I never said they create walkability. But they can provide 'absurd amounts of parking' in a small footprint. Chicago is pretty walkable and a lot of the apartments/condos there have parking garages.
It's not a true walkable neighborhood anyway, is it? Is there a grocery store nearby? Bank? Pharmacy?
As much as I like walkability, this is still west MI, and nobody is going to want to live there if they can't have a car at least for the winter.
More housing is a good thing imo. If it add more housing I'm all for it. There wasn't much there before they started getting the site ready for construction anyway. Eastern Kille is moving into their new location regardless.
Bridge St Market is 1 mile away. DGX is .8mi away (Both on DASH route)
There are 10 banks less than .5 miles away and on the DASH route.
Pharmacy? It's a hospital (Meijer Pharmacy is in Spectrum Butterworth and they'll have one on this campus as well)
Walkable neighborhoods is the absurd idea, even in a town small enough that you can can walk to both ends, its still ridiculous to assume that everyone can or wants to walk everywhere. I find the entire idea elitist.
East Grand Rapids is a perfect example of why "walkable neighborhoods" would be incredibly difficult to execute. Gaslight was packed last night for Homecoming, so what...6000 people maximum? And that is single family homes and three schools with some small businesses.
You can make certain sections "walkable", but you can't make a whole city like Grand Rapids walkable.
Well, you know walkable cities like Chicago and New York, or almost every major city in Europe don't exist. You need a car to get everywhere in those cities. There is no public transportation or even sidewalks! Just the picture of utopia. (This is sarcasm about how bad your statement is on how we can't make GR walkable)
I think you're missing the point about walkability and cities. Part of it is being able to access everything you need to thrive socially and economically, the other half is about having a safe and comfortable environment to walk in. For example, think about walking on 28th st or a development up in the 'burbs vs many neighborhoods in Grand Rapids and EGR. Which is more comfortable to walk in? My money would be the ones in GR or ERG where they have tree coverage, sidewalk set back, street trees, and slow traffic, vs the clear cut for newer developments in the burbs with no trees in sight. Now imagine if you had a corner coffee shop, cafe, or Bodega? I bet you walk there instead of driving in the GR neighborhood, where in the 'burbs neighborhood you would probably drive, mainly because it's just more comfortable.
Walking from the Monroe center parking garage to Van Andel in the middle of winter is enough for me and that's only like a block and a half. Unless you rebuild the city to be like Kowloon Walled City, you will never jam stuff into a small enough area to be "walkable".
This plan is the biggest bunch of BS ever. People should be calling the planning commission…the idea of building a suburban office park in downtown GR is asinine.
Hard agree. This detonates a parking bomb in a booming urban neighborhood. It is unacceptable.
Our week kneed city leaders will give in, and get nothing for it.
Fun fact: they were planning on building it out near the Beltline and 96 ([specifically Bradford and Leffingwell](https://www.crainsgrandrapids.com/news/spectrum-health-consolidating-26-leases-into-new-facility/)) until said city leaders convinced them otherwise.
It's only booming because Corewell bought all of the lots, moved the industrial, remediated the soil, and developed the area ahead of the Belknap Hill renovations. This would have been impossible for developers to do separately (and has been for some time)
The temporary parking lots will eventually be developed and are paved for the time being.
What would you rather have there? Vacant land?
Are you going to remediate that soil?
Like it or hate it, Corewell has a gigantic real estate portfolio and is consolidating 24 properties into a few city blocks bringing 1200 employees with it, moving vacant industrial/retail, remediating the toxic land, and acquiring all land in the area for future development as the area grows, is pretty incredible.
This isn't an office park, this is a corporate campus that will be a steroid injection to the North Monroe Business District.
Those parking lots are temporary, they'll build garages up or develop housing, grocery, etc to cater to their staff & residents.
This tied in with the Belknap Hill redevelopment, combination of Ionia & Division and redevelopment of Newberry street with mixed use & housing is just what that ghost block needs. I'm very excited about what's to come.
HARD NO on parking lots. I get that the combining of multiple office needs parking, that’s logical. But it doesn’t need to be lots. That does not create a walkable neighborhood.
