Building businesses and community at Jerico in Kalamazoo's Edison neighbohood

The old 1890s brick buildings on Fulford in the Edison neighborhood could've remained crumbling husks of Kalamazoo's dead industrial past, but Krystal and Jeb Gast turned them into a makers' hub over the past 10 years.

Now there are creators and makers of all sorts at Jerico, from craftspersons who can make art that hangs on your wall, to the kind of art that can heat your house.

Earth Body Pottery is one of the artisans working at Jerico.People may know of Jerico as the host of events like the Jerico Faire, a celebration of local artists, craftspersons, and makers, happening this year on Nov. 29. 

Jerico is home to Emily Betros' Earth Body Pottery. Kalamazoo Backyard Yogis hold yoga sessions. And the Clover Room stages musical and other performances. 

There are also Jerico shops that do industrial fabrication and design, and those that install HVAC systems. They would argue that there’s an art to what they do, too.

Bucks, and car parts, and grills, and furnaces

Jerico functions as a business incubator, as a makers hub. In hub fashion, they all seem to be up in each other's business in a good way. 

For example, if one shop needs a buck, another shop is ready to make them a buck.

A buck in this case is a wood form used to make, say, a Duesenberg fender. There aren't many spare Duesenberg parts around, so one must shape and beat metal around a wood buck to create that flowing 1930s automotive design. 

Fran DwightWood bucks used to reproduce Duesenberg fenders are used in car restorations. This one is an example of shop teamwork at Jerico: Design consultancy Argenta Park formed the bucks to be used for a Weavers Unlimited job restoring a classic car.We dropped into Stu Weaver's Weavers Unlimited and found a large part of the space dominated by a buck "for the Murphy Body Duesenberg fenders." He's making the fenders for a Duesenberg dealer, Straight Eight Garage. 

The bucks were formed by Nick Jobbit, contract engineer for design consultancy Argenta Park a short walk away. Their upstairs office is full of computer stations, and downstairs their shop has all they need to saw and shape wood bucks.

When we visited, Jobbit was working on a buck that may or may not be for a wood pellet grill prototype. Jobbit instructed us to not take photos of what looked like finished grill parts because they are under NDAs.

The grill parts are for the Kalamazoo office of Traeger Wood Fired Grills, a Salt Lake City-based company whose wood pellet grills can be found nationally at stores like Kohl's, Ace Hardware, and Costco. They have an upper-floor office that features a roof-top patio — their grill test site. The test grills provide a lot of meat in the summer, but when we visited they were undergoing the stress test of how they'd hold up left outside in a Michigan winter.

Fran DwightTraeger grills get a year-round climate test outdoor in Michigan's elements.Downstairs and another short walk away is Home Energy Solutions, an HVAC team led by Shaun Wright. His space is a warehouse of furnace and ductwork parts, with metal cutters and benders to fit heating and cooling systems to area homes. (Full disclosure: this writer's home had Home Energy Solutions install a heat pump and furnace last fall.)

He also owns what Jeb jokingly calls "the community forklift." Sometimes the lift gets borrowed, and Wright finds it's returned "with a bag of (wood grill) pellets on the back of it," Wright says.

Organically-grown makers hub

We first met Jeb Gast in 2015, when he was creating his electric scooter, the Fido. He and his spouse Krystal Gast had come to Kalamazoo from Seattle, Wash., attracted here by the Kalamazoo Promise.

In 2015, Gast was looking at the cavernous former Michigan Buggy Company and Star Brass Works buildings, and seeing a future business incubator, maker shops, and a cafe where residents and the surrounding community could meet and hang out.

Fran DwightOutside Jerico on Fulford Street in the Edison neighborhood where small industry and artisans work next to one another. It was a lot of spooky, empty space. Back then, it was just Jeb and Krystal, and the bat. 

Some have suggested the old factories are haunted, but the scariest thing that happened to Jeb was a huge bat, "the size of a cat!" that bedeviled him one night when he started work on Jerico.

Now Jerico's spaces are full, and the hub is a hub of activity. The Fiddle Leaf Cafe was busy on a February weekday morning, while elsewhere bucks were being shaped, grills were being tested, and more.

The Gasts have some thoughts of expanding — there's an old industrial building nearby that's been up for auction that had a buyer, yet is still apparently unused and likely full of asbestos, Jeb says. But it's a possibility for expansion, if it goes up for auction again.

Fran DwightA view of the Home Energy Solutions warehouse. All the parts needed to install furnaces, heat pumps, hot water heaters, and more.There are growth possibilities in Edison, they feel, and have felt since they started.

Ten years ago the buildings' former owner, when the Gasts told her they were interested, said, "Why would you want these?" Krystal says. "She was basically like, 'I didn't think anybody would want them, and I wasn't going to try to do anything with them because they were old and needed work and probably would just fall apart eventually.'"

Krystal adds, "But that was one of the cool things about Kalamazoo that drew us here. Oh my gosh, there's these historic buildings that could use some help, and we want a space to do our business, which at the time was Fido."

