2021 Newsmaker: Tim Schowalter

Tim Schowalter

President, CEO

Pioneer Construction

Pioneer Construction had many shovels in the ground in 2021.

Tim Schowalter, president and CEO for Pioneer Construction, saw the completion of the $70 million Daniel and Pamella DeVos Center for Interprofessional Health facility on Grand Valley State University’s (GVSU) Health Campus.

The new five-story, 166,000-square-foot health center is the home of GVSU’s Kirkhof College of Nursing, along with 17 classrooms, 12 interactive laboratories and technologies including electronic 3D modeling and imaging of the body and its organs, plastinated specimens, a virtual anatomy table and classrooms with interactive walls and floors.

Mission Design & Automation’s custom industrial automation and robotics integrator construction project in Holland also was completed. The 50,000-square-foot facility was a more than $5 million project that features office and manufacturing spaces for large-scale automation projects.

Pioneer is serving as the general contractor for a new $7.7 million operations center at Gerald R. Ford International Airport. The construction is expected to be completed by the end of June 2022.

The construction company is working with the Inner City Christian Federation, a nonprofit housing organization, to build a $19 million senior living residence in downtown Grand Rapids. The facility will be called Tapestry Square Senior Living. It is expected to be completed and ready for leasing by late 2022.

Construction also is underway for a mixed-use project in Ludington by Pioneer Construction. It is converting a historical building at 801 N. Rowe St. into 65 apartments that will sit above a 740-square-foot commercial space. The building will be called Lofts of Rowe.