nurfle!

A new Social Security office (how exciting!).

Here ya go. Sort of a hipper Old Navy.

For my part (and I may be speaking for a few people here), two things: 1) A large company is bringing new investment and jobs (granted, not exactly $40k/yr ones) to the GR area. Way too many companies of this caliber are not even taking a first look these days. 2) I want this development as a whole to move forward, and it ain't gonna happen with just a supermarket there. Sure, I'm not thrilled about the continued sprawl thing, but having vibrant business on that corner is better to me than the mud field that currently flanks D&W. Personally I'm curious about Chang's as a restaurant coming to my area (I live about a mile from this intersection), but their non-locality and their storied caloric largesse have put me off from being all that excited. I think I'd be just as on top of things as I am now if this were a Nordstrom store or something. All that said, what I'd really like to see is a big company announcing a presence downtown, but you take what you get.

PF Chang's seems to be full speed ahead...providing Evergreen quits blaming preexisting circumstance and fixes a storm water problem on site. On a side note, I want the job of the person who prepares PF's documents. I browsed the E-Packet earlier, and I don't understand how such a well-reputed company allows their letterhead to be associated with such sloppy writing. "Proposed use is going to be?" "Utilizes the use of?" "As well as a couple banks?" .

Yeah, even internally people just kept calling them Blodgett and Butterworth. They've gone through a few iterations since the merger; officially now they're Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital and Spectrum Health Blodgett Hospital. They want the media to use the whole name on first reference (hey, AP style now dictates a dignitary's full name and title be written on first, why not a hospital?) and prefer(?) the nomenclature above (e.g. Spectrum Blodgett) on further, but no one seems to raise a fuss when just the one-word names are used. If I'm not mistaken, they foresaw a much diminished roll for Blodgett right out of the merger gate (less room for expansion, older, yadda yadda), but thought differently of it later. The name change probably had more to do with seeing Butterworth and what's become the Medical Mile as the center of a new order than it did any bullheaded attempt to erase two generations-old brands from the local consciousness in the name of a central identity. Good on them to acknowledge it wasn't gonna stick.

I was afraid you were going to say something like that. A bit of advice, then, from a PR professional: If you are who you claim to be (I don't not believe you, but no one ever knows online), then you aren't doing dad's company any favors by opening up on us like you did. If he has a communications person, he/she would probably have an aneurysm watching you represent the company in this way. A lot of us are actually professionals in the field too, or at least in related fields. We may not be a bit unruly at times, but no one here says we're doing anything else but speculate and report what the media's saying. You don't like what you see, respectfully join the conversation; but your father's interests aren't served well by someone close to him quasi-anonymously attacking an influential group (whether we deserve it or not, there's plenty of influence on here) online where anyone can read it at any time.

Well, we are getting an Aldi across from Bostons...so, yeah.

Well, excuse my clumsy fingers and I shall excuse yours. As trongrr said: if we are so ignorant, please enlighten us instead of just trolling. Plenty of goodwill around these parts; we'd be happy to lend you some. EDIT: Fox 17 has a similar story up now, this one with BENNER (there we go!) saying he's got two more stores lined up.

PF Chang's is financed and Brenner claims construction could begin next month.

Just wondering, where would y'all put the shelters? I'm not seeing your"now is not that time."

From the 1/28 GR Planning commish minutes: So good news, bad news. PF Chang's is still involved (or was a few months ago), but they want to face the Beltline now. Who called it? Someone called it.

I think that Panera can attribute a good amount of success to having been the good kind of choosy with their franchisees. Trigo must have a mad good management team, from what I've gathered.

They've talked about it. I don't know how serious they were, though. They've also talked about some other ideas for expanding the business. I'm not sure how far I want to go into why I think they haven't--it's been pretty long since I had a front-row seat, and I have a certain, um, viewpoint that may color things, so I'm not sure it'd be fair for me to speculate beyond a guess. My guess is, though: just a lack of financing (this is a recession, after all) and more importantly a lack of time to coordinate and set things up, considering them always needing to have their eyes on the ball at the one restaurant they do have.

nah, still not enough. Rodents with little capes, maybe.

They wouldn't be shaped like metal trees, would they? If so there's one at the south entrance of Kirkhof.

A little birdy told me yes, as "they want it facing downhill like [most of] the others." That birdy may be talking out of his posterior, though.

Mackinac is #40 on this PDF map (gvsu.edu), it's that massive gunmetal grey panel-topped building across the main road (N/S Campus Drive) from the Fieldhouse. The new parts are very nice (LEED features like waterless urinals, new trappings from Steelcase, some really great places to study, etc.) but the new A-B-C-D wing floorplan takes some serious navigational skills. Haven't seen the dorms, but they're the big cluster of buildings along the bottom right of the campus map above (46,47, etc.)

