Predictions 2025

Submitted by whitemice on Mon, 12/29/2025 - 13:19

It is the prediction and prediction analysis time of year. First the analysis of predictions; comparing one's expectations to the data is a healthy - and sobering - process. Last year (2024) the sum total of my predictions netted out to 0 (0% of 28). Fortunately this is all for fun, as anyone who has spent any time with Data knows what she will consistently do to any and all of our imaginings.

I'm tallying using the following rankings: Nailed it ⚒️ (3 points) - Win 👍 (2 points) - Eh, Maybe?🖕 (1 points) - Wash 🤷 (0 points) - Near, but not really 👇 (-1 points) - Fail 👎 (-2 points) - Epic Fail ⚠️ (-3 points). Just being correct would be a score of 22; with "nailed it" allowing for a little recovery from error.

1. ) Venues continue to expand; especially of the entertainment variety. Between downtown, Bridge St, and Creston six new entertainment venues will open or be under development.

The Internet of Open Source and Information-Wants-To-Be-Free is dead. The playful Internet is dead. The sound of the internet has become a banshee's wail, amplified by the garbage factory of “AI” technology. This will compel more people to seek to return to IRL. This trends intersection with the housing crisis and the astonishing rise in single-person households will be a boon for urban third-spaces. It is either that outcome or a mental heath crisis of apocalyptic proportions. I'll put my money on human adaptation. Once people come to the brink they start thinking again.

Sub-prediction, which is barely a prediction: the soccer stadium breaks ground.

👍 Win (+2)

Did we get to six? Yes.

  • Bamboo (2 Fulton St W) builds out venue space.
  • BlueJay Hotel (644 Bridge St NW), includes first floor venue space.
  • Grand Rapids Game Show (112 Monroe Center St. NW)
  • Grand Vin (15 Ionia Ave SW) expands with venue space.
  • Ladies Literary Club (61 Sheldon Boulevard), renovated and reopened as community space & cafe
  • Selah Studio (235 Division S), pottery studio
  • SILVA (975 Ottawa Ave NW), multiple venus and gaming options

Further out is Pickle & Pin (662 Leonard St NW).

Downtown also got its first dry cocktail bar - Cafe Jazzy Rose (44 Ionia Ave SW) - establishing a new category of businesses.

Gimme's Par & Grill (45 Ottawa Ave NW) and Big Mini Putt Club (70 Ionia Ave SW) opened in the bottom of 2024, and thus don't count for 2025.

Creston very much failed to deliver in 2025; lots of proposals swirled about, very little moved forward.

Talk of a Pinball Land location in Creston seems to have died off. There was a permit filed by the company at the intersection of Plainfield Ave and Ann St in September of 2024, then the request was withdrawl. There has been intermittent permits files regarding 1801 Plainfield Ave NE, but nothing seems to proceed. I suspect the city's arbitrary parking requirements limit the viability of the location.

Creston is down one venue with the permanent closure of Creston Brewery which operated the "Golden Age" venue on the second floor. The new tenant LaFontsee Galleries, relocating from East Hills, will operate the second floor as gallery space while the first floor will accommodate their framing business.

The year ended up with more articles with titles like "Creston businesses wait for boom as new developments reshape the neighborhood" defining the mood.

On the other hand, despite the past years weak signal, I am not the only one who sees the sparking of a return-to-real-life movement.

The Soccer Stadium did break ground.

2.) For-sale home prices will increase barely above inflation as mortgage interest rates remain elevated and political circumstances become increasingly wild. Meanwhile rents (zORI) will continue to rise steadily, ending 2025 up more than 9%. Climate migration will begin in earnest in 2025; it is obvious to any clear minded individual what is eventually going to become of the American Southwest. This migration will further increase the pressure in rental markets overlapping with a healthy job market. Wealthier - and thus also likely older - people will try harder to remain in place (see intelligence's relationship to the brink, above). Americans have an extra-special relationship with the Sunk Cost Fallacy, but eventually the ship sinks [or burns].

