New space for growing business

MARQUETTE — The downtown Marquette area continues to develop and local businesses right along with it. ABC 10’s Sarah Mac has more about how local businesses are coming together.

If you take a drive down West Washington, you may notice some changes happening. Veridea Group has taken one unused space and dreamed of something more. Today Veridea Group and Upper Peninsula Health Plan – or UPHP – announced that they have entered a purchase agreement for the final space on the site.

Right now the construction is in it’s initial phase.

Veridea’s Director of Corporate Real Estate Michelle Thomas says, “We’ll be doing it in three parts, so we’ll be first contructing a two-level, underground parking structure, and then the building will go on top of that, and then the third part will be in the interior build out of the building, and hopefully a late August move-in date for UPHP.”

UPHP started with six employees in 1998 and has since grown into a company serving the entire UP with over 130 employees. UPHP President and CEO Dennis Smith said it was important to the company and it’s employees to remain in Marquette where they first started out.

“Well it means a lot I think for number one, because I think a lot of our providers are here,” Smith added, “the hospitals are here, but for the workforce, we’re able to support the community and a lot of the groups that we work with. So it was very helpful as opposed to relocate out to the townships or somewhere else. No offense to the townships, but the hospital’s here, the city’s here, a lot of our services are here, a lot of our physicians are in this general area, so it was very helpful I think for us.”