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Where is the next-closest liquor store? That's the real question to be dealt with. The party store at Franklin and Division? Is there really an issue though with other areas relocating homeless people to Grand Rapids? If so, I believe there is a tried and true solution to that: Okay, perhaps not.

I'll leave out the excess verbiage this time.. The new code effectively PROHIBITS 2 full stories. It's unstated, but you MUST use dormers or pricey custom trusses which will result in wonky (expensive) interior finishes. I suspected this was the case before, but looking at the Planning Commission minutes where they approved two of them (before the change) proves it. Take whitemice's plan (roughly): [first floor] 3" of concrete above ground, 8" of block to get the siding off the ground, 8' of studs, 5" of plates, [second floor] 14" (or 16") I-Joist to span without posts, 5" of plates, and 7'9"' of wall. Add it up. 18.6 feet, minimum, to the eve. Realistically, you'll need probably need another 8" to a foot in there somewhere. For a 4/12 pitch (minimum for shingles), over a 24 span, you're up 2' at the midpoint before the raised heel truss to hit ideal insulation levels, and before roof decking and ridge vent. Yes, we're counting the little stuff since this is so tight... That puts you at 20.6 feet with a NON-WAIVABLE restriction to 20'. Can't build it. A 6/12 or an 8/12 roof? Fuhgeddaboutit. There is no way the planning commission people did not know exactly what they were doing since they just approved TWO of them in August that were both over 21 feet. They set the height limit juuuuust low enough to make it almost impossible to do. You MUST now use dormers or far more expensive custom trusses. Even if they eventually take away the $2000 permit fee, they tacked on five times that in added architect and construction costs by going from 25' to 20'. That's why I'm irritated. The changes make the ADU situation worse, not better--the opposite of what Housing NOW was intended to do.

But when you add the third stall, you're easily over 700. And that third stall is fairly common tract house design now--that's how they managed to suck down the rest of it down to 22x22. Otherwise is just barely enough to fit two cars in. If you do two 9' doors you're automatically at 24'. An ADU needs stairs, so there's another 3'. But since we build garages in multiples of 4, you're at a 28' wide minimum for an ADU garage. And depth, well... No one is going to build something 20' deep on purpose. They'll go to 24 or 28 to be able to fit stuff. So that's a 700+ square foot garage right there. Yes, whitemice built smaller, but per the PC minutes it wasn't entirely financially motivated. We're talking about making these things commonplace. Building 500 square foot efficiency apartments over a garage to make money does not make sense (or cents... hahaha). (Checking Craigslist, I'm not convinced you could rent 500 square feet for a grand. No one is asking that much for anything in Grand Rapids that doesn't have utilities.) I think you need to go to 700+ to make it financially viable. And then you need to NOT have dormers. Which again, are wildly expensive (siding, insulating, framing, roofing--all go way up). You need a simple trussed roof. I checked the PC minutes. Both organsynder and whitemice used no dormers, went over the now mandatory 20' maximum (unless you can manage to site it more than 25' off the rear property line, which few can), and per comments here, they both spent $100k+ on just the ADU. And they were both just economical boxes. So the city just banned (on most lots) duplicates of the only two ADUs that anyone has built in years. New ones MUST cost more (barring the rare ultradeep lot). Hence my conclusion that they have done nothing to make an ADU more viable. Just the opposite. Even if they scrub the $2000 SLU fee, the construction costs just ballooned by over $10,000 thanks to their shiny new height limit (presumably to encourage or requirement those pretty but pricey dormers). Good intentions, but a major misfire.

