By James Windell
The building that was once a Dairy Queen and more recently Kitchen Tribes restaurant is no more.
A demotion team with two large excavators made short work of reducing the buildings at 555 and 559 Phoenix to a pile of rubble.
But what will become of the property next door to the South Haven City Hall?
Irene Wood, who bought the property at the end of 2025, said that there is no definitive answer to that question at this time.
“We made a quick decision to acquire the property and we’re still looking at some options,” Wood said on April 7, 2026, just after the excavators did their job.
Wood went on to explain she viewed the property when she found it was for sale in December, 2025. “The bank said if we bought it by the end of the year they would give us a deal,” she said. “So we bought it quickly with the thought that we would have some time to think about what we wanted to do there.”
Wood said once they took possession of the property in January, 2026, the state of the building left her with no choice but to have the building condemned. “The decision to demo the building was the safest option when we thought about the safety of others and the town,” she said.
With the building now razed, she said that they want the property to have a tidy look to it for this tourist season, and she wanted to get the demolition work out of the way so they would not be shutting Phoenix Street down due to heavy equipment working on the building.
“The next phase is deciding what we can afford to put there and what makes the most sense,” she said.
Wood, who is a South Haven, Michigan–born entrepreneur best known as the founder and owner of The Fields of Michigan, a luxury glamping resort built on a working blueberry farm just outside South Haven, said she has a goal.
“Our goal is to present some plan sometime this summer so our project, whatever it will be, can start this fall,” she said. “In the coming months we will appear before the Planning Commission to present some project ideas.”
