Edison Community Partners Recognized as 2025 Michigan Sustainable Business of the Year

Michigan Sustainable Business Forum recognized the Kalamazoo developer for its green building leadership

Michigan Sustainable Business Forum named Edison Community Partners one of its inaugural Michigan Sustainable Business of the Year winners at the 12th Annual Triple Bottom Line Bash last month at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids. The company won the Services and Consulting category, which recognizes providers of sustainability solutions and companies in the services industry.  

Edison Community Partners is a minority-owned development platform whose work centers on high-performance, community-focused affordable housing, including The Creamery, a LEED Platinum project, and The Legacy Senior Living, an all-electric project, both in Kalamazoo.

“Those of us with the least are often forced to live with the most pollution, highest utility bills, and greatest impacts from our changing climate. Our work focuses on the intersection of affordability and sustainability, and we believe that everyone, no matter their income, deserves a safe, decent, resilient place to live,” says Matt Hollander, Partner and Senior Developer at Edison Community Partners.

The signature event of the state’s sustainability community, this year’s Triple Bottom Line Bash hosted more than 350 professionals, supporters and their families to recognize businesses, institutions and professionals from around the state.  This was the first year for the Michigan Sustainable Business of the Year Awards program, which had previously been organized as a regional event focused on western Michigan. Award winners and finalists were nominated by Forum members and selected by a committee of their peers.  

Finalists in the category included Aztech, EcoSphere Organics, Edison Community Partners, and Progressive Companies.

“This year’s nominees include a technology firm, architecture and engineering, a developer, and an innovative food loss and waste start-up,” said Daniel Schoonmaker, Executive Director of Michigan Sustainable Business Forum.  “These companies are finding solutions and demonstrating a better way of doing business. Edison Community Partners is making a difference in people’s lives through innovative projects that demonstrate the best of what we can build in Michigan”

ECP (through its current work as well as its predecessor organization Hollander Development Corporation) has a history of success in creating more sustainable and energy efficient affordable housing. Projects have ranged from rehabilitations of existing multifamily apartment buildings to achieve significant energy efficiency improvements, to building the second commercial LEED Platinum-certified building in Kalamazoo County, to designing a new building for senior apartments to be built to passive house standards.

Recent Accomplishments

The Creamery was the original workforce housing pilot project for the State of Michigan, funded by the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) and Michigan Economic Development Corporation.  It was also the first project for which MSHDA issued dedicated, below-market rate bonds to support financing, a mechanism that allows social impact investors to financially support specific projects via a MSHDA-guaranteed bond.  It houses Michigan’s first comprehensive early childhood learning center with first, second and third-shift drop-off daycare.  It also includes the country’s first affordable electric vehicle car share hosted at an affordable housing development, available for anyone in the community to register to use at only $5 per hour.

More recently, ECP has partnered with Mt. Zion Baptist Church and its 1,700 congregants to create sustainable affordable senior housing in the historic Northside Neighborhood in Kalamazoo, a project that is expected to have a major impact on the revitalization of the neighborhood. ECP has also taken on a project to build permanent supportive housing to support individuals enrolled in the Problem-Solving Courts. This project, the second of its type in Michigan, aims to provide stable, affordable housing combined with wrap-around recovery services to help individuals sustain their sobriety and rebuild their lives. Both projects are expected to achieve close to net-zero energy operations, including all residential units, through a combination of Passive House design and large-scale on-site solar arrays.