S1E3 Birgit Klohs

Birgit Klohs is the former CEO of the Right Place. She has served on numerous boards and committees. She has "been in the room" for almost every major event or decision that has impacted Grand Rapids in the last 20 plus years. 

Now that she has "rewired, not retired," Birgit remains one of the most influential faces of the business community in the West Michigan Region. Her new role as the co-founder and executive chair of the New Community Transformation Fund is already making waves in the Grand Rapids business community. 

Here is what a lot of people do not know about Birgit, though. She is a huge fan of art and combined with her business background she make perhaps the ultimate source on the economic impact of ArtPrize. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to the official Art Prize Podcast, a limited series going behind the scenes of Grand Rapids premier art competition. I'm your host, Steve Kelso. I'm a former Art Prize reporter for Wood TV 8, a former Art Prize artist, and the owner of Kelso Communications, a proud Art Prize sponsor. In this series, I'm talking with the artists, the organizers, and the decision makers shaping Art Prize 16. Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Art Prize Podcast. Today, I am fortunate to be joined by Birgit Klose, who is the former CEO of theRightPlace.org. And you were telling me what tell me about what you're up to now.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

I'm the co-founder and executive chair of the New Community Transformation Fund, which is a venture capital fund that invests in underserved entrepreneurs in West Michigan. And we're starting fund two, and we're investing all over the state now.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Fantastic. So you were saying you have rewired.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

I have rewired, or I have not retired.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

No, no. The one question that kept coming to my mind when I wanted to talk to you about Art Prize is I want to know how you first found out about the original Art Prize, who originally told you, and what was your original reaction to the news of what Art Prize was, and did you share it honestly?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Um I remember very well the day when I found out about it. I got a call from the Art Prize folks at Wright Place. I was still in the water spilling on the on the uh mezzanine. Um and um I couldn't figure out what it was. You know, it was art in the community. And I'm like, okay, what does that really mean? I didn't know. Um I remember talking to my team about it and saying, well, let's see what this is, right? And I'm I love art. So, you know, to me this was a kind of a cool idea, but I had no idea what it was gonna be. And neither did anybody else for that matter. But it turned out that it was really innovative, right? Very available to a broad part of the population. What I thought about art price when it started, and it was so underestimated that first time. I remember all nobody knew what it was gonna be. All the restaurants ran out of food, remember? Everybody ran out of food on Sunday afternoon because nobody was prepared. And I don't think Rick, as the founder and the group around him, didn't know what it how big it was gonna be either.

unknown 2:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

I mean, restaurants closed because they had no food. Right. Right. And and then it became this massive, everybody came downtown. I've never seen so many people downtown until recently when the when the arena is open and the amphitheater is open, right? It was flooded. You you couldn't go anywhere. It was great. Um, so it turned into something way more than anybody expected and and anybody really anticipated. And it to me, it was the economic impact to me for from Art Price was folks, when I first went out on the street to do Art Price, because I was working downtown, so there's people are everywhere. And I said, Why are you down here? Well, I haven't been downtown Grand Rapids in years, right? It it meant to people who they came downtown from all over West Michigan who hadn't been in downtown GR in a long, long time and didn't really know what it was. Maybe it wasn't safe. But this brought them with their children, their grandmothers, you know, it was all generations, all kinds of people experiencing art because it wasn't intimidating. Yeah, it was accessible and it was free.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

And it was free.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

And it was free. You you could maybe you like art, maybe you don't, maybe you like something, maybe you didn't. But you could experience this at your own pace without being intimidated, without being judged, and just and vote. And you had to vote in it, and you had a voice in it, what you liked. I thought about it.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

That fact alone, the fact that the public could say what was important to them.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

To them. You know, and art can be intimidating. I mean, you know, not you know, the art museum, I love the art museum. I love art. We go to art museums all the time, but not everybody does this. This this made art accessible to everybody. And to me, that was the genius behind the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Aaron Powell And something else you said is that it made downtown accessible to everyone. Aaron Powell Correct. I don't know about the timing exactly, but there obviously has been an intentional push in the city of Grand Rapids and through Kent County to get more people downtown. With we go back to the uh opening of Van Andel Arena, right? 30 years in October. Thirty years in October. Uh so art prize comes along at a point where DeVos Place has been open for maybe what, four or five years?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

And the arena was open for about 10-ish, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Yep. So people are already starting to re-get this idea and this notion of coming downtown. Art Prize ends up playing a big role in that, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 5:14

It does. It did to me, because when you go to the arena, you you park and you go to the arena, you do your event, you go to dinner. But art price made you actually walk around, right? Because it the the installations were in the convention center, they were in banks, they were on the street, they were in a hotel, they were all over the streets. And so you walked downtown Grand Rapids. Over the bridge, over to the muse uh to the public museum, the Fort Museum. You walked the city and you started experiencing what we had done over these years to the city to make it walkable, accessible, safe. And so people experienced something that they hadn't done in a long time.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

For many, it was probably the first time.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