I would view what you did as a minimum reasonable and economical size. Whitemice's $100k for a 500 square foot structure doesn't offer the sort of returns most not fully committed urbanists would be willing to invest in. It is awesome that he did it, but most people won't. My maths on these things is as follows. With rents at, say, $800 for a very small single and $1100 for a two bedroom, you're at $9600 for rents on that single. (Am I way off base on that?) Now take into account vacancy and credit losses, and you're at $9000 a year. Since it costs $100k+ to build, I'll assume the assessor will assess accordingly, and you'll get dinged for the full $25000 of non-homestead taxes on it. Now we're down to $6500 a year before paying any other expenses. That's worse than a 6.5% return for having people living in your backyard in someone you get nothing for if you sell. At $1100, or even $1250 depending on neighborhood, you've got something that works, and which doesn't really cost anything more to build since the bulk of the investment is in the plumbing and electrical service, kitchens, and baths. Since the main structure requires a 25' setback, the height limit for a garage ADU is indeed 20' to the midline. Very hard to do with a 800+sf garage without dormers. Which are EXPENSIVE. I'm sticking to my guns for now with the claim that the city just made things worse, not better. This isn't Portland-style rents, and they did not take that into account when coming up with these regs which force very costly and/or impractical structures and which are now NON-WAIVABLE. And I would disagree with GRDad that 864sf is big for a garage. It's not. That's a standard 2 and a half stall garage with two 9' garage doors. A standard 24x26 two stall is two stall is 624 square feet. Those old 20x20s were designed to hold a Model T and some junk. Not two SUVs, a lawn mower, snow blowers, and everything else. That's why most of them are full of junk and not cars.

Is this project going vertical Motel 6? I hope not. But I'm afraid of it. Those dark panels on the original renderings appear to be vertical PTAC units (through the wall A/C) for each individual room that may have been less than honestly rendered. They're now being trimmed out with pieces of bright aluminum that are in there at sort of an angle. I'm hoping this doesn't end up looking as cheap as I'm picturing. But I'm afraid we're probably getting some less than attractive looking louvers. Yippee.

Right, but that wouldn't be possible to do with a "full" second floor. With 11ft on the first floor (which is what you'd want for fun stuff like a car lift to put that sports car on in the winter)... you'd be at 20 feet already at the EVE on the 2nd floor. You really need more height than 20' to pull this off and have a) no dormers and b) more than 8' on the first floor. An 8' ceiling isn't the end of the world, but it's not much fun in a garage, either. I think most residential attached garages are at 10'. But... if you can indeed pull off an ADU for 100k with the garage, that's not bad. Pays for itself. Now they just have to scrub the stupid fees, and tweak the height a little to make the less bold willing to make the jump.

That's at least some minor progress. I looked at the write up on your blog as well as the text changes. Not easy to find. http://grandrapidscitymi.iqm2.com/Citizens/Detail_LegiFile.aspx?Frame=&MeetingID=4574&MediaPosition=&ID=7755&CssClass=. It looks like a SLU permit is still required, plus they tamped them down to 20 feet UNLESS it's within the "setback of the primary structure." Which almost no garage is. So its 20 feet. And you can double the allowed size to accommodate the ADU. Hopefully that means you can add stairs on the main floor in addition to the allow area of the garage. Else, you're screwed there and sucking space out of the garage. So that's a little dicey there. As for height, 20 feet is tough. 9' or 10' on the first floor, then a floor joist, 8' on the second floor, then the roof. That's 18 or 19' to the eve alone. So you're stuck with a) dormers, b) barn style roof, or c) 8' garage ceiling. All of those options are either awful or expensive. And option (c) only gives you all of 6 feet from the top of the second floor to the peak. Plus, I think dormers get counted against the measured roof height once they get big enough to be another "roof plane". There's something about that in the regs somewhat, I think. So dormers might not be viable. So basically, these things are now somewhat harder to build even than before. Boo! How did you build yours? Your criticisms about killing the waivers for size and what-not were spot on. Yeah, yeah. This was a first effort and there were bound to be some false starts. Hopefully they'll clean it up. I don't think they helped the situation much. Scrap the SLU fee and it might help, but so far its arguably one step forward and two steps back. EDIT: So, I checked zoning regs of other areas. Most of them that address height allow significantly over 20 feet. I think GR just ripped off Portland, unfortunately. Portland has it at 20 feet. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of weird flat roofs, single-story garage conversions, or an ADU stacked over a 20' wide garage or a single wide garage, since they can't go up with the roof much. EDIT2: Lots of ADU projects here: https://accessorydwellings.org/category/projects/ (and elsewhere on the website). I mentioned the height/cost issues before. It's a real issue. Given current rental rates, 95% of the stuff shown here is not viable in Grand Rapids. The only ones that are? The straight up two story structures with living space on top and the garage on the bottom, with a 700+ size. That makes the roof and the foundation "free", cheap trussed roof (no dormers at $3k+ each), and drops the cost per square foot (which increases the rental return). The current regs make this type of building tough to do. This one here is one of the better examples of the form: https://accessorydwellings.org/2016/11/18/al-shannon-elizondos-adu-a-houston-carriage-house/. This is a really cheap one: https://accessorydwellings.org/2014/01/31/lissa-matts-adu-planning-for-our-sons-future/. I doubt the first one would fit the GR regs. The second one might, barely.

