flowers.”
When Goei was a child, his family fled Jakarta and lived in the Netherlands for over five years. When his family later emigrated to Grand Rapids in 1960, the child of Chinese lineage learned that he and several Grand Rapids students had something in common — they spoke Dutch! That helped Goei learn English and the American culture.
Because of his background, Goei is passionate about helping entrepreneurs — especially minorities, immigrants and women — be successful. He has set aside 10,000 square feet of the factory for these entrepreneurs to start businesses and get help writing business plans or applying for loans.
“Women, racial minorities and immigrants — most entrepreneurs come from these groups,” Goei says. “To transition from a manufacturing economy to a knowledge economy we must be able to attract and welcome entrepreneurs from around the world.”
Another 25,000-square-feet will be available for retail or office space.
Goei hopes to open the first phase of the development, the floral shop's new headquarters, in early 2009.
Source: Bing Goei, Eastern Floral
Related Articles
Foreign Force
Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.