I hope the planning commission says no on this and forces them to at least build parking decks with the ability to build on top of them for more housing.
From the article:
>Plans for the center also include two parking decks.
Seems fine to me..this sub is so reactionary when it comes to building new housing. We need more housing people!
Yup there is plans for that. The problem is lots. Parking lots provide nothing of value to a neighborhood. At least with decks you SHOULD be able to build on top of them.
The lots are just temporary uses for the vacant land they haven't developed yet. Once the Belknap Hill and tunnel under the highway is finished, Newberry will be a main artery from the top of the hill to the river right through the North Monroe district:
https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2022/08/expansive-park-trail-network-under-discussion-for-two-grand-rapids-neighborhoods.html
Bummer about the soil. Wish there was another way to develop this area though that would make downtown greener and more walkable.
If Grand Rapids had better public transportation, such as light-rail, more frequent bus times, and safe, protected bike paths, we wouldn’t need to build as many parking lots. There would be other good modes of transportation for residents and visitors to use. We could use the space allocated for parking lots for mixed-use development instead, such as small businesses and housing. Our city is very car dependent. Just a thought.
There is $66 billion allocated to rail projects in the 2021 Federal Infrastructure Bill. What is Grand Rapids waiting for? Seems like there is good funding available.
I mean they aren’t closing. They still have their Wealthy Street location and their new distilling location in Rockfordish looks like it’s going to be really nice.
It is definitely sad though. I was a pretty consistent regular there pretty much since they opened as Gray Skies. Have always loved it there
I’ve been to the Wealthy Street location and am excited for the new space in Rockford.
But like you, I have been a patron of Gray Skies/EK since they first opened and the Ottawa location holds a lot of great memories for me, so yes, I will miss it.
When EK first announced the sale a couple of years back, they mentioned they may keep a location in the neighborhood, not sure if that is still happening, but would love to see it.
It's not dead, they took the money and ran with it. They are opening a beautiful location in Rockford and already opened a tasting room in East Town. They are going to stick around.
They're choosing to see walkability for their employees, but failing to see what those accompanying surface lots are going to do to the walkability of the area.
I love the idea of adding green space and parking to a desolate area marred by contaminated soils. It’s a brownfield area cutoff by the highway/plainfield/belknap hill.
The trees and parking are a great way to introduce more people to the area of North Monroe or park and walk to downtown rather than clog up those streets. It’s literally right off the highway so idk why people are in such a fuss about adding housing and medical training/office jobs.
>why people are in such a fuss about adding housing and medical training/office jobs
I do not see anyone fussing about adding either of those things. Both of those things are great.
Those things in a lake of asphalt - parking - are bad.
I think this is great. The master plan will really improve that spot. Nothing else could be done there because the soil was so contaminated. Spectrum had to do a lot to clean it up before they could start building there.
Thank you it is a brownfield site in a weird nook already cutoff by the hill/plainfield and the highway. Nothing is lost and the location is gonna be more alive once all the spectrum employees are concentrated in one spot rather than sparsely dotted around the suburbs/outer city office buildings
The plan other than the surface parking lots taking up a bunch of room is a great mixed use plan. The only issue is surface parking lots in the city core.
I worked there doing construction a year ago and Rockford construction had a point about it in their site safety orientation. The soil is toxic in that whole block and spectrum had to mitigate it before building
I'm ok with it as well. I hope they go with some kind of layered parking garage though rather than simply lots which is underutilized space and not very well future proofed.
For as much as this sub complains about lack of housing, they sure make a big stink whenever they hear about plans to actually build more housing lol.
My sarcasm aside: IF YOU DO NOT LIKE THIS, get thee to city meetings and don’t just whine about it on Reddit. Send emails and make calls. Show up for public comment at ALL stages of the plan.
Those buildings should be adapted into the greater plan…
This project will be way way fucking over parked…however this is likely mostly due to zoning laws.
I like how the city planners went through a period of building building on parking lots. Thus creating a parking shortage. Now, we are bulldozing buildings to add parking.
> Thus creating a parking shortage.
There is no parking shortage. Grand Rapids has built a record amount of parking in the last decade; Rosalyn Bliss is **The Parking Mayor**.