Question: Where is this from? Who did the survey? Who is this polling? How was the sample set selected? I ask because if this is intended to show something akin to "downtown office commuters" there is a fairly clear sampling error, based on empirical observations. That error is that "34% of respondents use a mode other than driving alone at least once a week." The aggregate data for all downtown commuters don't support that. Moreover, if you look in my parking ramp or any other parking ramp, you will see precisely the same cars there every day of every week. There is no way that any significant group of office workers other than bicycle enthusiasts randomly decide to take the bus, walk, or bike nearly two days per week, and then take a single-occupancy vehicle for the rest of it.

I'll confirm that. ModSquad is right. Suzanne and the article were technically accurate. Well, sort of. See below. Also, I would add that the SLU fee is now up to nearly $2000. Plus, as ModSquad noted, the thousands for surveys and drawings that are inevitably required. And if you lose after the local neighborhood association gets their pants in a knot, there isn't a refund for any of that. It's a death knell for small projects. Like ADUs... and don't forget about the size restrictions! After all that, with an average sized house you might get what, 400 square feet for the ADU? It's a joke. While Suzanne avoided talking about it in this fluff piece, she knows SLUs and the host of other rules kill off small-scale projects. That's why they tried to make some changes. So, where is the article wrong? It's actually misleading to claim there are not "single family" zones. For all practical purposes, LDR is very much a single family zone. Unless you have a lot with a parcel size which does not exist, or a house which is so large that probably fewer than 20 of them exist, on just the right street, you cannot build any new multifamily in an LDR, and you cannot convert into multifamily. You also cannot convert any existing single family into a two family without a zoning variance. You can build a brand new one with a SLU, but then again you need that weird vacant lot that is bigger than all the others on the block. Good luck finding one. In that respect then, it's not true that there are no "single family" zones. All of the LDR zones are most accurately described as single family zones with an extraordinarily narrow and almost impossible to use set of exceptions. Putting up a traditional corner lot 4-plex or duplex with almost no yard to worry about? Probably impossible. To compare what Grand Rapids has to "allowing at least three units in all properties that are currently permitted just one" as Minneapolis proposes is completely disingenuous. Grand Rapids does nothing of the sort. Having even a single instance of that occur is, in fact, impossible without a zoning variance. Well, unless you have a 5000+ square foot single family mansion sitting on half an acre with nothing else like it within a few blocks. In that impossibly rare and perhaps nonexistent case, the thrust of the article would actually be true. Once you pay a few grand for the SLU and the drawings, and have a hearing.

Of all of those, I have to admit that the Hinman project is the one that takes the cake for me. While not the tower it once was, I think it's the best large-scale piece of architecture going in downtown, and looks better than it did when it was taller. Studio Park will be big, but I think this will be better.

I'm not sure anyone really "won" here. I don't think the County really wanted to get rid of the land bank that badly. At least, not what they thought a land bank should be. I think they wanted to get rid of what this land bank seemed to be becoming. At its core this was probably a personnel dispute that was resolved by using an overly large hammer, since it was the only tool available to them. ModSquad is right -- The KCLB didn't have to listen to a word the County said and they had effectively zero control over what the KCLB was doing. The KCLB arguably chose to rub their noses in that, to at least some extent. The County responded with the only tool it had, and squashed them like a bug. Hopefully this won't impact the city's efforts to address the "missing middle" too much.

If memory serves, there was once some discussions about Rockford being eager to get Walgreens into Morton. Obviously, they didn't. They've gotten nothing in there.

