On a Monday night in August, two downtown shop owners stood up at a Zeeland City Council meeting to talk about a street most people only use to cut across town. Missi Potter owns Adorned Home at 122 E. Main. Sue VanderHeide owns Lorna Lou at 137 E. Main. Both told council they were worried about what the Church Street reconstruction was doing to foot traffic.
"What we've been hearing is that it's going to happen (into) October-Novemberish, and we are concerned because that's our bread-and-butter months for Christmas," Potter said, as reported by the Zeeland Record. She had the timing about right. And the work running into the Christmas months comes from a decision Zeeland made long before this summer. Church Street is being rebuilt to match the rest of downtown, with the same heated sidewalks, the same brick and the same lights. Every block that gets that treatment has gone through a season like this one first.
Main Avenue went through it first
The downtown you walk today came out of years of construction on Main Avenue. In March 2024, the Holland Sentinel reported that a second summer of construction was starting on Main and that the city was launching The Main Thing, a "pardon our dust" campaign urging people to keep shopping and dining downtown anyway.
By that December, The Lakeshore described Main Street as "fully open after years of construction," with the Main Avenue project bringing snowmelt sidewalks, updated streetscapes and a fourth block of improvements. Some of the businesses now speaking up about Church Street arrived during that rebuild. Adorned Home opened at 122 E. Main in time for the 2024 holidays. On the same block, Wooden Nickel LLC was finishing a three-story mixed-use building at 137 E. Main that included a pedestrian passageway connecting the municipal parking lot to Main Avenue.
So the Main Avenue finishes have become the downtown standard, and Church Street is the next block in line for them.
What Church Street is getting, and why the bill grew
The project rebuilds Church Street from Washington Avenue to the city's Clean Water Plant. According to the Zeeland Record, design work began in 2023 with construction planned for the following year. Then water main failures on Taft Street pushed that reconstruction ahead in line.
When bids came in, the street fund's share came to $5,092,036 against a $4 million budget. The city's Church Street funding presentation lists that amount next to a separate $905,662 Michigan Department of Transportation grant, listed there as STPU funding, plus water and sewer funding and Zeeland Township's share of a larger sanitary line, for a total of $9.1 million.
Much of the gap came from items added so Church would match the rest of downtown. Then-Assistant City Manager Kevin Plockmeyer listed them for council:
- Snowmelt from Washington to Central, added to the city's snowmelt master plan by council vote in March: about $380,000
- Brick pavers between Main Avenue and Washington, matching Main, Elm and Cherry: about $140,000
- Ornamental street lighting, standard for reconstruction in the downtown district: about $145,000
- Storm sewer additions, including an 18-inch drain tile to deal with groundwater: more than $400,000
- Dredging the detention pond at the Clean Water Plant, which supports irrigation at Zeeland Cemetery: about $170,000
- A 10 percent contingency, about $819,000, which Plockmeyer expected to go mostly unspent
"Each of these elements supports community priorities such as maintenance of existing assets, all-season walkability, and a consistent downtown streetscape," Plockmeyer wrote to council, as reported by the Zeeland Record. City officials also said dropping the pavers would undermine consistency with the downtown district design.
Council voted unanimously to keep the full scope. It covered part of the gap with $400,000 from the 2024-25 general fund surplus and $200,000 from the personal property tax stabilization fund, and left the rest for the 2026-27 budget. Plockmeyer also said canceling was never an option. The contract for the northern section had already been awarded, and the MDOT grant for the southern section had already been accepted.
The schedule runs into the shopping season
The city's Church Street project page, last updated in late September, lays out the fall schedule. The city notes that all timelines depend on the weather and may change.
| Segment | Posted timing |
|---|---|
| Central to Main, base asphalt | Week of September 28 |
| Central to Main, sidewalk and snowmelt installation | Through mid-October |
| Central to Main, final restoration | Through October |
| Main and Church intersection, full closure | September 23 and 24 |
| Washington Avenue closure | Week of October 5 |
| Main to Washington, construction | October 5 to mid-November |
In August, Plockmeyer told council the goal was to have the Main Avenue intersection open to traffic by October 1, ahead of Pumpkinfest. In a mid-August update, he wrote that the city remained "on track to complete the project this fall." The posted schedule puts the last section, Main to Washington, right up against Thanksgiving week. That is the block with the brick pavers and the snowmelt that tie Church Street to the rest of downtown.
The city also notes that the intersections at Lincoln, Central, Centennial, Cherry and Washington will each close at some point during the project. For questions about getting to a particular block, the city takes calls at 616.772.0870 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and email at [email protected]. After hours, the number is 616.772.2001.
One storefront is changing hands at the same time
The Gritzmaker Social House at 120 E. Main closed temporarily in early October. According to the Holland Sentinel, original owner Scott Ingersoll said the restaurant will reopen under new ownership and management after a brief remodel. A sign is posted in the window. Ingersoll did not have any more details to share with the Sentinel, including the new owners' names or a reopening date. The Gritzmaker joined downtown in summer 2024 as the sixth full-service restaurant in Zeeland's Social District.
That puts the Gritzmaker right next door to Adorned Home at 122 E. Main, and across the street from Lorna Lou at 137 E. Main. The block where shop owners raised the alarm in August is also the one where a restaurant is resetting this fall. The other Social District license holders on the city's downtown page are Tripelroot, Frank's East, Public and StrEATs Taco Kitchen.
The downtown dates to plan around
Most of downtown Zeeland's holiday calendar happens on Main Avenue, a block or two from the Church Street work. These are the dates on the City of Zeeland events calendar:
- Trick or Treat on Main Street, Friday, October 30, 3 to 5 p.m. Participating downtown businesses hand out treats, with cider and donuts while supplies last, plus photo stations. Citywide trick-or-treating at homes with lights on follows on Saturday, October 31, from 5 to 7 p.m.
- Zeeland Turkey Trot 8K, November 26, starting at 8 a.m.
- Small Business Saturday, November 28, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with holiday sales and promotions from Main Street merchants.
- Tree lighting and Zeeland's Magical Christmas Parade, November 30. The tree lighting at the Splash Pad, 21 S. Elm Street, starts at 6:15 p.m., and the parade starts at 6:30 p.m.
- Feel the Zeel of Christmas, December 4 and 5, with trolley rides and holiday activities downtown.
Small Business Saturday lands about two weeks after the posted mid-November finish for the Main-to-Washington segment. Trick or Treat on Main falls right in the middle of that work. The city's thank-you note on the Trick or Treat page credits the downtown businesses with making the event happen. In August, downtown owners told council that this stretch of the calendar is the one they count on most.
Main Avenue and Church Street each cost the shops next to them a season of construction, and the Ron Webb Real Estate Team has watched the Main Avenue blocks go through that before Church Street. If you own a home near downtown and want to talk about how the finished blocks have changed the area around them, we're glad to sit down over coffee on Main and walk through it with you.