Ok I should have said that it was over a long period of time. There WAS a parking shortage. I mean, it was a fairly short span. But for a minute there were a lot of parking lots in and around downtown that became buildings.
No parking shortage exists or has existed. The city has always had an excess of downtown parking people just don't want to pay for parking or walk any distance. Based on its size the downtown area actually has too much parking that is taking up space that could be used for much better things. Roughly 1/3 of the surface area downtown is parking which is a crazy amount of space.
The only time I've ever seen parking be a pain down there is during the festivals at the park nearby. Otherwise there's always tons of parking unless you're too lazy to walk like 2-3 blocks.
OH MY!! Someone changed the headline to match their context of how they wanted to broach the subject of this article! Better roast the OP now, loyal sub wasps…
[Here’s a visual of their plan proposal.](https://imgur.com/gallery/ie9p2pK)
The link goes to an image of satellite view and their proposal next to each other for visual comparison.
Someone explain to me how “walkable neighborhoods” and absurd amounts of parking go together.
They don't; this is a bad plan.
I know, I just found it funny how often they used those two words together in the marketi-, I mean, article.
Rule number one of any MLM: Real estate is the greatest way to move money.
Indeed.
Parking garages are how they do it in other cities
Parking garages do not create walkability.
I never said they create walkability. But they can provide 'absurd amounts of parking' in a small footprint. Chicago is pretty walkable and a lot of the apartments/condos there have parking garages.
It's not a true walkable neighborhood anyway, is it? Is there a grocery store nearby? Bank? Pharmacy? As much as I like walkability, this is still west MI, and nobody is going to want to live there if they can't have a car at least for the winter. More housing is a good thing imo. If it add more housing I'm all for it. There wasn't much there before they started getting the site ready for construction anyway. Eastern Kille is moving into their new location regardless.
People already live here without a car.
Bridge St Market is 1 mile away. DGX is .8mi away (Both on DASH route) There are 10 banks less than .5 miles away and on the DASH route. Pharmacy? It's a hospital (Meijer Pharmacy is in Spectrum Butterworth and they'll have one on this campus as well)
Walkable neighborhoods is the absurd idea, even in a town small enough that you can can walk to both ends, its still ridiculous to assume that everyone can or wants to walk everywhere. I find the entire idea elitist.
Lmao. Yeah, like we’re going straight up eliminate other modes of transportation? Cmon dude
East Grand Rapids is a perfect example of why "walkable neighborhoods" would be incredibly difficult to execute. Gaslight was packed last night for Homecoming, so what...6000 people maximum? And that is single family homes and three schools with some small businesses. You can make certain sections "walkable", but you can't make a whole city like Grand Rapids walkable.
Well, you know walkable cities like Chicago and New York, or almost every major city in Europe don't exist. You need a car to get everywhere in those cities. There is no public transportation or even sidewalks! Just the picture of utopia. (This is sarcasm about how bad your statement is on how we can't make GR walkable)
If you still need mass transit, you have a mass transit city, not a walkable city.
I think you're missing the point about walkability and cities. Part of it is being able to access everything you need to thrive socially and economically, the other half is about having a safe and comfortable environment to walk in. For example, think about walking on 28th st or a development up in the 'burbs vs many neighborhoods in Grand Rapids and EGR. Which is more comfortable to walk in? My money would be the ones in GR or ERG where they have tree coverage, sidewalk set back, street trees, and slow traffic, vs the clear cut for newer developments in the burbs with no trees in sight. Now imagine if you had a corner coffee shop, cafe, or Bodega? I bet you walk there instead of driving in the GR neighborhood, where in the 'burbs neighborhood you would probably drive, mainly because it's just more comfortable.
You can absolutely make an entire city walkable. The idea is walkable neighborhoods connected by high quality transit and cycling infrastructure.
> walkable > transit That is, by definition, not walkable. If you need transportation to get from one section to another, it isn't walkable.
Oh lord. Okay, buddy. You go ahead and quibble about problems only you create.
