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People talking about Grand Rapids but not in a good way: New York Times writes about migrant children working in Grand Rapids food processing factories: NEW YORK TIMES: 2023/02/25 - u. s, unaccompanied migrant child workers exploitation If you don't subscribe to the New York Times, here is a free article from Mlive: MLIVE: 2023/02 food processor exposed for illegally employing minors in grand rapids says its reviewing practices Not as detailed or as dramatic as the Times article, here is a Detroit News free article that mentions some of the Grand Rapids story: DETROIT NEWS: 2023/02/27 state-feds-investigate-reports-of-child-labor-in-west-michigan

Now you can watch a new documentary about affordability and homelessness in Kent County at the Wealthy Theatre: WOODTV: new documentary sheds light on kent county housing crisis

Normally I wouldn't think of posting something from Reddit over here but I never heard of this before and I found this interesting and informative. Apparently there is a drainage pond behind the D&W at Knapp's Corner that is higher than the neighboring streets so during "significant rain events" the pond will overflow into residential basements. The drainage district's solution to this is to truck in huge tanker trucks the excess water to the boat launch at the bridge on Knapp and dump the water in the river. The trucks themselves cause environmental damage at the boat launch: REDDIT: water tanker trucks on Knapp Street

I did not mean to sound as negative as it appears I did. I completely agree with Joe that they may have their reasons to believe they do not need an abundance of parking. That's why I wrote that it would be interesting to see what their parking study says (although for proprietary reasons they may not specifically say.) I've noticed years ago when I traveled more extensively on business, that these extended stay hotels were often tucked away in not apparently convenient locations because they were located to cater to some specific very local clientele, for example: a nearby corporate training center or housing for (usually foreign) contract workers. I have not a clue if that's the case here or who the mystery clients, if any, might be.

It would be interesting to see the parking study and see how they justify having less than at least one parking space per room. This is not at all in the center of downtown where you might not need a car to get around. If I was staying at an extended stay hotel at this location, I'd sure want to be able to be sure to have a spot to park my car so I wouldn't be isolated on Front Street away from just about everything.

Sometimes it seems we could have a thread just for tacos restaurants: WOODTV: Breton Village welcomes newest Condado Tacos

This is big news for Detroit. This a a partnership between Henry Ford Hospital, Tom Gores and the Pistons, and Michigan State University. Here's the press release from Henry Ford Health: Henry Ford Health Press Release: Henry Ford Health, Tom Gores & Detroit Pistons, and Michigan State University Announce Plans for Multibillion Dollar Development in Detroit's New Center Here's a couple of more readable articles that so far aren't behind paywalls: URBANIZE DETROIT: 25billion-development-announced-henry-ford-health-tom-gores-pistons-msu This one is from Yahoo copied from a Free Press article: YAHOO (Free Press): Plans unveiled for major Henry Ford Hospital expansion in Detroit, 550 apartments

Probably could have posted this in the West Michigan / Grand Rapids Economy thread but I think it is a tighter fit here. This is relatively small project but interesting: MLIVE: Gentex to open Grand Rapids facility as it works to solve labor shortage

The magic of real estate photography: notice how much bigger the TV screen appears in the third photo than in the first (and how much smaller the refrigerator has become.)

GOOD NEWS, there's another new tenant for the Doug Meijer Medical Innovation Building. It's a "Startup Office Incubator" according to the WOODTV news article and what I think may be their official press release below. After reading the links I'm a little fuzzy about what they are offering exactly other than some new office space and some mentoring and the hope that if some young tech entrepreneurs move in on the same floor together then they will talk to each other and develop some "synergy" and come up with something great. I'm old so it's probably not important that I understand what they are up to, and likely there's more to this than they are telling right now anyway. WOODTV: new-incubator-in-grand-rapids-supports-tech-startups spartan-innovations-and-health-innovation-partners-announce-startup-office-incubator-the-bridge-on-medical-mile-in-downtown-grand-rapids

Jon Rooks is the developer. Looking at the photo of the old multi-story Shaw Walker factory just now reminds me that Jon Rooks several years ago had similar plans to develop another old multi-story furniture factory in Grand Rapids, the Sligh factory on Century. He didn't quite get around to that one. Of course he's done a lot of successful redevelopments of old buildings through the years in Grand Rapids and elsewhere. And he was doing them back when they weren't all that common.

So if you were interested in attending any of the History Detectives lectures but were busy last Saturday or you forgot about it, or you were interested but just not interested enough to bother to attend them, the lectures are all on YouTube so you can watch any of them at your leisure: YouTube: Welcome to History Detectives 2023 with Melissa Fox YouTube: What Sanborn Maps Reveal about Grand Rapids with Adam Oster YouTube: 1913 - Automobiles and Their Owners in Grand Rapids with Thomas R. Wilson YouTube: Vanished Market Avenue NW: From Fulton to Monroe - Part 1 with Team Photo YouTube: Vanished Market Avenue NW: From Fulton to Monroe - Part 2 with Team Photo YouTube: Emmett Bolden v Grand Rapids Operating Company (Keith Theatre) with Jon VanderPloeg YouTube: 50 Years Later: A Look Back at the Fight Over the ERA in Grand Rapids w/ Nora Salas and Ruth Stevens YouTube: Hidden History of Grand Rapids with Matthew Ellis

