GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Robert Daverman came downtown for ArtPrize this year and, as one might expect from an architect whose father helped design several buildings around Calder Plaza, he walked over to eyeball the big concrete square that downtown planners want to green-up and reimagine.

His impression: "Gosh, I can't believe how bad this is looking."

But Daverman is nonetheless excited about the Calder's home and the buildings that surround it now that CWD Real Estate owns the Fifth Third Center buildings at 111 Lyon and 200 Monroe Ave. NW, giving the local firm control over all non-governmental structures built on Vandenberg Center.

In early October, CWD announced its purchase of the five-story and 11-story Fifth Third bank buildings along the southern edge of the city's 1960s urban renewal project, an historic undertaking that replaced more than 120 buildings with a modern business and government district awash in concrete.

Sam Cummings, managing partner at CWD, wants to break up the "super block" between Lyon, Ottawa, Michigan and Monroe and inject the business hours-only area with restaurants, retail space and new access points to draw convention and pedestrian traffic from central downtown, the Medical Mile, residential buildings to the north of I-196 and CWD's nearby remodel of the historic Rowe Hotel.

A conceptual rendering showing what kind of pedestrian access and retail space improvements CWD Real Estate wants to make to its new Fifth Third Bank properties at 111 Lyon and 200 Monroe. The designs by the Hamilton Anderson firm of Detroit are "nothing more than conceptual and only indicative of one of the potential scenarios to activate that corner and Lyon Street," according to CWD managing partner Sam Cummings.

"We want to change the trajectory of the northern business district," he said.

The fundamental elements of the area as a consolidated civic center for government and commercial institutions are "still strong, if not stronger, than they were when Vandenberg Center was originally imagined," Cummings said.

"It's the design that hasn't stood the test of time."

The plan is, in effect, a reversal of mid-century thinking that birthed Vandenberg Center on the back of a once-diverse part of downtown. It dovetails almost perfectly with the first real attempt to update Calder Plaza since it was created in 1969; a process Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. (DGRI) launched this spring.

"Consolidated property ownership really simplifies the opportunity for a collaborative approach to improving these urban spaces," said DGRI director Kristopher Larson.

There's been gathering momentum around a Calder Plaza redesign over the last few years and CWD, through its existing holdings and a strategic acquisition along the district edge in 2014, is in a unique position to help drive the bus.

In 2014, the company bought the 10-story Calder Plaza Building at 250 Monroe Ave. NW after anchor tenant Miller Johnson law firm revealed plans to move into the Arena Place project at 55 Ottawa Ave. SW. A year later, CWD began to update the bland structure with a new atrium and new streetscape retail spaces.

On the eastern edge of Calder Plaza, CWD already controls the 200 Ottawa Ave. SW building built for Union Bank during urban renewal and the next-door Frey Building at 300 Ottawa Ave. SW, both of which Cummings' other partner Dan DeVos already owned when CWD formed in 2008.

Cummings and CWD partner Scott Wierda also sit on the 21-member citizen steering committee guiding DGRI's adjacent Calder Plaza redesign.

Cummings approached Fifth Third not long after CWD bought 250 Monroe, which, together with the adjacent bank buildings and surface parking lot south of the plaza, function together like a condominium association, he said.

Fifth Third owned 111 Lyon since acquiring predecessor Old Kent Bank, which built the imposing structure in 1966. Old Kent was a major urban renewal player which propelled the effort forward at an early, critical juncture by announcing plans to build in Vandenberg Center in 1963; a move that helped convince non-government developers the huge redevelopment was a safe investment.

Cummings pitched the bank on a move similar to what Fifth Third did in Cincinnati, when it relocated a flagship branch at the bank's headquarters in 2005 to aid the city's redesign of Fountain Square.

"We think something similar can happen here," he told Fifth Third.

At the time, the Warner Norcross & Judd law firm was contemplating but hadn't yet announced plans to move out of 111 Lyon for a proposed dual-tower project Orion Construction plans to build on the kitty-corner Ellis Parking lot.

