Kurt Knoth spent decades in healthcare. His wife Wendy worked for a local plumber. Neither one had run a bar before the end of August 2024, when they opened Off the Chain Brewstillery inside the same building as Loose Spokes, the bike shop their daughter and son-in-law own on Colfax Avenue. Seven beers, some wine, seasonal cocktails, no kitchen of their own. Customers bring in food from nearby restaurants, and on Tuesdays a food truck parks out front.
That building sits on Grand Haven's east side, a part of town that has never been the postcard version of the city. The postcard is Washington Avenue, the boardwalk, the lighthouse pier, the musical fountain running its themed shows every night of summer. Colfax and Beechtree are a few blocks inland from all of that, closer to where people actually live than where they vacation. Over the past two years, without much fanfare, that stretch has picked up three new, locally owned businesses that give it a shape it didn't have before.
Three Openings, No Corporate Backers
Off the Chain Brewstillery was the first. It moved into 1434 Colfax Avenue, next to Loose Spokes, which itself had only recently relocated there. Loose Spokes opened in 1989 out at 16790 Hayes Street in Grand Haven Township, outside the city line. Christian Miller worked there for ten years before buying the shop from longtime owner Jack Crawford in 2022, then moved it into the city at its current Colfax address. His in-laws, Kurt and Wendy Knoth, built the brewstillery next door. The site is now described as Grand Haven's fourth brewery and its first purpose-built distillery since Prohibition. Wendy Knoth put the motivation plainly when the business opened: they live in Grand Haven, own a home there, and wanted to build something in the neighborhood rather than somewhere else.
Whipped Cafe & Creamery came next, opening in November 2025 at 314 South Beechtree Street, in the small building that used to house East End Coffee Shop. Owner Khali Johnston runs the place with her aunt, Stacy Gesiakowski, and opening a brick-and-mortar spot had long been a goal for Johnston, who already runs a food truck with her husband.
The most recent addition is Rosewood Provisions, a refillery and sustainable swap shop at 106 North 7th Street, reported as a new opening in spring 2026. It sells cleaning supplies, bath and body products, and pantry staples with an emphasis on cutting down on packaging waste, and it functions as much as a gathering spot as a store.
None of these three businesses belongs to a chain or a multi-location group. They were built by people who already lived in Grand Haven, financed and run by family.
Same City, Two Different Kinds of New
Downtown has added new storefronts in roughly the same window, and the contrast is worth naming. Blue Porch Bar and Grill opened in late October 2024 inside the former Stan's Tacos space at 21 North Beacon Boulevard. It's owned by Meritage Hospitality Group, the same company behind Morning Belle, several West Michigan Wendy's locations, and the now-closed Taco John's chain in the state. A few blocks away, New Holland Brewing Co., a regional brewery with a wide distribution footprint, opened Pinwheel Kitchen, a takeaway concept, at 20 Washington Avenue.
Both are good additions to downtown's food scene. Neither is a first business for the people who run it. Blue Porch's director of operations told WOOD TV that a few people in Meritage's leadership live in the tri-city area, which was part of the motivation for choosing Grand Haven, but the restaurant itself is one storefront in a company that also franchises fast food chains across the region. Pinwheel Kitchen is a spinoff of an established, multi-state brewing company.
That's the actual split happening in Grand Haven right now. Downtown is getting reinvestment from operators who already run businesses elsewhere and are adding a Grand Haven location to the list. The east side is getting first businesses, opened by people whose only location is the one they built at home.
October Pulls Downtown. The Corridor Doesn't Follow
This fall gives that split an extra layer. Downtown's calendar is loud in October. Bones About Town runs from October 1 through October 23, placing more than 150 five-foot decorated skeletons around the district, judged by popular vote in categories for originality, funniest, and scariest, with voting open daily until noon on the 23rd. It closes out with a Fall Festival on the streets of Downtown and Centertown on October 24, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. A few weeks earlier, on Friday, October 2, Witches & Warlocks Night Out takes over the same district from 5 to 8 p.m., starting with a Witches Walk down Washington Avenue from The Brass River, with a self-guided "Spellbook" route for anyone who wants to make their own way through the shops and restaurants.
At the same time, the boardwalk at Lighthouse Connector Park is closed for repairs, a stretch of work the city says began September 17 and is expected to wrap up during the week of October 12. That closure lands squarely inside the Bones About Town run, which means the loop a lot of people use for an evening walk downtown isn't fully available during the exact weeks the skeleton display is up. The Musical Fountain has already stepped down from nightly summer shows to a Friday and Saturday schedule, another signal that downtown's weeknight foot traffic thins out this time of year even as its weekend programming ramps up.
None of that touches the east side corridor. Off the Chain's Tuesday food truck runs on its own schedule, tied to nothing on the festival calendar. Whipped Cafe and Rosewood Provisions keep their regular hours whether or not the boardwalk is passable. The east side's version of fall doesn't depend on a festival closing streets or a repair crew closing a walkway. It's just open.
What's Actually New, Side by Side
Business | Location | Opened | Ownership |
|---|---|---|---|
Off the Chain Brewstillery | 1434 Colfax Ave (East Side) | Late Aug. 2024 | Independent, Knoth/Miller family |
Blue Porch Bar & Grill | 21 N Beacon Blvd (Downtown) | Late Oct. 2024 | Meritage Hospitality Group |
Whipped Cafe & Creamery | 314 S. Beechtree St (East Side) | Nov. 2025 | Independent, Johnston/Gesiakowski |
Pinwheel Kitchen | 20 Washington Ave (Downtown) | Recently opened | New Holland Brewing Co. |
Rosewood Provisions | 106 N. 7th St (East Side) | Spring 2026 | Independent refillery |
Laid out that way, the pattern holds across every entry. Every downtown opening on this list belongs to a company with other locations somewhere else. Every east side opening belongs to someone whose business address is also close to their home address.
A Corridor Worth Walking on Its Own Terms
None of this makes the east side a rival to Washington Avenue, and nobody involved is framing it that way. What it does is give Grand Haven residents a second reason to walk somewhere other than the boardwalk on a Tuesday night in October, one that doesn't require checking whether a festival has closed the sidewalk or whether the fountain is running that evening. A bike tune-up and a beer next door. A cafe in a building that used to be a different cafe. A refill station a few blocks over. It's a small stretch of the city, built in under two years, by people who already lived there before they opened anything.
The Andrea Crossman Group spends most days talking with people who are deciding where in West Michigan to put down roots, and conversations like this one, about which streets are actually gaining new life, come up more often than median price does. If you're curious what else is changing on Grand Haven's east side, or want a longer list of what's opened in the neighborhoods along Lake Michigan and Lake Macatawa this year, reach out. We keep track of this stuff because we live here too.