Fail 👎 (-2 points)

At least I was correct about home values, which according to ZHVI (Zillow Home Value Index) for Grand Rapids, rose a mere +2.54%. That is less than the current annual inflation rate of 2.7%.

Rents were remarkably flat, at 4.43% or 1.64X inflation, which blows up the other half of my prediction.

After watching this year I feel that I need to commit to myself never again to make any prediction which involves a Climate Change justification. We have, collectively, decided we don't care. After much drama which amounted to nothing at all the Grand Rapids City Commission adopted the "Climate Adaptation and Adaption Plan" (CAAP)" - a sprawling document of 296 pages (including three appendices). Then, only a few months later, it was decided to shelve plans to change the city to a single hauler trash service. More than nine (9) out of ten (10) residences in the city use the city's trash service, but something-something about half of the remaining one (1) out of ten (10) being unhappy [that's ~5%?] and it "wasn't the right time". So the impact of heavy vehicles, consuming fuels, wearing down tires, stressing streets, and accomplishing nearly nothing ... meh, maybe later. And in Grand Rapids we know what it means when the City Commission says "later"; anyone remember TFER (Taskforce for Elected Representation) from 2020 or when the recommendation of the GR Forward plan to end new surface parking lots was tabled in 2017? It has been a long time so I understand if these agenda items have been forgotten. And I won't bring up "Vision Zero".

No, I guess I do have one Climate Change related prediction left: in 2026 we will spend a not insignificant amount of time talking about composting; a municipal composting plan and backyard composting. A whole bunch of time spent of something that, in the numbers, matters not a whit. But it makes people feel good about themselves. As someone who watches every City Commission and Committee of the Whole (COW) meeting I will be fast-forwarding through all that pointlessness in order to protect my general fondness for humanity. Environmentalism has devolved into little more than a moral performance. Also the CAAP will go on to join the ranks of documents like The Michigan Street Corridor Plan (2015) in contending for the title of "Most Forgotten Plan Of All Time".

All this even as people bear witness to the stunning rise in property insurance rates of which Climate Change is a significant factor. 🤷

3.) It will be the year of the Duplus (Duplex + ADU). At least 20 new ADUs will be permitted or under construction in association with a duplex, whether the duplex is new or existing. While the total unit count will not be all that significant it will be a new high for small-scale in-fill development.

👎 Fail (-2)

I don't have a number, but I am confident that number won't be twenty. As will be discussed in the next prediction in-fill development did have a very good year. However I don't think the Duplus was [yet] as significant as twenty (20) units.

I habitually over-estimate the flow of information, and resulting awareness, even among people with incentives to know. At the ADU Bootcamp in August (2025) discussing zoning reforms which were then over a year old was met with near universal surprise. That is among people who chose to take a weekday to attend an ADU Bootcamp event. I was seated at a table with several people who build housing or were looking for lots on which to build housing, and not one of them were aware of the reforms passed in April of 2024. Somehow the pipeline of information from the civic realm to the places it impacts is severely dysfunctional. Which is, of course, part of the reason this very website exists.

4.) Fewer new housing units will be created than in any year in the last 10 years [the lowest year 2020, permitted 570 units]. The pipeline of large projects, those which provide more than one hundred units, is nearly empty. Aside from Talbot's development at 648 Bridge NW who has shovels in the ground on a large residential project? None of the few large projects remaining in the pipeline [Factory Yards, 385 Leonard, 1340 Monroe Ave NW] will deliver units in 2025. Of the 1,215 housing units proposed via the planning commission agenda in 2023 only 29% moved forward or show any signs of life. Only 482 units were proposed via 2024 agenda items. No large projects in CC or TCC zones - which would not require Planning Commission review - are underway.

Near, but not really 👇 (-1 points)

According to the Planning Department's numbers over 1,000 units of housing were added to the city in 2025. Their number is 1,163. I'm calling bull on that number. I believe they are counting housing which will not be available to the market until 2026 - such Residences at 111 Lyon - but the number is still much higher than 570.