A Greek owned cracker manufacturer announced the opening of a plant and their U.S. headquarters in Kentwood the other day in a property that's been empty a few years that had housed an Irish owned food ingredients factory: NEW TENANT 4444 52nd St: european-snack-manufacturer-snackcraft-hosts-grand-opening-of-new-u-s-hq-in-kentwood OLD TENANT 4444 52nd St: 2019 kentwood-manufacturer-closes-laysoff-107-employees This is at the southwest corner of Broadmoor and 52nd Street

A follow-up with rendering today on GRDadof3's rumor from back in May: MLIVE: Townhome, retail development would transform stretch of Wealthy Street in Grand Rapids

Here's how Rossetti, the architectural firm sees it: ROSSETTI: LMCU ballpark reimagination There are a lot of sports venues listed in the Rossetti Wikipedia entry, including many you are likely familiar with but no baseball parks: WIKIPEDIA: Rossetti Architects A far off topic personal note about Rossetti: Back in the late 70's early 80's when I worked for the Free Press, I could see a Rossetti creation (the red girder thing,) if I looked down out of my tenth floor office window towards Cadillac Square. Rossetti was a much smaller mostly local firm then and they didn't do sports yet: This was a trolley station at Cadillac Square for what was basically a tourist attraction. The trolleys ran from in front of the Book Cadillac Hotel to Renaissance Center and back with a stop in between at what was then called Cobo Hall. The red girders were controversial at the time mostly because they didn't match the surrounding architecture. I didn't mind them, they added some color. After the People Mover was built, the trolleys where doomed and the station, the tracks, and the trolleys were removed. I was also gone by then.

Richard Florida gave a talk and an interview at the 2023 Detroit Policy Conference this past Tuesday (Jan 11, 2023.) He was pretty positive about what's going on in Detroit right now and in Detroit's future. Here's an article on his talk from the Detroit Chamber. Embedded in the article is a YouTube video of his talk and interview: Richard Florida at the Detroit Policy Conference 01-11-2023 Not in any way the most important thing in the video but I learned that Florida at one time lived in Grand Rapids and worked at Steelcase.

Looks like the grant from the state was denied that the county was depending on for the Cannonsburg purchase. So it's back to the financial drawing board to figure out how to get the money for this project: WOODTV: kent-county-denied-state-grant-to-help-buy-cannonsburg-ski-area

The Free Press today (Jan 4, 2023) has an update on this unusual project. It is just about done. One more floor will be lifted then the last two floors will be constructed the normal way - from the bottom up and will meet the already completed and raised upper floors. From the article: A new 16-story building in Greektown with upscale apartments and condos is nearing completion and will welcome its first residents this summer. The 165-unit development, known as The Exchange, is being built through a novel top-down construction method involving LIFTbuild technology in which floorplates are constructed at ground level, then hoisted up concrete and steel "spines" and locked into place. The building is the first in Michigan to be constructed this way. The eventual fourth floor of the building was lifted Monday. The final lift — the third floor — is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 15, after which the remaining two floors would be built conventionally. Here's the link to the complete story but it is behind a pay wall so you can't read it unless you are a digital subscriber: DETROIT FREE PRESS: detroit-developments-opening-2023 Here's is an article from October that you can probably read for free from Engineering News-Record (ENR) unless you've unlikely used up all your free clicks for that publication: ENR: exchange-liftbuild-delivers-first-us-top-down-project-since-the-70s

No idea really what's going on, but just noodling around on the interweb just now when I should be doing something more constructive, here is what I found: The address of the property is 153 Seward NW and it was sold to Uptown Properties LLC fairly recently. The agent for Uptown Properties is listed as Daniel S Terpstra of 152 E 6TH ST, HOLLAND, MI, 49423. I'm guessing his middle name is Sean and this is his Linked In page - LinkedIn: sean terpstra realtor

Almost every year a group called the History Detectives, which is made up of several local organizations, puts on a series of local history lectures on different topics all day on a Saturday in January at the main Grand Rapids Library downtown in their Ryerson Auditorium. This year’s program is on January 21. It is sort of like a day of college classes, except there are no tests or tuition or stress or athletics, and the demographics tend to lean a bit older. Each lecture is forty-five minutes with fifteen-minute breaks between lectures and a break for lunch. You can attend just the ones that are of interest to you or you can hang around all day. Again, it’s free (except for the catered box lunch which is optional.) All you have to do is show up. If you’d like the box lunch, you must register and pay for that in advance. Here’s their website with better details: HISTORY DETECTIVES 2023

From WOODTV: year end list of some of the businesses that closed in 2022: WOODTV: west-michigan-businesses-we-said-goodbye-to-in-2022

Trivial historic note about the BK: When I was growing up in the neighborhood in the fifties, where that Burger King is at the corner of Plainfield and Eleanor was the location of a Desoto and Plymouth dealership, Van Andel & Flikkema. The Van Andel was James Van Andel who was Jay Van Andel's father.

The Royals as a sports bar serving pizza didn't last long:

Of no interest to anyone but me, that old bus station / Ellis lot used to be the site of a two story car dealership, Eberts Cadillac. Right after WWII my grandfather worked there as a salesman and my father as a mechanic (my father moved on to other things and retired from GM as a senior designer.) After the dealership was sold and moved to 28th Street, the building continued as a parking garage for several years till it was replaced with the surface lot that's there now.

Not likely as a tech event but it does look like Artprize is in for another reinvent: WOODTV: ArtPrize being handed over to city, DGRI, Kendall College EDIT: And here's a link to the Mlive story - sounds here more like an abandonment than a reinvent: MLIVE:artprize-calls-it-quits-after-13-years