Edison and Curé and Firestone worked in buildings like this: high windows, sturdy wood floors, wide stairwells, old-style elevators, all enclosed in a fortress of brickwork. Four floors of hallways lead to artists' studios, artisans' workshops, retail spaces, offices, and small entrepreneurial businesses within the interior of this historic manufacturing space.

The Park Trades Center has stood in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan for nearly 100 years. Originally a manufacturing facility for the Loose Leaf Binder Company, it is today completely filled with the most remarkable people, actively pursuing their life-long dreams. Fine artists, graphic designers, metalsmiths, painters, sculptors, printmakers, potters, woodworkers, glassblowers, stained glass makers, photographers, furniture painters, web designers, a foundry and an interesting collection of entrepreneurs fill this space with creative synergy.

It’s a wonderful old building. Filled with character, and characters! For it’s the people that provide this space with its new purpose, its sense of energy, excitement and potential.

The people engaged in creative work here are as diverse in background and personality as can be imagined, and they are all driven by different purposes. But they do share two things in common: a high level of genius and creativity. The Park Trades Center houses some of the most inventive and creative work being produced between Detroit and Chicago. And, in many cases, the work done here is done nowhere else in the country.

Locating affordable work space has always been a problem for emerging artists and small entrepreneurial businesses. Often finding suitable spaces in urban warehouse districts, the very presence of creative individuals in old industrial neighborhoods acts as a catalyst for area-wide improvement, development and ultimately, rising property values which force the artists out. The Park Trades Center is dedicated to offering affordable space to artists, artisans and small businesses – thereby ensuring the long-term cultural and economic vitality of Kalamazoo’s downtown Warehouse District.

Early in 2001, Park Trades Center artists and artisans formed the Park Trades Center Art Studios Association whose mission is to create a community of visual creation. It is their dream to continually improve the building itself and create a lasting and profound impact on the surrounding downtown area. Their efforts, along with the support of the building’s owners, have made the Park Trades Center a “must see” stop at the facility’s biannual open studio/gallery hops, which are major downtown attractions that bring thousands of visitors twice a year to see and interact with artists, artisans and entrepreneurs in their studios.

It’s a great place to be! A great place to become. A great place to visit. The Park Trades Center has become, and will continue to be, a vibrant downtown space which creates a wide range of interesting cultural activities and entertainment opportunities for local residents, tourists and visitors to the Kalamazoo community and a haven for emerging artists, artisans and entrepreneurs.

Park Trades Center.

Call it a really large studio or a creative community or a band of inventors. it’s really a place of ingenuity.