Situated midway between Chicago and Detroit on Interstate 94, Kalamazoo, Mich., is a little town with a lot going for it, and at a price point that stretches meetings budgets further.
"The most notable thing about us is that we’re easily accessible, we have a wide variety of entertainment and we’re an affordable destination," says Renee Newman, marketing & communication manager for the Kalamazoo County CVB. "We have everything from world-class museums to seven live theaters, featuring everything from Broadway-style theaters to All Ears Theatre, which is a theater of the mind that goes back to the days of radio programs such as Little Orphan Annie and Orson Welles."
According to Newman, All Ears is a particularly unique live theater offering, one that sparks the mind to create visuals that accompany the stories.
"It’s unlike anything you’d see with theater," she says. "You literally go and watch the actors perform like it’s a radio broadcast, so you don’t have the props. It’s all mind visuals—you just have the actors telling the story."
Newman also mentions that the city’s Art Hop, which happens on the first Friday of every month, and the Gilmore Keyboard International Festival, a two-week affair featuring some of the top keyboard players in the world held every other spring in late April and early May, are two other top art-scene attributes.
Adding to the culture—and meeting space options—in Kalamazoo County is Western Michigan University (WMU), with two major meeting venues, and four other colleges. According to Newman, WMU recently handled a group of more than 3,000 scholars that met for the 45th annual International Congress on Medieval Studies.
Additional Kalamazoo attributes include its location at the terminus of The Lake Michigan Shore Wine Trail (www.miwine
trail.com), an Art Deco downtown and historical neighborhoods, 20 area golf courses, and scores of lakes and other natural areas.
And if all of this doesn’t pique your interest, consider that Kalamazoo County is the leading producer of bedding plants in the U.S.—they call themselves the Bedding Plant Capital of the World, in fact—with massive greenhouses that can’t help but inspire attendees, if only to get their own gardens in shape when they get home!
For More Info
Kalamazoo Nature CenterKalamazoo Valley Museum’s Challenger Learning Center
Underground Railroad House
269.679.4129
