Jippy

I think the proposed Starbucks, would be a good interim model for 28th street. Non-standard architecture, buildings pushed closer up to the street but still allows auto uses in front of the building. Realistically, 28th Street will not urbanize until the Division has substantially undergone an redevelopment transformation. The one exception may be more of a life-style center redevelopment in the 28th and East Beltline area.

My badGR-Urbanist

@GR_Urbanist Enough said? Last time I counted, I have managed, planned, financed or developed over $750 million in projects, so I would hardly disqualify my input as lacking skin. Your pedestrian insults really belong in MLive's comment section next to "If you don't like it, then move!" I am also glad that Eric weighed in, but gosh, the whole point of this blog is to discuss the quality of development. If the rule is we are only allowed the sing holy praises at every development, then we might as well shut this forum down. I certainly enjoy the discussions of any and all developments, because ultimately it should elevate everyone's knowledge and hopefully elevate the quality of development in GR. This site certainly is a difficult site to develop, but you fail to recognize the precedent that it sets. It becomes that much more difficult to say no to anyone else that does not meet the zoning requirements established for the corridor. The proposed is an auto-oriented use in an urban area that forgoes long-term maximum returns for short-term profit. At minimum, the building should be pulled to the street and include indoor seating areas where outdoor seating is proposed. What good does outdoor seating do for 9 months out of the year? This project is more appropriate for 28th Street or Byron Center.

I enjoy the irony that Mlive is covering another development that espouses the community's vision: http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2013/10/hall_street_bakery_will_open_i.html#incart_river_default And done on a parcel 9000 square feet. 1500 square feet less than the .24 acre with the proposes Starbuck site.

Gr_Urbanist, spot on. I would also add that the Orion development on Wealthy Street is nearly the same 0.24 acres than the proposed with quite a different outcome. Mr Developer, I appreciate you chiming in on this forum, but the fact of the matter the proposed is a very low risk, low creativity attempt to capitalize on the billions of dollars in urban development on the Hill. You could find the same success by plopping a drive-thru on Michigan Ave in downtown Chicago. Sure it will be commercially successful, but it fails in your civic duty as a developer to build up a neighborhood, rather than ride the coat tales of others. I have never seen a request for so many variances for such a sub-par outcome. I really would encourage you to go back to the drawing boards. Lastly, Sinclair Avenue serves no purpose at this point. Access to all other adjacent parcels can be achieved via other streets less the sub-station. Request the City to abandon the road in exchange for a more urban development and preserve a cross-access easement for Consumers. Heck, you could then reach out to MSU, who owns all the parcels immediately to the east and explore joint venture projects for something that better fits the vision of the community.

Agreed, the list of variances required is nearly 2 pages long. This is completely contrary to what is adopted in in the zoning code and the recently completed Michigan Corridor plan. Approving this would set the city in for a generation of disappointment along Michigan Ave. How do you allow this crap and none of the other ones that will undoubtedly follow? At some point McDonalds will desire to redo their building and this would essentially guarantee that it will have the same suburban site plan. Nearly all major cities ban or require urban setbacks for drive-thrus in urban areas. This Starbucks, and Michigan Ave generally, should be no different. By approving this site plan, the city is essentially stating that urban development shall cease at the western edge of McDonalds and let the suburban crap reign all parts east. I have had it with Martha's Vineyard. One successful and one failed attempt to tear down buildings around their existing building and now this? I mean this is honestly 1960s urban renewal all over again. Compare this to say the Wealthy Street bakery owners who are are successful at respecting the historic nature of the buildings they buy.

This will become Grand Rapids true salvation. Many of these higher-ed programs will evolve into more research based institutions that will begin to pump out spin-off companies. Even Kendall has huge opportunity to better leverage economic development through design. I can't think of another mid-size city that has clustered biotech, art and design (including industrial), business, technology and engineering in such a small geographic area downtown through so many different institutions. Even Ann Arbor is missing some of these elements on U-M's central campus. A true college town emerging. Only a matter of time before Fortune 500 companies will be desiring smaller regional offices to leverage the ongoing higher-ed investments. Ongoing challenges of high cost and connectivity to other cities via the airport comes to mind as a barrier to fulfilling this vision.

I really haven't seen any bashing on this topic -- well other than about the unwise and unkind ways of the developer. The critique is about market forces and the ability to support the market based on demographics of the immediate area. Too much commercial serving too few households. It will require a different approach to be successful or an atypical anchor that will draw customers from further west locations.