The scooter eventually took a back seat as the Gasts worked on Jerico.

"We kind of fell into this space, and that's why we have way more space than we originally needed, and ended up doing what we're doing now. It all kind of just happened organically," Krystal says. "I think what I've learned in this process is, being a caretaker for something is important and beneficial in many ways." 

Fran DwightJeb Gast works on a roof at Jerico last summer. The forklift is sometimes shared among the businesses at Jerico.In the 19th through 20th centuries, Edison was an industrial neighborhood. Many of the houses west of Jerico were built near the turn of the century for workers who built the buggies on Fulford.

Some Jerico business residents have ties to Edison, some to nearby Milwood, but the old buildings no longer house major employers for the neighborhoods.

However, "Having this just sit here empty at the edge of a neighborhood is not good for anyone," Krystal says. They're "putting these buildings to use, and giving people space for their creative endeavors, their businesses."

Jerico is serving businesses that need smaller spaces. In 2015 they could've gotten "30,000 square feet of an industrial space, but we don't need that, and we can't afford that," Krystal says. 

They filled the void, providing smaller spaces, and looking at the "creative, makers' side of things," she says. 

When they started, then-Mayor Bobby Hopewell was backing the idea of makerspaces, where creatives, innovators, and small businesses can incubate, network, and grow.

Fran DwightKrystal and Whidbey Gast. Asked what it's like growing up in Jerico, Whidbey says, "It's fun!"It all happened organically at Jerico, Jeb says. "It was just people showing up, 'I heard from a guy that you have space.'"

Jerico makers and creatives, those who work with music, or clay, or furnaces, or grills, appreciate the community there, Krystal says. 

The shops have done work for each other, and have had some unexpected collaboration. Former tenants, Damn Handsome Grooming, who make men's grooming products, made a fretboard oil for Kal-Tone's guitars. Artist Mike Klok of Stuffed Brain Studios has created logos and commercial art for many of the businesses, including Traeger. 

Jeb's Fido Motors has also done work for and with Traeger and Weavers. "There's a lot of intermixing," Jeb says. "It's a helpful community."
Fran DwightA scene from Fiddle Leaf Cafe, Jerico's community cafe.
Makers-spaces, opportunity-spaces

The City knows about Jerico, and other makers-spaces, Antonio Mitchell, Community Planning and Economic Development Director for the City of Kalamazoo, says.

A facility like Jerico could be called a makers-space or an incubator, like the Gibson Guitar building in the past, or now, the Park Trades Center, WMU's Business Technology and Research Park, and various local co-working spaces, Mitchell says. 

Courtesy Antonio Mitchell Sr.Spaces like Jerico and similar hubs are a benefit to the city says, Antonio Mitchell, Community Planning and Economic Development Director for the City of Kalamazoo.For example, Black Wall Street is working on making their own space, and is looking to move into the Can Do Incubator Space on Park near Walnut, he says.

Spaces like these are a benefit to the city, Mitchell says. "We have a good number of them. With us implementing our economic development strategy with more marketing and promotion of Kalamazoo, we'll be able to talk more about these spaces and all the services that go with those spaces. The plan in 2025 is to better promote these spaces throughout Kalamazoo. Also training or programming to assist those spaces as well."

At Jerico, on the day we visited, we just happened to stumble on people making connections and working with each other. Activity like this leads to overall growth, Mitchell says.
Fran DwightThe official Jerico cat, Jeri.
"Even with the BTR Park, with their incubator, it's connected to 40 different businesses," Mitchell says. "That's more (of a) science-makers-space. It's research. But it has an indirect connection to 1,400 jobs."  

Spaces like these, large and small, lead to "job creation, and also indirect job creation because of their additional business relations that they have locally and regionally. In some cases even nationally and internationally."

Businesses like the Utah-based grill company Traeger might have just a satellite office here, but they "expose Kalamazoo as a great business environment for small businesses," he says.

It might seem a drawback for neighborhoods to have large industrial buildings that no longer serve their original purpose, but when they are repurposed, they can be a benefit, Mitchell says.

Fran DwightStu Weaver of Weavers Unlimited was recenty working on a buck for for the Murphy Body Duesenberg fenders..Core neighborhoods like Edison and the Northside sprang up during a time that no longer exists. In the 19th century, factories and other industrial buildings were on the outskirts of what was the city, then housing for employees sprung up around them, back in the time before commuting by car. 

Manufacturing eventually left "for greener pastures in the suburbs," Mitchell says. "And so the buildings are then being reutilized as cut-up space for either smaller manufacturing or refurbished commercial space for distribution and sales," he says.

"That's a good thing in the sense that, one, the buildings are being reutilized. So they're not blighted locations," he says. "Then the other good thing is -- not all the time, but a good number of times -- it opens up opportunities for the local residents in that area to work at some of those locations."

