Downtown Doesn't Need Another Hotel

 They're converting the old 5/3 Bank/Peoples State Bank building into a hotel.  We don't need another hotel in downtown.  Parking is already at a premium in downtown Holland, and the primary aim for The Vault Hotel is to share a parking lot with Pillar Church.  Since I've been hanging around Downtown Holland starting around 2012, parking has become increasingly convoluted and inconvenient, especially for downtown employees.

 BUT - parking is not my issue here. As mentioned in a previous entry, Downtown Holland has no culture.  For being a town whose primary tourist draw is Tulip Time and our Dutch heritage, there sure aren't many restaurants that offer traditional Dutch fare...There's a few objects here or there, DeBoer's on the north side offers their "Taste Of The Old Country" lunch sampler; Big Lake Brewing offers Dutch bitterballen (a drinking/pub snack); Wooden Shoe Restaurant offers Balkenbrij (scrapple); but that' about it.  For being a college town, there aren't any coffee shops open late.  I'm sure Hope has on-campus amenities and everything, but even when I was in college and hanging around Holland, the town has never felt like a college town.

Holland has had a revolving door of businesses and restaurants opening and closing over the past few years.   Costs are going up, both on raw goods and on rents/leases downtown.  It would be amazing to see some efforts made to encourage small businesses, retail, and restaurants onto the 8th Street corridor and focus hotel development to the north of downtown - there's an awful lot of unused formerly industrial space along Central Avenue between 3rd and 5th Streets, not to mention all the green space between 7th and 8th and Lincoln and Columbia where the old Pizza Hut sat.  Hell, there's even a vacant lot between 8th and 9th sorta behind the DeVos Fieldhouse.  Put the hotels there, man.  Ample room for parking, and those areas aren't situated such that they'll mess with the "main drag" of town.

 Sadly, Holland has grown itself into a corner - the main draw to retail in the downtown area are tourists and wealthy locals.  I'm a dude who works in a factory, writes a dumb blog, and buys jeans at the hardware store...Glik's selling a $90 pair of jeans ain't for me. While delftware is a traditional Dutch artform, who the hell needs a whole-ass store full of this?  There are an awful lot of stores selling VERY high-end and expensive gifts and decorations.  Meanwhile, you can't buy a bottle of Advil and a bottle of Gatorade anywhere within walking distance of downtown.  Downtown Holland is out of touch.

What I'd propose for the Peoples State Bank building is a small indoor plaza.  Something with a short-order restaurant (cheap sandwiches, hot dogs perhaps), a drug store or C-stop, and maybe some kitschy tourist souvenir stores.  Something that invites Hope College students, accommodates locals, and has presence for tourists during Tulip Time.  Move the hotels (even you, Haworth Inn) off of the "main drag" area and into the outerlying areas of downtown.