News Photo by Darby Hinkley Alpena businessman and property owner Jeff Konczak talks recently about why he has invested in Alpena, and what he sees for the future of the city.

ALPENA — Jeff Konczak owns a lot of this city, because he believes Alpena is worth the investment.

“We’ve been investing in Alpena since 2002,” Konczak said in December. “Our investments are based on moving Alpena forward, for sure.”

Konczak owns BCubed Manufacturing, an Alpena company that makes standalone drive-through buildings, like the Biggby Coffee location in the Meijer parking lot, which was his pilot cube. He sketched that idea on a napkin one day before pitching it to Biggby Coffee founders Bob Fish and Mike McFall, who ran with the cubes for a host of locations of their Michigan-based company.

Other Alpena properties he owns include Harborside Center, on the corner of State Avenue and Chisholm Street, which now houses several businesses that used to be in the Alpena Mall, including Glik’s and Prattscapes.

He owns the old Fletcher Paper Mill property, as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration buildings along the Thunder Bay River. He owns the Coast Guard station downtown. He also owns the building that used to be known as Summit Sports, the Biggby Coffee indoor location at the corner of State Avenue and Chisholm Street, or U.S.-23 and U.S.-23.

“I ended up buying the building and wanted something that was different, and cool, and sustainable, and a little hip,” he said of that Biggby franchise location. “I couldn’t get a drive-through because of where it’s located, on the corner of 23 and 23 … right down city center … I couldn’t have a drive-through, and I knew we needed a drive-through.”

Konczak also purchased and is renovating the former Royal Knight Cinema building on the corner of Chisholm and 2nd Avenue, the former State Theater on North 2nd Avenue — which will return to its historic name, the Maltz Opera House — and the former antique store across the street from the theater, which is being restored and will be called the Vaughn, after the department store that once operated out of that building.

“The main reason (I invest) is that there’s a huge opportunity for Alpena, when you look at where we are, where we’ve been, and where the rest of the state is going,” Konczak said. “We have a pretty unique community.”

Konczak was born and raised in Alpena, as were his parents.

“So, it’s pretty important for me to base here,” he noted. “I always say I couldn’t wait to get out of here when I got out of college, but then I couldn’t wait to get back.”

Konczak lived in Boston and Chicago before returning to his hometown.

“Initially, we wanted to raise our kids here,” Konczak said. “Then it transitions into, you want to be close to your parents and make sure they’re good as they age.”

He owns many properties across the state and country.

“This little project, not such a little project any longer, our BCubed project, it’s pretty inspiring to me, personally, when you go from a sketch to now putting these things all over the country,” Konczak said. “We have one leaving, they’re loading it now, and it says, ‘Alpena, Michigan’ on the side.”

He had just returned from Kentucky before sitting down for an interview with The News after taking a second cube down there to be installed.

“We’re now lining up to send some to North Carolina and South Carolina and Florida,” he added. “We have patents on the building. So, now, any drive-through modular building that Biggby does anywhere in the country, or world, will come out of Alpena, Michigan, which is pretty cool.”

Since the first cube in 2018, his company has put out 24 buildings so far, as of early December 2021. He planned to have at least three more installed by the end of 2021.

“So we’ll have 27 buildings out – and a COVID year, right? – so I think it’s pretty great,” he said, adding that, “Next year, I think we’ll do 50 or more buildings.”

“It’s growing Biggby Coffee at a significant rate,” he added. “And all the BCubes that are running are doing far more volume than a brick-and-mortar store.”

His company produces the cubes at the old foundry location, at 666 McKinley Ave.

“It’s pretty exciting for us,” Konczak said. “Because Biggby Coffee and ourselves, we see thousands and thousands of these BCubed cubes going around the country. So, it’s pretty important for Alpena. You know, we are high-paying jobs and skilled guys and gals, and we’ve got a good team.”

He employs about 30 people across all his companies.

Konczak talked about the employment situation in Alpena, which has traditionally been known as a somewhat rural and industrial Northeast Michigan town.

“Finding gainful employment has always been a challenge, unless you were in one of the large factories,” such as Alpena’s largest factories, LaFarge Alpena and Decorative Panels International, he said. “Our pay scales were lower and, unless you were in union workforces, just, it’s a different life here, and slow is sometimes OK.”

He said that, at the same time, more people in Alpena are stepping up to move projects forward, which is what the city needs.

“You can see it now, all over Alpena,” Konczak said. “There are some really fantastic, young entrepreneurs.

“I used to feel like I was the young entrepreneur, but, clearly, that’s not the case any longer,” he added with a smile.

“I’m one of the larger (Veterans Affairs) clinic owners in the country,” he said. “The Lansing VA clinic, we built (in 2020), Traverse City… I have nine.”

He’s building a new one in Indian River and owns ones in Clare, Cadillac, Cheboygan, Gaylord and Alpena.

“I’m a real estate guy,” he said. “And we own them and lease them to the federal government.”

As for his properties in downtown Alpena, he said a new movie theater at the old Royal Knight location will hopefully open in 2022 under a new name, possibly Fremont Theater.

“We have exterior masonry going to be restored in the spring,” he explained. “We wanted to get it done (in 2021), but we couldn’t get the right contractors together in such short notice to do what we needed to do. So they’ll start when the weather equalizes, in May, on the outside.”

Then the exterior storefront windows will go in after the masonry work is done, but they will be false windows because it is a theater.

“So, it’ll look like the old JC Penney’s,” Konczak said. “All the asbestos abatement on all the buildings is done.”

He noted that the theater will feature three screens and a bit less seating, but much better seating, with “comfortable leather loungers.”

The original Royal Knight had 441 seats, but he said they will drop it down to 300 to 325 seats.

“We’ve requested a liquor license,” he added. “We’ll see how that goes, but I’m sure the (Alpena Downtown Development Authority) will be interested in helping us with that.”

With the closure of the State Theater because of COVID-19, Alpena has not had a movie theater since early 2020.

The new movie theater at the Royal Knight location will feature new bathrooms and a new concessions area.

“We’ve turned into a drive-through society,” Konczak said. “I don’t think a lot of people understand the redevelopment of old buildings.”

He said he does not feel rushed to complete any of the projects because he wants to make sure they are done right, maintaining the historical integrity of the buildings.

“There are only a few people in Northeast Michigan that can do the work that we’re planning to do,” he noted.

The Maltz Opera House, formerly known as State Theater, will be a live performance venue.

“We have a historic consultant, Jessica Flores, from Preservation Forward (Lansing), and a historic architect, Dan Snyder, from Noir (Detroit),” he said. “The building’s been scanned, we have 3D cuts, 3D models of the entire building, which is good, because it’s never been done before, all different elevations. So, we’re working through the process of getting that building on the National Register of Historic Places, which is a big deal, and that, too, takes time.”

He envisions “less of a business and more of a community project.”

Across the street, the Vaughn will become a hub of activity full of “exciting” businesses, but Konczak was not ready to reveal those details, yet.

“We’ve done a lot down there,” he said. “It doesn’t look like much, but we’ve done a lot … It’s just a gorgeous building. I love that building.”

Renovations are underway for the 25,000-square-foot space.

He said some people have approached him about turning it into housing, but his response is, “I’m not interested. It’s too nice a space to chop it up.”

He’s happy to be a part of the city’s progress.

“These are really quite spectacular steps forward for Alpena,” Konczak said.

Darby Hinkley is Lifestyles editor. She can be reached at 989-358-5691 or dhinkley@thealpenanews.com.