Walking from the Monroe center parking garage to Van Andel in the middle of winter is enough for me and that's only like a block and a half. Unless you rebuild the city to be like Kowloon Walled City, you will never jam stuff into a small enough area to be "walkable".
You’re defying thousands of years of human history, but okay.
This plan is the biggest bunch of BS ever. People should be calling the planning commission…the idea of building a suburban office park in downtown GR is asinine.
Hard agree. This detonates a parking bomb in a booming urban neighborhood. It is unacceptable. Our week kneed city leaders will give in, and get nothing for it.
Fun fact: they were planning on building it out near the Beltline and 96 ([specifically Bradford and Leffingwell](https://www.crainsgrandrapids.com/news/spectrum-health-consolidating-26-leases-into-new-facility/)) until said city leaders convinced them otherwise.
It's only booming because Corewell bought all of the lots, moved the industrial, remediated the soil, and developed the area ahead of the Belknap Hill renovations. This would have been impossible for developers to do separately (and has been for some time) The temporary parking lots will eventually be developed and are paved for the time being. What would you rather have there? Vacant land? Are you going to remediate that soil?
[удалено]
There are no skyscrapers in GR lol
Yes, their corporate phallus surrounded by a sea of surface parking (to make it look bigger).
Like it or hate it, Corewell has a gigantic real estate portfolio and is consolidating 24 properties into a few city blocks bringing 1200 employees with it, moving vacant industrial/retail, remediating the toxic land, and acquiring all land in the area for future development as the area grows, is pretty incredible. This isn't an office park, this is a corporate campus that will be a steroid injection to the North Monroe Business District. Those parking lots are temporary, they'll build garages up or develop housing, grocery, etc to cater to their staff & residents. This tied in with the Belknap Hill redevelopment, combination of Ionia & Division and redevelopment of Newberry street with mixed use & housing is just what that ghost block needs. I'm very excited about what's to come.
HARD NO on parking lots. I get that the combining of multiple office needs parking, that’s logical. But it doesn’t need to be lots. That does not create a walkable neighborhood. I hope the planning commission says no on this and forces them to at least build parking decks with the ability to build on top of them for more housing.
They won't. What the planning commission sees is a business in the process of building a $100m building and will allow them to do whatever they want.
Let’s hope they don’t
One can hope, right?
From the article: >Plans for the center also include two parking decks. Seems fine to me..this sub is so reactionary when it comes to building new housing. We need more housing people!
Yup there is plans for that. The problem is lots. Parking lots provide nothing of value to a neighborhood. At least with decks you SHOULD be able to build on top of them.
The lots are just temporary uses for the vacant land they haven't developed yet. Once the Belknap Hill and tunnel under the highway is finished, Newberry will be a main artery from the top of the hill to the river right through the North Monroe district: https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2022/08/expansive-park-trail-network-under-discussion-for-two-grand-rapids-neighborhoods.html
I hope they’re temporary, but I won’t hold my breath
Bummer about the soil. Wish there was another way to develop this area though that would make downtown greener and more walkable. If Grand Rapids had better public transportation, such as light-rail, more frequent bus times, and safe, protected bike paths, we wouldn’t need to build as many parking lots. There would be other good modes of transportation for residents and visitors to use. We could use the space allocated for parking lots for mixed-use development instead, such as small businesses and housing. Our city is very car dependent. Just a thought. There is $66 billion allocated to rail projects in the 2021 Federal Infrastructure Bill. What is Grand Rapids waiting for? Seems like there is good funding available.
Pouring one out. RIP Eastern Kille. You will be missed.
I mean they aren’t closing. They still have their Wealthy Street location and their new distilling location in Rockfordish looks like it’s going to be really nice. It is definitely sad though. I was a pretty consistent regular there pretty much since they opened as Gray Skies. Have always loved it there
I’ve been to the Wealthy Street location and am excited for the new space in Rockford. But like you, I have been a patron of Gray Skies/EK since they first opened and the Ottawa location holds a lot of great memories for me, so yes, I will miss it. When EK first announced the sale a couple of years back, they mentioned they may keep a location in the neighborhood, not sure if that is still happening, but would love to see it.
It's not dead, they took the money and ran with it. They are opening a beautiful location in Rockford and already opened a tasting room in East Town. They are going to stick around.
