Belmont Square Homeowners Association, 2021, All Rights Reserved.
Belmont Square History
by Sara Leeland
Belmont Square was built by Macatawa summer resident Eb Fritz as a set of upscale apartments, beginning with the 1966 building address in 1973 and ending with the 1992 address four years later. He must have loved trees, since many of the great pines and maples here predate the apartments. He also believed in building well, as the double walls between condo units show. Fritz's main home was in St. Louis and he was an heir of the Anheuser Busch fortune ('Eb" stands for "Eberhard" and his middle name was 'Anheuser,' echoing the name of Eberhard Anheuser who co-founded the brewery with Adolphus Busch in the mid-19th century). No one knows the origin of our name, Belmont Square. It's true that the Anheuser Busch brewery had strong connections with the Belmont races in New York. And it's true that the name, also used for several notable mansions in the United States, seems to carry a sense of the quality inherent in this development.
In 1982, when the idea of 'condos' was still new to Holland, Charles Sligh IV saw the possibility of a conversion. He bought the property and added touches like the seating and grill areas on the road side of the units and the skylights and electrified doors in the garage units. His father, Charles Sligh III, was a major investor in the conversion. In its early days Belmont Square had an exit on its First Street side, but late-night drivers headed east on South Shore sometimes missed the X curve since our First Street engrance looked too much like a continuation of the road. So that entrance was fenced off and landscaped with an earthen berm, trees and shrubs as a successful visual block.
Belmont Square stands in an historic spot of Holland. Immediately back of its fence ran the tracks of the Holland to Macatawa Interurban train line. Across the road and a little west, Jenison St. is named for Jenison Electric Park whose roller-coaster and other rides attracted tens of thousands of visitors each summer in the early 20th century. The Kuipers family, grandparents of current residents the Brondykes, operated several restaurants in this area. First was "The Hot Shop" on the corner of First and South Shore, which was later enlarged and renamed "The Jenison House." Fresh lettuce and tomatoes for the restaurant were grown in a garden near First Street. Another Kuipers family restaurand, "The Marquee" was located where condo building one now stands. For many years two interurban train cars were left standing on the abandoned train tracks behind what is now Belmont Square.
Before Dutch settlement, this area was home to the Ottawa (Odawa) people who hunted, fished and made maple sugar here.