We have debated chain restaurants to ad nauseam on this forum, and I don't care to restart the debate. However, there are few that can be anchor chains (PF's is one of the few), but the fact of the matter is they operate in a crowded space. The chain casual restaurant is fading relic of Americana -- Chili's, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, TJ Friday's, Applebees, etc. They are being replaced by three categories: 1) high quality fast casual (e.g. Chilis), fast food...it ain't going anywhere, and local restaurants. I now I am a food snob, but these are the only three categories that me, my friends and family ever frequent. Fast casual for the last minute meal, fast food in an emergency, and the local restaurant for the bulk of our going out food purchases. The up-side is that Village of (the destroyed) Orchard Hills has PFs. Long-term it can still be a good development with the right developer. It wouldn't surprise me if CWD or another of the more urban developers sniffs this project out.

Maybe if he actually fulfilled the original vision, he could have differentiated himself in the over-developed marketplace at that intersection. When you are the third one to the intersection, the spoils were largely picked-over. There is way too much commercial development out there compared to the number of households.

I agree with most of the posters. One alternative for a viable town center street is to focus on a perpendicular street to 28th. This is a successful approach in many communities where you have the direct access and visibility from the major thoroughfare but the ability to create a more comfortable environment on a smaller street. Wyoming will never be able to achieve the density required to over-shadow 28th street. It works in Chicago on Michigan Ave, because there are 15-100 story buildings and 25 ft sidewalks. Sorry, but that ain't happening here. While I commend the 28 West vision, a parallel street is going to lack the visibility, the traffic, and is a too large for what the market can support. I would start with investing on a one block stretch of an existing street -- do a road diet on one of the N-S street, put some substantial CDBG dollars towards redoing the infrastructure on that section, and subsidize or fully pay for the first few buildings to get things up and running. There is no reason that walkable redeveloped neighborhoods can only cater to the affluent. People like community, and I would be a wager on Wyoming residents desiring supporting some sort of town center -- ice cream, coffee, deli, dinner place, bar, etc on the ground floor with possible apartments above. GR_Urbanist is absolutely right -- Wyoming had a viable investment opportunity to anchor the concept with their civic buildings. But by choosing a typical suburban, non-synergistic approach to their civic buildings it is going to very difficult to find those anchor buildings that can feed day-time demand.

Summer vacation

I'm hoping for an awesome Chicago-based chef that is coming home to her/his roots in West Michigan for the restaurant.

Last I checked, Woodland Mall was constructed before I was born. In my book, that qualifies for infill development. Currently, city-MSA balance for residential building permits is 15-20% of residential units constructed in central cities. In 2012, GR held 17% of regional housing unit starts. The more nuanced approach would also include inner-ring suburbs pre-1960 (e.g. D.C. would include Bethesda, Alexandria, Arlington, etc). Using this measure the central core of the region (as defined with the aforementioned cities) jumps to 50% in "Inversion Cities" (San Fran, DC, NYC, Portland, Chicago, etc). This analysis becomes more complicated in smaller regions like Grand Rapids, because adjacent communities contain both areas older than 50 years and greenfield areas for development (Wyoming, Walker). My prediction is that within the next 15 years, this inversion will take place in GR and the inner-ring suburbs. Thus, real estate values become another proxy for determining how this inversion will take root as a precursor to future housing starts in the broader central city area (pre-1960 areas). The precursor to the inversion will be that housing values flip, where residential units in the Heritage Hill to East Grand Rapids corridor become more valued than the region (fyi, I don't live in this corridor). As people become priced out of this area, additional neighborhoods will follow suit. One of GR's biggest hindrances to this effect is certainly K-12 educational quality, to which I have no suggestion. This is a challenge through America, and especially in areas that have fractured school districts (urban vs suburban districts). ...Discovered after the fact: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/08/why-san-francisco-may-be-new-silicon-valley/6295/

But it does fly in the face of lacking proper educational opportunities in the city. Beyond pejorative comments concerning education inside the City, the developmental creep towards this area is reflective of broader national demographic trends towards suburbanization. Those trends are beginning to slow all across the county, and are reversing in some areas. As a third tier market, it will take longer for those trends to take root here, but I don't see anything strikingly peculiar that this region would buck those trends. Chain stores are not stupid. There is a reason that this project is not developing with places like Antropology and H & M -- they see the writing on the wall...there is greater purchasing power growth in infill destinations. Downtown Grand Rapids and inner-ring neighborhoods will continue to strengthen, and at some point they will become more desirable (in terms of real estate values) than their exurban comp. This is not some magical wishing, it is simply a result of what is happening all across the United States. It doesn't mean all suburban development will cease, it simply means cultural values, as reflected in property market value, are shifting.

