Urban Grand Rapids

The 👉2023-05 meeting of the Rapid Planning meeting contained the "Rousing Debate".👈. Truly riveting reading for those of us who are the type of people who read meeting minutes. 🙂 Fortunatley for us, this conversation continued at 👉the 2023-09 Planning meeting (PDF, minutes)👈

The text from the meeting minutes has been edited slightly for readability.

UPDATE 2023-11-10: The stream is available on Youtube 👉here👈. The public comment for the 959 Bristol Ave NW development is 🔥lit🔥! 😑 The discussion at the end of the meeting related to the topic of reducing or eliminating residential parking minimums starts 👉here👈.

Let's take a look at the Federally defined Urbanized Area (UZA). This is in contrast to the city, and the generally meaningless Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) which is most commonly cited. The appealing aspect of the UZA is that it represents a geographically contiguous area, usually clearly defined by the underlying infrastructure. It is also fun to say.

So, where is the Grand Rapids UZA?

Micromobility

Use of micromobility service (scooters and e-bikes) has increased 201% between 2022 and 2023. 2022 was a total of 163,690 rides, and 2023 January - August has already seen 262,155 rides.

The "Economic Impact Report of New Americans in Kent County" report was presented to the Committee Of The Whole on 2023-10-24.

The most important slide from their presentation of the report, from an urbanist perspective, is clearly:

UPDATE 2023-10-27: Due to the length of the meeting the discussion of the potential zoning reforms was postponed. What that means for any possibility of reforms which could assist the 2024 building season is not yet known.

UPDATE 2023-11-01: The discussion of the potential zoning reforms was moved from the end of this meeting to the beginning of 👉the 2023-11-09 meeting👈.

As you may already know Corewell Health constructed a new office facility in Monroe North between the Brassworks building and the Embassy Suites hotel. They also dropped ~900 additional parking spaces into the neighborhood - a neighborhood immediately adjacent to the city's commercial core and a neighborhood intended to be a hub for recreation and access to the river. Well, they've come back with phase 2.0 of their plan: it is surface parking lots everywhere. Corewell's intention is turn the entire center of Monroe North into an auto storage facility.