Riverbank Farm in Davison area flipped into arts and crafts spot for women

RICHFIELD TWP, MI - When Colleen Pace set out to renovate her Riverbank Farm built in 1987, the 70-year-old two-time breast cancer survivor had no previous building experience for what she envisioned.

"When my husband would ask, ‘What are you going to build in here?’ I would reply, ‘I’m not sure. I haven't thought about that yet.’"

Pace said she just knew she wanted to incorporate the 40-year-old oak tongue-and-groove boards that comprised her old horse stalls, and the heavy stall doors that thousands of people repeatedly rolled open in order to share time with her horses over the decades.

The riding arena she renovated at the farm, 8375 East Coldwater Road in Richfield Township, starting in September 2021 is 1,200 square feet large.

Pace used be the owner of a horse-riding stable where inner-city kids and others learned about horses and pet them.

Over 5,000 local Girl Scouts earned their Horse Lovers Badge here and over 1,000 people took their first horse ride at Riverbank.

She primarily trained non-horse owning beginners.

"In the horse industry, they expect everyone wants to do competition which is not true," Pace said. "Eighty percent of the people are not interested in competition, but you don't see them. The industry only sees the competitive people."

She stopped giving lessons around 2010 when her husband, Gary, retired as an associate biology professor from the University of Michigan-Flint.

Pace flipped the arena into a she-shed, the female equivalent of a man cave -- where women can go and "not listen to their husbands’ favorite sports on TV," she quipped.

It will be used for gardening, sewing, painting, tea rooms with friends and toys for kids.

If Pace had known how difficult the renovation would be, she would never have started it.

"I permanently damaged my left elbow struggling to crowbar the old stalls apart, so much so that the swelling in my arm caused my doctor to test for recurring cancer in my lymph nodes," Pace said.

Last summer, she attempted to stack one incredibly heavy stall door sideways on top of another to form a wall, but the top door fell on her head and hand, putting her out of work for three days.

Pace also mistakenly applied polyurethane to the kitchenette floor wearing only one of the thin blue surgical masks for COVID-19.

It landed her in an urgent care and on Prednisone for a week. Even though she purchased an appropriate mask before finishing the gathering room, she is still working with a pulmonary specialist now.

"Even with all of that, now that it's done, I am so incredibly happy with it," Pace said. "As Disney Princess Cinderella sang, "I’m in my own little corner in my own little room."

The gathering room and kitchenette floors are made from the backside of the old tongue-and-groove stall boards.

Pace spent all winter hand-sanding each one for a consistent deep brown finish.

The hall and bathroom floors are made from the front side of the boards, partly sanded in order to leave much of the original paint – green, white, pink, or yellow, depending on how that stall was used over the decades.

Pace has four horses: Sara, Sparky, Zena, and Ruby.

Growing up in Winchester Village in Swartz Creek, she had five siblings and no access to horses. In the early 1960s, when she was a pre-teen, Pace was introduced to riding stables around Genesee County and bought her first horse when she was 16 years old.

"I was just one of those kids in a subdivision family that loved horses and I was born with it," she said.

Pace earned a business degree from the University of Michigan-Flint and worked 20 years as departmental secretary and eventually became a dean secretary in the School of Management.

She has done so much community service, including writing a introductory program for people who most likely never own horses and reading programs for kids and has won a national award from Pfizer Animal Health and Stable Management Magazine, a go-to place for horse farm and stable owners managers to get practical information.

Pace is hoping lots of women swing through for the she-shed activities and is looking for a number of instructors.

Inside the barn is a cricut machine, hot press, rock tumbler, and an embroidery machine.

One woman reached out to her interested in hosting a yoga class.

Pace's former daughter-in-law will host a three-dimensional greeting card class at the end of January.

"There are a lot of artists in Flint who are capable of teaching but have no place to do it," she said. "Nobody gets rich doing this."

Pace might not have had a clear vision to renovating her decades-old barn, but at least her husband now has the answer.

Blog

Riverbank Farm in Davison area flipped into arts and crafts spot for women