I talked to people from Cedar Springs. I remember this like yesterday that said, we haven't been down here ever. Because there was no reason. There's no reason. There's no reason. If you don't work down here and you're living in Cedar Springs or Lowell or Ada or Allendale, you do your shopping in your neighborhood, right? You get your entertainment, maybe at the movies. But unless you work down here and you go to the arena specifically, and there wasn't an arena for many years either, why are you coming downtown? Okay. And so this brought people back downtown, and it became the biggest two weeks, and I think this is the huge economic impact, the biggest two weeks in the restaurant scene in downtown Grand Rapids.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Yeah, I've heard restaurateurs call it their 13th month.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Correct. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

That it does that makes their whole rent, their whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

It's like Black Friday for retail. Yeah. It used to be, right? It is their 13th month.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

It's it's a thing that covers that.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Particularly at a time when um at the tail end, you know, at the at the end of the summer, when people are coming back from vacation, going back to work, um, you're starting to think about what am I gonna do in the fall. So yeah, I mean, the restaurants loved it.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Early on, it was like, what are we doing? But then once they be it became clear that, you know, these folks are coming downtown and they're gonna have a beer or a burger, or you know, it it really made sense.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

Beyond the it's I say it's fairly easy to track the economic impact, but I say that as a person who all I have to do is open up the reports from GVSU and see it's so it's fairly easy to see the economic impact and growth and the millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars of dollars that get left behind by an art prize crowd coming in. But from like the right places perspective, you're charged with bringing other businesses to this area. And I would imagine that a lot of businesses, if they're going to bring a large number of employees here, they have to be able to convince those employees that this is uh that this is a great place, yeah, that this is a great place to raise their families.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Well, you know, we we used to call it quality of life, and now we call it placemaking, right? And and it used to be that if you got a if a new company came in or or and you got you, Steve, got transferred from Oklahoma City to Grand Rapids, you say, Yes, sir, I'm going, right? Right. Um that's not the case anymore for the last 20 years or so. It's more of do you we have an opportunity for you in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and you're like, where is that and what is it, and how is it, and does my family like it? Are the schools good? What else is there to do for me? And what kind of a vibe does the city really have, right? And so to some, that placemaking, maybe playing golf or going to the opera, for others it's art. So when you look at the whole picture now of Grand Rapids, between the arena, the amphitheater, art prize, you know, we have Meyer Garden, I'm losing leaving some out, you know what I mean? But we have a really wonderful, wonderful um place making where if you can't find something to do here today, then you're not looking. Okay. And and I think Art Prize is a good uh opener for all of that. That you know, come and experience the city when it's really alive. And but I'll tell you a quick story because it's about 10, 11 years old. And so you remember Switch, and Switch came and bought the pyramid. Well, they came. I met the senior team, 567 folks, doing art prize 11 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

So that whole deal is how many employees came with that?

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Um I don't know how many they have now, but it was the fact was they were here doing art prize. It's late afternoon on a whatever day of the week it was. It was early October. Uh it was a beautiful day like today. It was a pristine Michigan Day, and the city was packed.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

And so they flew in on their private plane, they stayed at the Mway, and I got invited to meet them. They were having a beer at the at the um um Ruth Christ, right in the bar. And so we're one of my team members then uh today it's Megan Rydecki, then it was Megan Saul, said Burgett, I just met these people, but she please come and join me in it because she was part of my team. And I said, Sure, they want to meet the CEO of the right place. Great. So they were totally blown away that this mid-sized mid-American city had all these people walking around looking at art. Okay. Now that it wasn't the only thing that was interesting because they liked they obviously bought the building, and we needed to do a lot of work before they actually made that deal. But they were totally amazed by the vibrancy of Grand Rapids on that particular day. And art price was part of that, right?

unknown 11:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

You don't know what kind of goes through somebody's mind because you don't want to you don't want to be someplace where there isn't liveliness, where there isn't where there isn't something that you can embrace. And so it certainly impressed them. In fact, I ran into one of them at an event recently. He retired here.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Retired here.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

He retired here.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Relocated and retired here.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

Yeah. And he still remembers Art Price and what that said to him. He told me this at a big event over here at Devos.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

And he that's really not surprising because remember those first years, people were just in awe, walking around.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Well, but even I have friends over in the Detroit area, and we are we serve on a board together, they come every year.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

They they come every year. They they go to the board meeting here, and then they say, We're now going down to Grand Rapids and go to our price. They come every year.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

It's just become their thing.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

It's come become their thing. And then they tell other people about it, you know. It's become their thing. So and I think they're, like we said a little earlier, it's in a refresh stage, and I really hope that they make it, because I I do believe it's a really, really important part of the culture of the community.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Aaron Powell Yeah, I think there's some things that people don't understand about our prize. I think that a lot of people out there still believe that there's a lot of family money behind it, and that's not the case anymore. And honestly, we're almost at a point now where if we want this to continue, it's really kind of on us.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

