The building at 547 and 549 E Grand River Ave., home to the Greater Lansing Visitor Center, apartment space, and, until recently, Sweet Lorraine’s Fabulous Mac n’ Cheez!, has seen businesses come and go for decades, landlord Steve Perry said.

Perry, a manager with Perry Investment Group, LLC, said his family has owned the building since it was built in 1946.

Originally designed for the dry cleaner his parents ran in the 1940s and early ‘50s, the building has been home to mostly restaurants or retail, but has seen turnover every three to four years, Perry said.

Wanderer's 

Two businesses have come and gone from the space at 547 E Grand River Ave. in the last decade alone.

Before Sweet Lorraine’s occupied the space, it was home to Wanderer’s Teahouse.

Michael Spano, now an acupuncturist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, started Wanderer’s in August 2010.

Spano said his travels throughout Asia and Europe inspired him to bring the teahouse culture of socialization and relaxation back to East Lansing to see if it would work in America.

It did, he said.

“Our place was a place where you (could) go and not worry about anything, no matter what you did in life, where you were, everyone was just sitting down and having tea,” Spano said. “Executives of companies and students and everybody, and I always struck up lots of conversations.”

Wanderer’s Teahouse appealed to the open-mindedness of college students, Spano said.

It became a venue for open mic events, small classes and other events, he said.

Spano didn’t run his business into many barriers in East Lansing, he said.

While MSU’s cafeterias cut into the food business, Wanderer’s teas were carried in them.

While downtown’s paid parking became a hassle for some patrons, most students would just walk anyway, he said.

Perry said Spano had a solid understanding of business and finance and planned for East Lansing’s down periods.

The downfall of Wanderer’s Teahouse was a “perfect storm” of factors that happened all at once, Spano said.

After two years of getting on its feet the business was making money, but the lease was up and Spano had some trouble with a rent escalation, he said.

On the side, Spano was working as an acupuncturist at Henry Ford Medical Centers in Novi and West Bloomfield and had about five days off a year, including weekends, he said.

Healthcare was also a financial concern. Spano said no one would insure him and his wife at the time, in their respective 40’s and 50’s, and the price for anyone willing to give them catastrophic insurance was twice their mortgage.

Their healthcare plan was basically to go bankrupt, he said.

“I had to make a decision right then, and it was hard,” Spano said. “Trust me, it was the hardest decision I had to make in my life.”

Coming and Going 

Spano was made an offer he couldn’t refuse, he said.

MD Anderson offered him a position with a good salary, constant hours and full benefits.

“Do I start from almost ground zero with money to try to build it up even more, so I can pay the rent and keep my profit ... or do I just stop working 80, 90 hours a week and take a job where I get paid well and get full benefits and retirement and paid days off which you never get as a private business owner?” Spano said.

“I didn’t want to leave, trust me, it was the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life was to turn away my dream, and that was always my dream to own a little place like that that was part of the community, that people looked forward to coming (to).”

Wanderer’s Teahouse closed in May 2013, and there’s not a day Spano doesn’t think about bringing it back, he said.

If given another chance, Spano said he would’ve gone in with another investor to have more capital, wouldn’t have taken a second job and would have found an operational partner so he’d be able to have more time off while maintaining the teahouse’s quality.

Independent businesses don’t have as much capital as chains, and are at a disadvantage because of this, Spano said.

“They come in, they pay a ton of rent up front and little guys can’t compete with that,” Spano said.

“I’m sure Sweet Lorraine’s came in with a ton of money, and it’s just the way it goes. As an independent you don’t have that much capital up front. There’s so many things behind the scenes that people don’t know that goes on with an independent business compared to a franchise, and I’ve worked for both in my life.”

Before Wanderer’s the space was an Asian restaurant, Perry said, though he doesn’t remember its name.

“They were there for maybe two to three years but didn’t have much financial strength, and really I think that the main reason why all these restaurants have come and gone is primarily the seasonal aspects of being downtown and near a university, with having so many students there during the school year and then having that basically dry up and the demographic change so abruptly,” Perry said.

“Restaurants and businesses that plan for that, and plan their expenses across the 12-month year so that they can make it through the summer, are successful, and ones that don’t do a good job of planning for the students population going away in the summer are the ones that fail.”

Sweet Lorraine’s, which opened in September 2014 and closed in October 2016, failed for slightly different reasons than many other restaurants, Perry said.

“They have several restaurants in the Detroit area, and I think they just got a little bit too aggressive in running businesses and they didn’t have the time to oversee this one, they were too far away,” Perry said.

“When there were challenges, they just didn’t dedicate the time they really needed to put into this restaurant, despite the fact that they had the assets needed to keep it going through the summer months, they didn’t have the time and investors didn’t have the confidence in them that they were gonna be successful.”

The owners of the Sweet Lorraine’s franchise did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

549

Before 549 E Grand River Ave. housed the Visitor Center, a barbershop operated there for decades, Perry said. At one point, the owner wanted to retire, so he closed the business and went on to something different.

After that, it was a smoothie café called California Juice Company. Perry said the business was owned by a man in California who had set it up for his daughter, an MSU business student, so she could get real world experience.

“After she graduated from MSU, she moved away and didn’t want to run that business anymore, so they kinda just abandoned it and closed it down,” Perry said.

The Visitor Center has been in the space for about four years and has been an excellent, consistent tenant, Perry said.

“Their purpose for being there is a little bit different than some of the other businesses, and so even though their visitation may go down during the summer months, I would say they’re better organized in terms of planning for that ... they’re really doing well, and they’re a premiere location for that type of business,” Perry said.

Though businesses come and go, Perry said there’s no shortage of people who want to start a business on Grand River Avenue and have a dream to do something there. Perry said he’s now considering several offers for the Sweet Lorraine’s space, including talks with MSU, but can’t comment on anything because no lease has been signed yet.

“I think any business or building owner would like to have the perfect tenant that moves in and pays their rent on time and is there indefinitely, but yeah, given the nature of business in a college district, that’s just the way it is,” Perry said.