You are right, but the great thing about fixed transit is once it is switched on, you have dramatically increased the land area that can develop around transit. When the Silver Line opens, both downtown and everything within a quarter mile of S Division becomes a transit destination. GR Metro will take longer to swing back, but Chicago, NYC and Washington DC now have more building permits issued in urbanized areas than the suburban portions of the metro area. It will take time, but these trends are just beginning to occur here as well.

The pendulum is swinging back quickly towards urbanity in first tier cities. It soon will occur here as well. I think we have only begun to see the beginnings of urban revitalization in Grand Rapids. Look at the single family sales prices in the Heritage / East Hills areas. They have increased dramatically in the last 6 months. List prices for homes are now approaching $200k in areas that were closer to $75k 10 years ago (despite the Great Home Value Implosion).

Triple Convergence (Anthony Downs, Still Stuck In Traffic) "Now suppose that the limited-access route undergoes a vast improvement—for example, its four lanes are expanded to eight. Once its carrying capacity is thus increased, the drivers using it move much faster than those using alternative routes. In response, three types of convergence occur on the improved expressway: many drivers who formerly used alternative routes during peak hours switch to the improved expressway (spatial convergence); many drivers who formerly traveled just before or after the peak hours start traveling during those hours (time convergence); and some commuters who used to take public transportation during peak hours now switch to driving, since it has become faster (modal convergence). This triple convergence causes more and more drivers to use the improved expressway during peak hours. Therefore its traffic volumes keep rising until vehicles are once again moving at a crawl during the peak period. This outcome is almost inescapable if peak-hour traffic was already slow before the highway was improved. If traffic is going faster than a crawl on this direct route at the peak hours, its users will still get to their destinations faster than users of city streets, which are less direct and more encumbered by signals and cross streets. Total travel times on these two types of paths will only become equalized if the limited-access roads are so overloaded that vehicles on them are moving at slower speeds than those on normal streets. Triple convergence creates just such an effect during peak hours." http://davidpritchard.org/sustrans/Dow92/ Jippy: There is a fourth element of convergence, by momentarily allowing for greater speeds, land use patterns also change, thereby allowing more people to live further out and thus generating even greater numbers of trips and congestion than if the improvement was never performed. Thus we get a whole lot of shuffling around of land use patterns, millions spent on roadways, and very little to show for it.

Sad that I remember when this intersection was all farm fields and apple orchards...I'm getting old.

What do you think, do gandolas have a role in GR's future transit system? http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/04/golden-age-gondolas-might-be-just-around-corner/5220/#slide1

Here! Here!

Confusing the two ultimately confuses the public, as they legitimately are different technologies and applications. Commuter rail is heavy rail as exemplified in Austin and San Diego above. Austin, as it appears, did a good job in attempting to blend the look to appear more "Light rail-esque". The greatest distinguishing factor is the separation between the stations (due to braking and acceleration abilities), headways, and if it can be blended in with an urban road system. Minneapolis and Charlotte both primarily rely on existing rail right-of-way, but they do get integrated into the street infrastructure at times (as do Phoenix, Denver, Portland, et al). Commuter rail would be more effective connecting GR with say Holland (ex. Miami, Orlando, MERTA - Chicago, VRE - DC/Virginia). Light rail is a more realistic application for inclusion within the streets city -- say Division, the 131 boulevard, to woodland and then to the airport. While I do have a bit of a light rail addiction, I do agree with JohnE that true BRT might be a better fit for GR. GR doesn't have the rate of population or economic growth that dictates the additional cost. True BRT (the Silver Line shares most of the qualities for "true BRT" but not entirely) can facilitate the same level of real estate development.

Your example above is "commuter rail", not "light rail". Two very different technologies and applications.

Not to ruin the party, but anyone willing to bet that it is not New Holland? I am beginning to sense a trend that many of the merchants will be opening branches of existing businesses. I hope we get some new concepts in the market as well.

The parking environment can certainly be improved, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that it is the primary problem. There are a confluence of circumstances, policy decisions, market forces, and development/design decisions that have led us to the retail market we have today. Parking is certainly one of the bundle of challenges. Mandating ground floor active uses ensures the minimum supply of space for retail. Additional strategies are needed to address a supply of better establishments and creating greater consumer demand. Artificially creating an active downtown retail scene is next to impossible, but there are certainly a myriad of policies that can facilitate a more robust retail scene.