We got to do crowdfunding.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

We got to do crowdfunding. Yeah. And it can be five or ten bucks from each of us.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Or yeah, I I mean no, the families have started it. Okay. They I looked at this like a venture, right? So they gave us venture capital to start a new venture that took off, right? And was very successful and continues to be, but now we need to re-up it, right? It was innovative, it grew immensely, it matured as an event. Now it needs to go to the next level. And and that requires uh financial resources for more than just one family, right? And the next level to you is to really bring it back um to uh in in my mind, it needs to go back to being accessible, having people be able to vote, to really in re-engage with the community and say this is open to all. Um and yeah, I I think they have what, a thousand artists signed up this year? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Yeah, for the first time in several years.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Yes, right. So it's obviously coming back, right? And I think that's really important because it is a it's a community event now that people expect to see.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

And and really when we talk about art prize outside of our community, uh, to friends, family members who may want to come visit, we talk about it as though it's ours.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

And so maybe, maybe it's time we take a stake in it somehow.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Well, I I mean it is it is ours now, right? I mean, we have to embrace it to m continue to make it successful. Um and that that means, you know, what does that mean to you? What does that mean to me? I know they're raising money uh from the in the community, and I really do believe it's a very important asset in our community. And and our, like I said, we said earlier, our downtown businesses, especially restaurants, you know, depend on it. They they really count on folks coming downtown, okay? And so from that aspect, it's it's an economic driver.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Yeah. Hotel nights are big.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Hotel nights, restaurants, you name it. The ancillaries that everybody Yeah, there's a lot of you know, the ice cream parlor, the, you know, the food trucks, yep, the gas station, everything. It's uh it drives a lot. And it's people have to also remember it's new money into town.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

It's new money into town. And it's my friends come from Detroit to spend two nights here to go to art price and have dinner. That is new money. That is, there is a leverage to that money. It's not just something that rotates around the community. Right. So it's very important. It's new. It's like when you sell a ticket at the amphitheater and it's somebody comes from Indianapolis. I sat behind somebody the other day who came from all the way down there for, you know, because it's not that hard. And then you spend the night, etc.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Right. And people will travel to see their band. Absolutely, they will.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

So absolutely. I sat in front of somebody from Brighton uh at a cut. Oh, I've never again never been here. Didn't know what this was. Heard of Crime. You know, that's the other thing I think. We we particularly in the southeast side of Michigan, sometimes people say, Oh, I haven't been in Crime Rappets in years. Or maybe never. And then they come to art prices like, oh wow, this is a cool town. So it has this uh uh effort, this um reaction that that changes the uh perception of crown apps. That's the other thing I think that's important.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Yeah, and outside of Grand Rapids, that perception changes.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Yeah, exactly. You're changing the perception that this is a really alive city with lots to do um that embraces the arts. And and I think that's a really good perception changer.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Favorite piece of art prize art you've ever you ever saw?

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Oh boy. Actually, the um the the beautiful piece that that's the um um fabric art that won the prize one year um from the woman up north.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Yeah, I can't remember her name, but uh Loveless, I believe was her last year.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

And she has uh had a whole series of them. I think it was at the at the uh Fort Museum. Yep, yeah. It was. Yeah, yeah. I did like Nessie, but that was fun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

That was fun. That was fun. And it should be fun. And I think I think sometimes that's when people get this attitude that it's not the same as it used to be because they don't see a giant steam pig or uh or a table and chair on the blue bridge. But I don't think art prize was ever meant to be what it was supposed to be, and that it was always supposed to be changing every year, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:26

I mean that that's that's art. If you go through any art museum, you have so many different rooms with different kinds of art. And so this is the same thing, except it's in the open, it's outside or it's in a it's in divorce place. But art changes. And it also is the artist, right? How does he or she look at the world, right?

unknown 17:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Um it you it can't stay the same.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Aaron Ross Powell You can't go to the museum and have an opportunity to chat with Rembrandt about what he was thinking.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Aaron Powell Right. No, but you have an opportunity, you can. What what made you do this? Uh you know, or um I think Eddie does a great job in curating at Divorce Place. I really do. Um there he always has very, very insightful art.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Yeah, he's a big art fan.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

He's a big art fan, and he does a really good job curating. Okay. So but it's uh it's exciting that there are ten that there are a thousand artists back again, you know.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

So I hope that people come back downtown and you know experience it.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Aaron Powell What are you most looking forward to this year?

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Well, unfortunately, I'm not going to be here. Uh no, I'm uh it's really a bummer the way we we we have a travel schedule that didn't comport, so unfortunately. The other thing that I loved um in the last few years is um the fashion show at the end. Um uh you know, R. C. Kalen is is an artist.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Uh I mean fashion is also art in my mind.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Aaron Ross Powell And fashion's a big part of this year. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Correct. And um and R. C.'s fashion is art. And we we always loved going to his uh fashion show because it's it's so artistic, right? Um it's colorful, it's creative, it's innovative. So yeah, I I think the fashion show is a huge part for me always.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Fantastic. Thanks for joining me today.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

It's my pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

It's been a great conversation. I've been looking forward to it for some time.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Thanks, Steve. I appreciate it. Thanks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Thanks for joining us for this episode of the official Art Prize podcast. Make sure to download the Art Prize app and cast your votes. Visit Artprize.org for more information.