Letter to the Editor - Kraftbrau

This letter is in response to the July 24th article regarding the anticipated new location and re-opening of Kraftbrau Brewery. I am pleased for Kraftbrau that they have found a place to reopen and I wish them success. My concern is with the location that they had previously hoped would house their re-opening (1126 E Michigan Ave.). This has been an abandoned building for some time and as a resident of the Eastside, I was pleased that Kraftbrau was going to re-open there. Maybe more energetic, young business would follow?! I was even more excited when I saw renovation being done on the building. Like most major renovations, it started with demolition. Before Kraftbrau set their sites on a different location, workers partially removed a relatively attractive façade which had covered a rather unattractive substructure. Additionally, there are now windows missing from the upper level. The building looks considerably worse then it did before they started – so much for enticing other business to move into the area.

I don’t know who was calling the shots on the renovation, and I’m not writing this letter to assign blame to anyone, but rather to express my concern for the consequences of a project that got started (with good intentions) but never came to fruition.

It’s nice for Andre Ellison of Kraftbrau that he is “really freakin’ excited” (as quoted in your article) about his new location for re-opening, but I hope everyone involved will put some serious forethought into what they are getting into before they start any demolition on their new location of choice. Property values in Kalamazoo are declining fast enough without the added blight of abandoned demolition projects.