Urban Grand Rapids

The Master Plan draft was sent from the Planning Commission to the City Commission on 2024-08-08. The City Commission is expected to accept the plan on 2024-08-13, which will begin the required 63 day public review period on 2024-08-14. If accepted the required review period will complete on 2024-10-16. At that point the Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on 2024-10-24 and recommend the City Commission adopt the plan. The City Commission will then schedule and hold a public hearing on 2024-11-19. The City Commission will ratify the plan, most likely, on 2024-12-03. At this point a rewrite of the zoning ordinance will begin, to align the ordinance with the new plan.

UPDATE 2024-11-16: The public hearing of the master plan is on the City Commission agenda for 2024-11-19, as expected.

The Towers

Addresses: 3, 17, 21, 37, 41, 45, 47, 53, and 63 Market Avenue SW, 216 Fulton Street W

Site: 6.9 acres / 10 parcels

The municipal agenda for the Planning Commission meeting on 2024-11-14 is 👉here👈

1947 & 1961 Alpine Avenue NW

This is a returning agenda item; previously discussed at the 2024-08-22 Planning Commission meeting.

The site has now been rezoned, as requested, from SD-IT (Industrial Transportation) to TCC (Transitional City Center); as TCC permits retail uses. The applicant is now applying for Special Land Use (SLU) to both operate a recreational marijuana facility (which requires SLU in TCC) and to construct an eighty eight (88) space surface parking lot. This amount of parking exceeds the maximum amount of parking permitted for the 3,785sq/ft building; this is twenty three (23) parking spaced per 1,000/sq/ft. As each parking space is 153sq/ft (18ft x 8.5ft), not including lanes, this is 13,464sq/ft of parking spaces; three and a half (3.5x) times the size of the building in parking spaces. The site is within the walk-shed of the Rapid #9, which is a frequent service route.

The site is not within 1,000ft of any "sensitive uses" as required by the zoning ordinance for marijuana uses. The nearest residential use is 1,415ft from the site, the nearest religious use is 2,700ft.

Kent county had the lowest voter turn-out since 2012, with 69% of registered voters casting ballots. Election turn-out in 2020 was 73% (72.58%), which was the highest since 2004.

Turn-out in the city of Grand Rapids was 61.48%. Voter turnout in the city rose steadily until ~1:00pm and then rapidly declined, with extremely low rates of voting from 2:00pm until poll close.

The Winners

• 1st Ward : AliciaMarie Belchak w/54.95% (12,548) vs. Dean Pacific w/43.12% (9,846) : total of 22,394 votes
• 2nd Ward: Milinda Ysasi w/97.32% (22,038)
• 3rd Ward: Marshall Kilgore w/57.77% (14,479) vs. Bing Goei w/40.04% (10,034) : total of 24,513 votes
• Mayor: David LaGrand w/62.54% (50,490) vs. Senita Lenear w/36.17% (29,201) : total of 79,691 votes, 10,476 more votes than were cast, in total, for City Commissioner seats.

The ZORI is the Zillow Observed Rent Index from, you guessed it, Zillow, Zillow provides a variety of data at their Data page. We periodically check in on the ZORI to see what it says about rents in Grand Rapids.

There is currently two road reconstruction projects underway, one designed and one in design. These projects address Wealthy St, through East Town, from Richard Terrace Ave east to the city limits. Public engagement for the section from Ethel Ave to the city limit (east) was conducted in 2022. The second phase from Ethel Ave west to Richard Terrace Ave, a length of about two blocks, is currently in the design phase and public engagement is open. A future third phase will address Wealty St from Lake Drive to Woodmere.

There is a lot, very quietly, happening in the transportation space. On the surface not much is changing, other than related to ride-hailing / car-sharing, which I will cover first. Meanwhile, down below in the civic forges the bellows are pumping; we are either shaping the beginnings of a different future, or at least witnessing the death gasps of the status-quo. If voters choose wisely next month the stage is set for change; but we’ve been here before, don’t count those chickens just yet.