The more I review the subcommittee oversight reviews and reports (which I just read), the less surprised I am that this action was taken. It was not "hasty" as some are claiming. The most recent report is here: https://www.accesskent.com/Departments/BOC/pdfs/2018-KCLBA-Report.PDF. A prior report is here: https://www.accesskent.com/Departments/BOC/pdfs/Reports/2017-06-30_FINAL_KCLBA_Report.pdf. Here are a few points that were made June of last year by the subcommittee: 2. Mission Creep. The KCLBA should avoid expanding its mission in an attempt to address other areas that impact home ownership and housing affordability. Focus should remain on the central mission under which the KCLBA has operated since its inception, including addressing blighted and significantly distressed properties. 7. [...]Specifically, the Subcommittee recommends that the County request the State Legislature remove the mandate that land bank authorities receive the full 5/50 tax revenue without the ability to return it to the taxing jurisdiction, and require that any specially voted millages (including school millages) remain with the taxing jurisdiction. In recent years, the Land Bank was apparently gobbling up EVERY SINGLE tax foreclosed property in Grand Rapids. No wonder the real estate community was incensed. The land bank was also carrying half a million dollars in administrative overhead. It was funding itself (in part) by siphoning off half of the property tax revenue for the next 5 years (thus stripping it from operating funds, schools, etc). Granted, that is how the statute works, but when you combine that with buying up every single property so that you can siphon the tax revenues, it becomes an increasingly big deal. Granted, GR probably promoted that, but there's a simple reason: They derive comparatively little of their operating budget from property tax revenues. If the increase continued, I suspect it was evident to the commissioners that the land bank would soon be pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in property tax revenues foregone by other entities, and appeared to be using it for stuff that was outside of the bounds of what the Commission supported. In the grand scheme of things, it is not fair for anyone to state how much "positive economic impact" was generated by the land bank without looking at the opportunity cost of that impact. And that is a difficult project. Given the recommendations that were made by the subcommittee appointed to exercise oversight, it seems to me that the land bank basically decided to play chicken. It lost. I don't think it was probably so much the idea of a land bank that was problematic, it was how this land bank increasingly chose to conduct itself. At this point, they still have a year to wind down. It's entirely possible that the commission might setup a new land bank within that period with a more heavily circumscribed mandate. It could perform important functions that aren't otherwise easily performed in the private market. In fact, that wouldn't surprise me that much at all, and would probably be a good idea. Lessons learned all around, I suppose.

I think the mistake here was rebranding as "InnovaLaB" and then wandering off into the weeds with this modular home and "missing middle" housing stuff. Noble intentions, to be sure. I've griped here quite a bit about the short-sighted neighborhood associations that have done all they can to interfere with the City's efforts in this area because they fear/dislike renters. I think you're trying to do the right thing, but I also think you've gone far outside of the job description, which was revenue capture and blight remediation. The land bank is not a nonprofit, and this sort of mission creep--which seems fairly undeniable from the December report--is arguably inappropriate. The KCLBA is effectively a county agency that looks for all the world like it has gone off the rails. Hopefully a course correction can be made and the KCLBA can get back on track, because it does have a potentially valuable purpose in title clearing and blight remediation.

You know the bar is high when it's good because at least it isn't made of corrugated metal....

If it's the same outfit consisting mostly of mortgage brokers with no readily apparent experience in the field that applied the first time around (see prior posts), I think they'll get turned down again, and again, and again....

The argument, which I'm not sure I but, is that more hotels will cause more conventions to happen, which will increase hotel demand, and increase prices. If someone has a study showing that actually works, I'm all ears. If someone comes up with a strong tenant who will pay market rent for a 20 year lease for a hotel to be funded by the CAA, I'd be happy to hear about it. Of course, if that's the case, I would find it rather difficult to understand why someone else wouldn't just build the thing in the first place.

Charts like the one you posted earlier demonstrate why this is a horrible practice. Subsidizing this stuff just plasters over deeper structural problems that further damage non-subsidized operators. If they want to do a ground lease for a dollar in order to collect the tax revenues, fine--they own the dirt. But paying to build the hotel is just foolish, when there have been plenty of hotels built by market operators. Amazon basically manage to get corporate Section 8 for itself. Taxpayer funded hotels, sports stadiums, etc., are no less awful.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Exactly. Eventually, though, I suspect this strategy may not pan out how they want it to. I think landlords with vacant spaces are going to end up wishing they had locked in leases on vacant space years ago. We'll see. Maybe they all have some sort of inside information about a huge influx of residential and office users ready to jump into the pool. But I doubt it.

