A longtime Grand Rapids staple has a new home. 

The University Club of Grand Rapids plans to move in October to the Pen Building, 116 and 120 Ottawa Ave. NW in downtown Grand Rapids, in conjunction with the club’s 100-year anniversary. 

The University Club has called 111 Lyon St. NW home for years. 

The organization will use the second and third floors, as well as the basement. The first floor has a Macatawa Bank branch, while the fourth and fifth floors will be private offices. 

The new space, formerly owned by RDV Corp., will allow The University Club to expand with new spaces, including a cigar bar, whiskey bar, tea room, games and board room. 

“We are excited to elevate our club by leveraging all of the improvements that were made while RDV owned the building and add to it with unique spaces,” said University Club President Tom Pantlind. “These new amenities will foster an environment that increases meaningful dialogue, builds strong relationships and inspires leaders that will benefit our diverse community for generations to come.” 

The club has nearly 350 members, but there are hopes to grow membership to 600 in the new building. 

“We are excited about the new possibilities our move to this historic building will bring,” said University Club General Manager Mark Canak. “We look forward to welcoming new members and offering community members a place to call home in our growing city.” 

Founded in 1923, The University Club of Grand Rapids serves as a hub for business leaders and local community members who come together to build business connections, entertain guests and enjoy social camaraderie. 

Moon beams 

A poem by Patricia Clark, professor emerita of writing at Grand Valley State University and former poet laureate of Grand Rapids, is slated to be launched to the moon as part of the “Lunar Codex” project. 

The poem, “Astronomy ‘In Perfect Silence,’” will be part of a time capsule headed to the moon in 2024. Lunar Codex project leaders say they are using surplus payload space for multiple moon missions to archive the works of more than 30,000 artists from around the world on the moon. 

Clark’s piece, which will be stored on archival technology, is part of the “Polaris” collection, which is scheduled to launch in November 2024. The poem is also in an anthology named “The Polaris Trilogy: Poems for the Moon.” 

She was invited by an editor soliciting poems for the project to contribute a piece, an invitation that Clark eagerly accepted. She learned that her poem was chosen with an email that opened with, “You’re going to the Moon! Well, to be more precise, your poem is.” 

For Clark, who was poet laureate for Grand Rapids from 2005-2007 and also served as Grand Valley’s poet-in-residence, it is a thrill for her poem to be included in the payload carrying artistic material that is set to stay at the moon in perpetuity. 

“My husband says he’s going to look up there and think about my poem,” Clark said. 

Poets were asked to tell the judges if they were writing about the moon, stars or sun. Clark said she chose a form called abecedarian, which is a 26-line poem where each line starts with a letter, A-Z, in order of the alphabet (and with a little poetic license where necessary, as Clark did with the line starting with “X.”). 

The poem is a celebration of astronomy and the wonder of space, she said. 

Her inspiration was an astronomy professor from her undergraduate time at the University of Washington whose enthusiasm for the subject stayed with her even though she never pursued the discipline professionally. 

“When I saw the call for work, I was immediately excited because I thought, ‘This will give me a chance to write about this experience I had.’ I thought I’d start writing about the experience of the class and see what I get to,” Clark said. 

A key reason she knows that class stuck with her is because she still has the book, one of the few from college that she saved after multiple decades and many moves. She valued the star charts, too. 

Though the poem notes that Clark had forgotten the professor’s name, she contacted her alma mater to see if they could figure out who the professor was. She soon learned that the professor was George Wallerstein, who had died in recent years. 

But the poem is a testament to his inspiration as a teacher and the importance of a well-rounded education, Clark said. While she didn’t dig deeply into the field, she has a deep appreciation of it because of this teacher. 

“It might not be something you spent your life on, but it mattered to you. That’s what liberal education is all about,” Clark said. “The magic of space and the wonder of it all is still there because of this class and this professor who was so jazzed about it all.”