[So-called "Exodus" of businesses downtown - Is a crisis brewing?]

On 6/19/2023 at 3:26 PM, Khorasaurus1 said:

What's confusing to me is that the south end of downtown (Heartside, etc) hasn't changed that much in the last five years. There were always gatherings of homeless people at the missions and in Heartside Park. It doesn't seem that much worse to me now.

No, but the downtown core has gotten worse. The city just allocated $500,000 to get rid of (excuse me, "provide temporary housing for") 44 unhoused individuals who hang  out on Monroe Center and Louis Campau Promenade. That's a big increase from five years ago, at least from my anecdotal observation. 

[24-Story Tower Proposed for Fulton and Ottawa]

The project is now officially dead. 

“It’s not possible in this current economic market for us to move forward with this project at this scale,” Jason Wheeler of Wheeler Development Group said.

https://www.woodtv.com/news/grand-rapids/plans-scrapped-for-24-story-tower-in-grand-rapids/

[ArtPrize and Project 1 - Grand Rapids]

Darn it, I lost the feed, just as the Mayor started to speak. Regardless, I'm delurking to echo Yankee Fan's feedback. This is a fantastic idea, and I've already got an email from an artist friend in Atlanta about it. Kudos to Rick and the DeVos family. I love it!