By K.D. Norris
With the 2017 launch of the Welcoming the World: Honoring a Legacy of Love $115 million capital campaign, Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park was honoring the legacy of Fred and Lena Meijer’s past community vision and well as initial and continuing financial support.
But Meijer Gardens — a bedrock cultural and artistic landmark in West Michigan — was also acknowledging that for it to move boldly into the future, for it to “Welcome the World”, it needed to get buy-in from the West Michigan community, including businesses large and small, and civic-minded individuals.
That buy-in — the fact that the capital campaign had attained it fundraising goal, and thus stayed on-track with its massive and near-complete 4-year facility expansion — was clearly evidenced by a wall of donors in its just-opened expanded Welcome Center.
Also evident was the intent of the leadership of the Meijer Gardens to make sure the community and tourism focal point of the region stayed vital and vigorous for generations to come.
“This is not monument to one person or one family, the community is making this happen and that is critically important,” David Hooker, president and CEO of Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, said to WKTV at the Welcome Center opening Monday, Jan. 11. “We, as an organization, have no time horizon. Our goal is to be here until the very end of time. For that to happen, everybody has to rally around, to own the place. (To be) stewards of it. This generation, the next, and the next.”
While the opening of the Welcome Center is not the end of construction at Meijer Gardens supported by the capital campaign, it will allow the end of use of a temporary entrance and work to be completed on a new Garden Pavilion and a veranda to expanded Tassell-Wisner-Bottrall English Perennial Garden — one of the final pieces of the multi-year effort.
In all, the highlights of the expansion and renovation effort included the 69,000 square foot Welcome Center, the 20,000 square foot Covenant Learning Center, the Peter C. and Emajean Cook Transportation Center, the expanded and upgraded Frederik Meijer Gardens Amphitheater, and the Padnos Families Rooftop Sculpture Garden.
The need for expansion was evidenced by a 2016 economic impact study, conducted by Grand Valley State University, that estimated that Meijer Gardens supports or contributes more than $75 million to the Kent County economy each year. More than 12 million people from around the world have visited since it opened in 1995, according to supplied material.
The project also addresses facility needs that include expanded annual horticulture exhibitions, more galleries for sculpture exhibitions, additional parking capacity and improved vehicle flow.
The Welcome Center’s architect is Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects/Partners, with local partners Progressive AE and Owen-Ames-Kimball, Co.
One area of the Welcome Center not yet complete is the Garden Pavilion, a central room where Jaume Plensa’s “Utopia” will be located. For the four walls of the Garden Pavilion, Plensa created a sculpture using one female face on each wall representing different ethnic backgrounds, according to supplied material. The faces “represent universal symbols of the beauty inherent in humanity,” and was specifically commissioned for the Garden Pavilion and is scheduled to open later this year.