With the bank on board, CWD put the Hamilton Anderson firm of Detroit, which was already redesigning 250 Monroe, to work drafting concepts.

"Everything is on the table," said Cummings, although "probably not" new construction on the bank parking lot or knocking down either building.

Hamilton came back with phase one designs that replace the rock wall along Lyon Street with windows, reconfigure the stairs to the upper plaza from the corner of Lyon and Monroe, and remove the row of landscaping along Monroe Avenue where the Vandenberg Center historical marker stands.

Subsequent phases would create new terraced access between the upper plaza level and Lyon Street, where a hotel recently opened across the street in the historic Waters Building, which is also marked for new apartments and offices.

Later phase conceptual plans include some kind of "iconic" anchor space above the corner plaza and street level restaurants, bars and retail spaces.

The property complex would be intercut with new pedestrian access points, notably a promenade staircase immediately north of 250 Monroe that would connect the plaza level with Monroe Avenue and give walkers a pathway leading to DeVos Place Convention Center and DeVos Performance Hall.

Numerous architects have suggested cutting an open-air staircase into the stone plinth along Monroe over the years. Daverman, who designed the convention center, added drawings for alluvial "Spanish steps" leading from Calder Plaza to the lower street level as a tangential idea during DeVos Place design.

"It would be a logical architectural device," he said.

Early DGRI-led designs for updating Calder Plaza include elevators, steps and/or a pedestrian bridge over Monroe into the convention center.

The conceptual designs, which are undergoing community feedback-based revision, feature retail and restaurant spaces, a food truck court and water features. Between 25,000 and 40,000 square-feet of tree canopy and up to 8,000 square-feet of structure shade would make the plaza less barren, but won't, Larson stressed, impede the sight-lines around the Calder stabile.

Both CWD and DGRI plans replace street level rock walls with windows and improved east and west access points to the plaza.

At 250 Monroe, CWD is reversing what had been the "back door" -- the Monroe Avenue side -- by constructing street level space to bring-in people.

"One of the real basics in civic space design is activating the edges," said Larson.

Larson said that 300 days a year, Calder Plaza is just a vacant open space. It's big enough for large events, but nobody really wants to hang out there -- especially on a hot, sunny day. It's surrounded by office buildings empty after 5 p.m. and ringed on three sides by rock walls that impede upper level access.

The walls are a classic example of 1960s design, which favored rigid land use separation that brushed back the public during a decade of societal upheaval. Calder Plaza and buildings around it reflect 'Atomic Age' modernism that favored airy plazas and fortress-like glass and concrete edifices over the ornate Victorian styling and density that urban renewal replaced.

Times have changed, though. Mixing together live, work and play in the built environment is the favored approach among Grand Rapids boosters who still watch downtown empty out at 5 p.m. for an exodus to the suburbs on the highways originally built to make it easier to bring people into downtown.

Getting more people to live downtown is key to attracting retailers, which Grand Rapids has struggled with for decades.

Right now, a downtown like Grand Rapids is seen as a "trade area," which big retailers -- notably absent downtown -- consider a sub-market, said Cummings. Developers are addressing that with new residential projects on Fulton and Bridge streets on the West Side, along Michigan Street east of the hospitals, and downtown with residential towers at The B.O.B. and Fulton and Sheldon.

It's no surprise, really, that CWD and DGRI conceptual designs feature common elements geared toward making the area more people-friendly. There are an ever-growing number of people nearby who simply go elsewhere right now.

Calder Plaza is, in some ways, a donut hole in the middle of downtown.

"As more people live around this area and other types of employment situations and opportunities come to be we haven't seen yet, more people will want to be living and working there," Daverman said. "The retail and restaurants to support that population will want to find spaces close to where the people are."

City builders have learned a lot since the days when urban architects like Skidmore Owings & Merrill designed Calder Plaza, said Cummings.

It's time to make the whole Vandenberg Center "work for today's world."

"We'll make it market-correct," he said. "We'll make it contribute again."