Leadership
Jon Rooks
Jon Rooks is the Founder & President of Parkland Properties.
Rooks started Parkland in his early 20’s and over the last 30 years, grew Parkland into one of the largest real estate firms in West Michigan while developing some of the most well-known projects in the area.
At a young age and while flipping homes, Rooks acquired a passion for finding creative ways of taking something old and useless, and making it useful again. This mindsight would later spur him to transform the abandoned Union High School into Union Square Condominium, the old Berkely Gay Furniture Factory into Boardwalk Condominium, a Greek Revival office building into Cityview Condominium, and to perform many other iconic projects that define the West Michigan landscape.
Rooks is credited as being the pioneer that brought thousands of residents into downtown Grand Rapids in the early 2000’s to help support the transformation of downtown. Rooks is also responsible for bringing another 200 full time residents to downtown Muskegon and has been the largest private real estate developer in downtown Muskegon in the last 30 years.
Rooks attended Calvin College and the University of Michigan Business School.
Rory Charron
Rory Charron is Director of Operations & Real Estate for Parkland Properties.
Charron previously assisted attorneys on complex real estate and business transactions. Charron joined Parkland’s real estate development division in 2015 and in 2020, became Parkland’s Director of Operations & Real Estate.
Since 2015, Parkland has expanded the Wharf Marina, developed the 70-waterfront homesite community at Terrace Point Landing and the 9-story Highpoint Flats apartments, renovated the Holiday Inn Muskegon Harbor to the Delta Hotels by Marriott Muskegon Convention Center, and developed the Muskegon Convention Center in collaboration with the City and County of Muskegon.
More recently, Parkland has been working on redeveloping the abandoned, former Shaw Walker Furniture Company into over 600 residential units, with complimenting retail and office space; and redeveloping the 123-acre former Sappi Paper mill site (known as Windward Pointe) into over 2,000 residential units with supporting retail, a marina, and an in-and-out boat storage operation.
Charron attended Grand Valley State University where he received a bachelor’s degree in legal studies and business.