ACTION: Corewell Parking Bomb, phase 2

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.

Planning Agenda: 2023-10-12

The Planning Commission's agenda for 2023-10-12 is ๐Ÿ‘‰here๐Ÿ‘ˆ.

How Dense Is Grand Rapids

You can explore the density, by Census Precinct, ๐Ÿ‘‰here๐Ÿ‘ˆ

Most of the land area of the city is in the 2,000 - 4,000 souls per square mile range. Of course many things can influence density; land can be used for a variety of useful purposes such as parks, industry, rail yards, and institutions such as schools. And land can be gobbled up by unproductive purposes like highways and country clubs.

Planning Agenda: 2023-09-28

UPDATE 2023-09-29: The conversation was interesting. ๐Ÿ‘‰The meeting can be viewed on Youtube.๐Ÿ‘ˆ. Text corresponding to these proposals are expected to come back to the Planning Commission in November. If the Planning Commissions supports that edition of the change text then the texts will go to the City Commission. The City Commission will hear them ... in December? ... then schedule a public hearing in ~30 days after hearing them.

The Rapid's "Secondary" Routes

A little known local transit detail is that the Rapid operates a set of route extensions during the GRPS school year. This includes routes #1 (Division/Madison), #4 (Eastern), #7 (West Leonard), #10 (Clyde Park), and #12 (West Fulton). These route extensions operate on weekdays in the ~7am and ~2pm hours.

The Local Transit Senate

The concept of the Senate, at least as implemented by the United States Constitution, is anti-democratic. In the state of Montana each senator represents ~500,000 people, in Michigan ~5,000,000 people, and in California ~19,500,000 people. A citizen of Montana has 39 times the representation of a citizen of California, and 10 times the representation of a citizen of Michigan.

The Prosperous Future Report

The Citizens Research Council of Michigan has issued a new series of reports named - the irony must be intentional - the "Prosperous Future". The picture painted by the findings is bleak. All things obvious to anyone who has been paying attention, and about which our elected leaders have done little or nothing since this conversation began circa ~2003 [20 years ago].

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