Dilapidated, 1860s building to become apartments, retail in Brooklyn

BROOKLYN, MI — When Beatrice Nestor moved to Brooklyn after living away from Jackson area for several years, she noticed a beautiful, dilapidated 1860s building.

She saw its potential and thought of how wonderful it would be if someone did something about it.

“Why couldn’t that be us?” Nestor said. “There’s something special about the building that connected with me, and I just really felt that this was kind of a small way we could help it.”

Nestor grew up in Addison, and her family owns Maple Drive Farms north of Addison. She and her husband moved all over the world, before buying a house in Brooklyn when her husband’s job with Kraft Heinz brought him back to the Midwest, she said.

She bought the property at 101 Monroe St. in September 2024, after visiting the area to see their new home. Construction started on the three-story building in October, she said.

Plans call for renovating the downstairs into two retail spaces, while the second and third floor will be turned into six apartments, including one- and two-bedroom units.

She envisions the apartments will marry modern and historic styles, with arched windows, quartz countertops and sleek appliances, and hopes to begin pre-leasing them in the spring and complete work at the end of summer 2026.

“My big goal is to reintegrate it into the fabric of the town,” Nestor said. “Both economically and just having people live there.”

According to Nestor, the building began as the Beehive Hotel before a fire destroyed it. It was rebuilt in 1868 and was known as the Ennis Block.

Over the years, it housed many businesses, including a bakery, barbershop and dentist. Eventually it had an ice cream shop on the first floor, where a large window that used to serve as the ice cream walk-up counter still exists.

After the ice cream shop’s owner died, his brother expanded it into a diner called “The Spot” in the 1950s.

While the upstairs is largely a mystery, Nestor believes the top floor was once a ballroom that served as a meeting place for local clubs before it was divided into apartments.

The top two floors have been vacant since the early 1930s while the first floor has been empty for a few years, she said.

There have been partial fixes over the years, but it’s in rough shape, she said. She plans to maintain all of the brickwork on the outside, restore the Victorian facade and match the windows with new ones, while modernizing the mechanical and electrical portions of the building.

One of the retail suites has been leased to Gretchen Speidel, who plans to open Fetch Market & Deli. The name plays on Speidel’s first name and the “Mean Girls” quote from Lacey Chabert’s character, Gretchen Wieners: “That’s so fetch.”

Speidel previously created the menu for Atlas, which opened in November 2024 in Brooklyn.

She saw a positive reaction to high-end eats and said with the market and deli, she’s bringing a big-city concept to Brooklyn. Referring to the business as her “bougie bodega,” she envisions serving sandwiches with sauces, salads, gourmet glizzies, or hotdogs, and other grab-and-go items.

She will work with Bliss Bakeshop in Brooklyn for items guests can quickly grab for dinner parties, she said. She’s also in talks with Grazing Thyme, also in Brooklyn, for charcuterie boards.

On the market side, she hopes to become a one-stop-shop, where people can grab flowers, wine, a charcuterie board and a treat for date night, as an example, she said.

She said the market and deli will be zero waste, so anything that isn’t purchased by customers will be used in a salad dressing, sandwich or spread, she said.

Speidel has been posting updates on Facebook.

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