He points to Aunt Millie's bakery on Palmer in Edison. "I think 50% of their employees live in the Edison neighborhood. And so that opens up for a lot of residents to be able to walk to work, especially in the summertime.... You've got a manufacturing company that, in this case, makes bread, which is great. It smells great. But it's in the middle of the neighborhood."

There are good reasons for appropriate manufacturing and industry to be in neighborhoods, from metal shops to bakeries to small home businesses, he says.

Fran DwightA look inside the Inside the Weavers Unlimited shop.Small businesses need cheaper, nearby spaces to grow into, options that aren't a business park far out of town. "When you have businesses reinvested into these old manufacturing buildings to create business opportunities that usually are more affordable space than sometimes in the suburbs, it's a plus," Mitchell says.

"We're really trying to invest in home-based businesses," Mitchell says. "They grow out of their basement, grow out of their garage, and utilize regions and other spaces like at Jericho, and hopefully Gibson and Park Trade Center for office space because they've grown out of their house."

He adds, "So, that's the dream."

Every business has its reasons for being at Jerico, or in Edison, or in Kalamazoo....

Recording engineer Ian Gorman was looking at a few options when he began La Luna Recording and Sound in 2017. And he chose a spot in an old factory that needed a lot of work.

Fran Dwight Jerico has many performance spaces, along with the small-scale industrial businesses."It was a major construction project," Gorman says, to make the space acoustically perfect, build recording booths, and install a lot of expensive equipment. But he wanted to be there because of the Gasts. "They're incredibly supportive of independent businesses and artists, creativity, community, and all that good stuff," he says.

Fran DwightPlex, robot from kid's show "Yo Gabba Gabba," keeps an eye on Argenta Park."Another thing was the location. There's a lot of revitalization going on in the Edison neighborhood, that was really exciting. And the idea of renovating some historic buildings, rather than just tearing them down, was something that I thought was really cool."

For the grill company Traeger, Jeb tells us, it was hard finding design or mechanical engineers in their home base of Salt Lake City, and it was also hard to get skilled people to move to Salt Lake.

Traeger test engineer Sam Armstrong, and director of mechanical engineering Joe Marietta come in from lunch, and invite us up to their office space. 

Utah is "very corporate friendly," Marietta says. But the talent they need is better found in Kalamazoo.

"Basically, Southwest Michigan or Michigan in general has just per capita a lot more design and mechanical engineers," Marietta says. Traeger's VP of Engineering, Dan Altenritter, originally from Southwest Michigan, suggested they open a design shop here.  

Fran DwightJerico is home to the satellite office of Utah-based wood-pellet grill company Traeger. Marietta says Altenritter's message was, "In the Midwest, people are good at making things."

Traeger started their satellite office in Jerico in 2021, and now they're up to eight people.

The space, with a kitchen area, living room, and Marietta's racing motorcycle on display, is inspired by Traeger corporate headquarters – “kind of like an Applebees,” he quips as we find items like a submarine sandwich sculpture and AI-generated “class pictures” of the staff on the walls. 

But there are nods to their home here, like a framed mugshot of Tim Allen from when the WMU alumni was arrested for cocaine trafficking, and "Misfits of the Mitten" Michigan-themed office logo stickers designed by Jerico neighbor Stuffed Brain Studios.

Their grill testing area gets something that Utah can't provide, the real weather conditions of Midwestern yards and patios. "These stay outside all the time. They get rained on, snowed on, hailed on. Tornado goes by, they're just here," Marietta says.

Part of the hub, part of the neighborhood

Making Edison Home Energy Solutions' base was just how Shaun Wright does things.

Fran DwightKrystal and Jeb Gas and their daughter Whidbey. "Part of that reason is, since my wife and I were married, we've always intentionally worked and worshiped in the inner city neighborhoods," Wright says.

Wright and wife Emily Wright live in Vine. They began the nonprofit Community Homeworks, which serves to help homeowners fix their own homes in Edison in 2009. 

Now, he runs Home Energy Solutions for profit, yet still, "We have a passion for helping our low-income neighbors. It's still a lot of work that we do, even at Home Energy Solutions. We work with a lot of nonprofits and utilities. We try to help low-income families get highly energy-efficient equipment to reduce their utility bills. About half of our customers are actually within five miles of our shop."

Wright also likes the community at Jerico, where they all share ideas, forklifts, plasma CNC machines, and more.

He could've set up shop in a more modern building — the type Jeb called a "pole barn" in a separate interview — in some industrial park like the ones east down Miller or off of Sprinkle Road. "The idea of living out in a suburb or driving to work to some big complex out in an industrial park is just not appealing to me," Wright says.

"We like the people of the neighborhood. We like the character of it. We like to be part of it," he says.

This story is part of Southwest Michigan Journalism Collaborative’s coverage of equitable community development. SWMJC is a group of 12 regional organizations dedicated to strengthening local journalism. Visit swmichjournalism.com to learn more.

Fran DwightJeb and Krystal Gast walk between the buildings of Jerico have taken old industrial buildings that they have turned into a hub of small business activity.