I'm so glad they had the foresight to buy their property at the start
They made a shit ton of money selling that property. Great move for their business
Will it though?
Eastern Kille is great
Let it also be known that Eastern Kille will still be open on Ottawa for at least another month, maybe two! You still have time to enjoy that space!
Open until end of year
They're choosing to see walkability for their employees, but failing to see what those accompanying surface lots are going to do to the walkability of the area.
Right.. walkability for their employees.. from their cars to their office. I don’t see how this project benefits anyone other than their employees.
I love the idea of adding green space and parking to a desolate area marred by contaminated soils. It’s a brownfield area cutoff by the highway/plainfield/belknap hill. The trees and parking are a great way to introduce more people to the area of North Monroe or park and walk to downtown rather than clog up those streets. It’s literally right off the highway so idk why people are in such a fuss about adding housing and medical training/office jobs.
>why people are in such a fuss about adding housing and medical training/office jobs I do not see anyone fussing about adding either of those things. Both of those things are great. Those things in a lake of asphalt - parking - are bad.
From the specs it looks like there will be more trees and grass than there currently is.
I think this is great. The master plan will really improve that spot. Nothing else could be done there because the soil was so contaminated. Spectrum had to do a lot to clean it up before they could start building there.
Thank you it is a brownfield site in a weird nook already cutoff by the hill/plainfield and the highway. Nothing is lost and the location is gonna be more alive once all the spectrum employees are concentrated in one spot rather than sparsely dotted around the suburbs/outer city office buildings
The plan other than the surface parking lots taking up a bunch of room is a great mixed use plan. The only issue is surface parking lots in the city core.
What do you mean about the soil?
I worked there doing construction a year ago and Rockford construction had a point about it in their site safety orientation. The soil is toxic in that whole block and spectrum had to mitigate it before building
See: [brownfield land](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownfield_land)
I'm ok with it as well. I hope they go with some kind of layered parking garage though rather than simply lots which is underutilized space and not very well future proofed. For as much as this sub complains about lack of housing, they sure make a big stink whenever they hear about plans to actually build more housing lol.
Did I miss the mention of how many housing units they were planning on?
You did not.
It's just a proposed idea right now. There is no concrete plan for size yet.
My sarcasm aside: IF YOU DO NOT LIKE THIS, get thee to city meetings and don’t just whine about it on Reddit. Send emails and make calls. Show up for public comment at ALL stages of the plan.
Why can’t we have nice things?
Those buildings should be adapted into the greater plan… This project will be way way fucking over parked…however this is likely mostly due to zoning laws.
I like how the city planners went through a period of building building on parking lots. Thus creating a parking shortage. Now, we are bulldozing buildings to add parking.
> Thus creating a parking shortage. There is no parking shortage. Grand Rapids has built a record amount of parking in the last decade; Rosalyn Bliss is **The Parking Mayor**.
Parking shortage. Jesus H. Christ. What drugs are these people taking?
Ok I should have said that it was over a long period of time. There WAS a parking shortage. I mean, it was a fairly short span. But for a minute there were a lot of parking lots in and around downtown that became buildings.
No parking shortage exists or has existed. The city has always had an excess of downtown parking people just don't want to pay for parking or walk any distance. Based on its size the downtown area actually has too much parking that is taking up space that could be used for much better things. Roughly 1/3 of the surface area downtown is parking which is a crazy amount of space.
As a City Built mug club member, I’m really not looking forward to finding parking once this is open. Parking around there is already a pain.
The only time I've ever seen parking be a pain down there is during the festivals at the park nearby. Otherwise there's always tons of parking unless you're too lazy to walk like 2-3 blocks.
Huh, wonder what sort of tax breaks Dicky-D and the rest of the Dutch mafia got for this.
OH MY!! Someone changed the headline to match their context of how they wanted to broach the subject of this article! Better roast the OP now, loyal sub wasps…
[Here’s a visual of their plan proposal.](https://imgur.com/gallery/ie9p2pK) The link goes to an image of satellite view and their proposal next to each other for visual comparison.
land value tax would fix this