Speed limit's 55. And there are ditches. To get there from N/S campus Dr (the road along the main academic buildings) it's 0.7 Miles past The Meadows and Meijer-sized parking lots, along a 45-MPH, mostly sidewalk-free stretch of W. Campus Dr. This on a campus where I regularly see students hopping the 50 bus just to avoid walking the 1500 ft from Mackinac Hall to Kirkhof Center. At that point it's Taco Bob's or that cookie-cutter looking cafe I never seem to get around to trying. There's a reason I spend most of my study time downtown even though most of my classes are in Allendale. Kirkhof campus is just too big around the edges to really connect to anything. Maybe if they sold/moved The Meadows...nah, it'd never happen. Jocks have too much sway around those parts (*ducks and runs away*). EDIT:Ted, any word on when that "future home of LMCU" will BE an LMCU? maybe off-topic, sorry.

1) yup. 2) Did you notice how that Walgreen's is being built kitty-corner from (wait for it...) a WALGREEN'S? Allendale is a little bit scary in how much of a new-prefab-ghost town it seems to be. The amount of new development implies some anticipation of heavy traffic or something when even the more inhabited complexes are eerily empty at all hours of the school day. Kirkhof campus itself is pretty badly sprawled-out and very insular. Off-campus types don't seem to wander far from the central Zumberge-Kirkhof/Padnos-Manitou-Mackinac areas unless they have to (hence Kirkhof and Fuel/Fresh being packed to the gills all of the time). Beyond that, there's nothing but desolation. Those students who have cars don't seem to use them that much to go into Allendale proper--with the exception of the Main St. pub and the strip mall area around Burger King, I've been the sole (at least student) patron in any given restaurant (even Taco Bob's, which is relatively close to campus) more times than I can count. All this with students constantly complaining about how crappy and laughably expensive food is on-campus. What all of these developers are planning for is beyond me. Everything seems way too spread-out to become anything lucrative or community-like.

I've timed it--taking the 50 is often quicker classroom-to-classroom than driving to Allendale from Seward Ramp and finding a spot out here. Definitely no need for a dedicated lane.

Great shots here. That's Ye olde Masonic Temple if I'm not mistaken. Or is it the church next door like the last two photos indicate (can't tell if they're supposed to show which building the other photos are from or just be roof shots)? I've always wanted to go in and look around both. They're some of my favorite buildings in GR. I used to live back on Oakley Pl, and on my way to church (in heartside) sometimes I'd just walk past them and stare for a second.

I was driving about GR aimlessly the other day and found what looks like an abandoned (residentialized?) church on SW National Avenue just North of Butterworth. I was wondering if anyone had any info on it. Something about it just haunts me. Come to think of it, the entire near west side haunts me, but that's another story.

I'm surprised no one's posted this yet. Here's an absolutely wonderful (and surprising too! </snark>) addition to Wyoming's woes: Roger's Plaza is now going down what seems to be a very short one-way street to foreclosure as it was found to be part of a ponzi scheme being run by its current owner. The court-appointed receiver says the place has absolutely NO recoverable value for its investors. If my last visit to the empty, depressing shell that once was GR's only mall is any indication, it's nowhere near the 74% capacity stated in Knape's article. That said, Bob Israels evidently thinks the foreclosure is a good thing, and he's talking to someone in California about buying it. The structure's pretty solid with some bonuses (stores have unrenovated but semifinished full basements with some very old office trappings--creepy!), but other than that, the place needs near-total renovation. I was working there when WexTrust came in, and something smelled fishy even then. They made some minor improvements (carpeting, etc) to the main hall and redeveloped the end with AJ Wright and Famous Footwear, but left some very glaring problems completely ignored as far as existing retail space was concerned. The external wall of our bay was falling off and leaking, but no one cared. Same with Believe in Music's former space. I have been scratching my head as to how it stayed open especially since it seems to have lost about half its existing stores since I worked there. Guess I got my answer. This raises a question. Does anyone actually think a place like Roger's Plaza could attract an investor who would put the necessary funds into a workable rehab or do you see the place bulldozed in the next few years? What would replace it? How would we redevelop this stretch of road to either give it back some of its old "glory" or to make it a more relevant/desirable part of the GR area rather than a rotting cesspool? I wasn't sure whether to post this here or make a new topic. Someone please elucidate me (and fix it if you want).

Does anyone know if something is going on at the Junior Achievement building? I drove by earlier this afternoon and there were two guys working out of the second floor window on the corner. They looked like they were building the framework for some sort of sign or facade on the part of the building that curves around the corner.

Aha!, THAT explains why there's been one showing up there in Google Maps / Google Earth for like a year now! At least they're regional, family-owned, and not too shabby on the quality. We could do a lot worse (the day Del Taco sets foot in Grand Rapids, for instance...).