I'm sure it will be fairly good quality. ICCF so far has shown a fairly good commitment to quality traditionalist urban architecture. It's not always the latest trend, but it's also not dated and trashy looking in 10 years. They're building for the long haul, which is a pretty good philosophy.

Whenever this thread resurfaces it makes me sad.

Since they've run out of good buildings to protect, I'm sure they will start trying to protect the trash that replaced the treasures. In order, save, you know, for all of time the history of how beautiful buildings were replaced by garbage... But whatever happens to this Ffith Third building, it's hard to see how it could be worse. I'm just going fingers crossed on this that it doesn't end up like another Warner "Tower" glass cube.

There seem to be two trains of thought here: One--> You can usually find a space if you are going downtown for a visit (unless it's near the Arena, which can be a nightmare). Agreed. However, that's not a real issue, apart from whether the spaces meet what is needed to facilitate restaurants. Two -->The major issue is OFFICE parking. And it's out of stock. Not a single post yet claiming I've mischaracterized a bit of this. Just that they can find some restaurant parking if they want to pay enough for it. Sorry to go off on a rant, but everytime this Naramore guy opens his mouth I'm just astonished by what comes out of it. I wanted to figure out what his deal was, and I think I did. He wants to do anything but efficiently and effectively run the department that facilitates essentially all of the meaningful economic activity downtown. People want to buy steaks, but he would really rather be selling tofu.

You're talking stuff like Akron, Sioux Falls, and Fort Wayne. I would be a little reluctant to include places like Des Moines or Madison since they double as state capitals. Of the first three, none of them charge anything even close to what Grand Rapids does for parking by, well... a lot. Des Moines is still cheaper by about $50 to $75 monthly. Madison is about on par. But it has almost 100,000 more people, is the state capital, and has a major university which makes GVSU look like.. well... not UW-Madison. IMO, it's pretty clear that Naramore/city are 100% on board with jacking up the rates, causing the congestion, and trying to force a "mode shift". Well, that will mode shift people, all the way out of town to a place that isn't run by ideological morons who think they will save those dumb suburbanites from their evil cars. Eventually, CWD is going to have to crack under the pressure, list their acres of empty space and/or lower rates, and then the true scope of the office market ugliness will be out there. Downtown isn't exactly a place any sane, growing employer wants to put an office or have an office at the moment. It's an OFFICE PARK with NO PARKING. I have talked to multiple employers who have had to have serious discussions about getting out when their leases are up. They don't have options. They can't hire because people can't park. And what do all of those thousands of suburbanites who work downtown tell their friends? Yup. Parking sucks. Stay away. And now more articles about rates getting jacked up even higher? Oh, dear. The message NEEDS to be: WE ARE ADDING SPACES AS FAST AS POSSIBLE AND HAVE XYZ GARAGES COMING ONLINE. It ain't. It's still, "take a bike" and it's COMING FROM THE GUY RUNNING THE PARKING DEPARTMENT which is PLAYING WITH FIRE. [As for congestion, the worst of it was intentionally manufactured with unused bike lanes on Division. Or, construction derived. There is almost no congestion except congestion that has Division or construction as its cause. Before that bike lane on Division, there was none. That bike lane backs traffic up on Division, and all feeders, often well past Ottawa because you can only cram about 25 cars on all of Division southbound, maybe, and there is no right turn lane or secondary thru lane].

There was no state income tax for people who lived there, or businesses who operated there (among other perks). It wasn't necessarily intentional, but RenZones brought about scads of apartment conversions, with lots of high income single people living in them (see: Union Square). It was probably singly responsible for Wealthy Street as it is today, obviously Union Square, and arguably the new Meijer could even be an offshoot. I think that tax break worked shockingly well. This tax break is not as direct. This break is designed to tempt rich people to stuff their capital next door to poor people, and grow businesses there, but it isn't nearly as aggressive about it as RenZones were in terms of tempting rich people to actually move into impoverished areas.