I am happily wrong on this one. It looks like it was a good year for infill and "missing middle". There are twenty-four (24) neighborhoods which saw zero large projects in the last four years (2022 - 2025), and in the last two years (2024 - 2025) those neighborhoods, cumulatively, added 192 more units of housing than they did in the previous two years (2022 - 2023). In the four years since the pandemic (2022 - 2025) those twenty-four (24) neighborhoods have added 830 units of housing from other than large projects; with a 60% increase in the last two years over the previous two years (511 vs. 319 units).

5.) The state legislature will pass modest reform of the wage-n-tips law. Downtown and inner neighborhood restaurants will keep on keeping on, while restaurants in the big box ring will suffer the most and blame the wage reforms regardless of the extend of the reforms. The actual cause of the failures will be a combination of labor shortages, a continued decline in alcoholic beverage sales, and managerial/owner incompetence. The later being the primary cause of all business failures.

⚒️ Nailed it! (+3)

The law did get revised in February (2025), creating a decelerated increase for tipped waged workers. The Michigan minimum wage will rise to $13.73 in 2026, and the tipped minimum wage - at 40% of that rate - will be $5.49.

The world kept turning, and the restaurant industry is still with us. New restaurants have opened in 2025. More are on deck to open in 2026.

Whenever the business communities' spokes people are running around crying "The sky is falling! The end is 'nigh!" the wise leave their lawn furniture out on the patio, as it is as likely to be a sunny weekend as not.

6.) No new high-rise developments are announced. There is no substantive movement related to either the West Site or amphitheater podium tower. The Three Towers office tower will break ground, but rumors will swirl about the fate of the other two towers (not due to break ground until 2026).

Wash 🤷 (0 points)

Almost correct! Then I had to add that last sentence. Argh!

Keeping with the theme of 2025: nothing happened. No announcements, and no ground breaking.

7.) The hottest corridor for new developments will be Plainfield (Creston). It will have the most [in count] projects announced of all the corridors.

⚠️ Epic Fail (-3)

Hard miss concerning Creston, which had a very 2025 year [nothing happened]. Creston has only one project under development - The Horizon (301 Leonard St NE) - and while it is of a significant scale (171 units) it is also barely in Creston.

It feels like the low-hanging fruit on Bridge St has been picked, as well as on Wealthy St. Without significant residential development - which has not happened - Division isn't going to take off. It is a tragedy how the cities mismanaged the Silverline project; a squandering of potential ROI.

Creston still seems to me to be the obvious next; just, not yet. And given the economic and political headwinds perhaps Grand Rapids will be waiting awhile for its next hot corridor. Meanwhile, Bridge St is still flexing.

8.) The site of the aquarium is not announced.

👍 Win! (+2)

I am calling this a Win, and not a Nailed-It, as it does appear that political cronyism has selected a site. Now we cross our fingers that the economic development incentives are not available to waste money on this albatross. Or maybe, just maybe, someone can still intercede to get this project located on an economically productive site.

9.) The library lot project is silence.

👍 Win! (+2)

In July of 2024 the next proposal to be revealed for the main libraries parking lot was as a new site for the Grand Rapids Childrens museum. Since that announcement there has been no further news or related agenda items.

10.) The Sligh project continues to appear in the news only in the context of financial drama and lawsuits.

⚒️ Nailed it! (+3)

The last thing we know from the Sligh project is that a judge dismissed the lawsuit against the developer; that was in October 2024. The developer is John Gibbs of Sturgeon Bay Partners. The most recent article still used present tense regarding the intent to develop "hundreds of apartments and retail space", however, it has now been years.

11.) Nothing continues to happen with the Keeler (56 Division Ave N) building.

👍 Win! (+2)

This prediction always guarantees me two points. At this point I feel obligated to include it every year until it fails me.

Score

And the final tally is:

6 (27% of 22)

.

An excellent year, as the score for 2024 was 0 (0% of 28)..

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