Khorasaurus1

First look at the Soccer Stadium Tower...and a parking garage next to it? Is the north side of the stadium Blumrich Street? So that entrance in the top rendering is the corner of Blumrich and Winter? Will Blumrich be extended to Mt. Vernon? I'm very curious about what that corridor will look like - how will the first floors of the residential tower and parking garage (?) be activated?

Honestly, USL Championship seems right to me. Here are the cities in it - this list reminds me a lot of the Arena Football League. Louisville Detroit Hartford Charleston Birmingham Tampa Raleigh-Durham Miami Northern Virginia Indianapolis Providence Pittsburgh Orange County Sacramento Albuquerque Las Vegas San Antonio Monterey Phoenix Tulsa Oakland Memphis El Paso Colorado Springs

Raleigh got North Carolina's NHL team rather than Charlotte. Could GR get a "Michigan United" MLS team? Would be awesome. Unlikely, though. How exactly does USL work? Is there promotion and relegation? Which level is GR being targeted for?

Generally they default to the lowest spot on the property to avoid having to regrade. Which is frequently near the road.

The view coming south on the S-curve as you go over the river will be amazing. You'll be driving right into the skyline.

The arena was built for expansion. That's why it's a horseshoe with a weak southern facade. But that decision was made out of irrational 1990s exuberance. GR is never getting an NHL team (barring half of Phoenix moving here for climate reasons or something).

The jumbotron is a major revenue generator. They'd take out one of the grandstands before they take out the jumbotron.

There's no height restriction downtown, though. The 12 story muddle is caused by the market, not zoning. I agree with your point when it comes to neighborhood infill and the housing crisis, though. There should be more opportunity for 3-4 story buildings in outlying areas (as well as a larger area in the core with no height limit).

The market is such that they're not so much "vacating" 82 Ionia as creating an opportunity to add housing and refresh an older building. When the dust settles, this is likely to be a win-win.

We have that comic strip framed on the wall of our kitchen. There's also a Zippy about the old Rosie's Diner in Rockford (specifically the mini-golf course). I think he was standing next to the giant lemon meringue pie slice.

I agree, but I find it odd that Broadleaf appears to be succeeding in a random suburban location (and not even a high-visibility one!) but couldn't succeed on GR's trendiest nightlife corridor.

Interesting that it's being phrased that way - I had previously seen it as Ionia would be removed, Division would be shifted west, and the bike path would be built at the foot of the hill. Which is the same idea, just phrased differently. Just semantics (and street signs/addresses), but it will be interesting to see how the road names work. There's three names to work with - Division, Ionia, and Plainfield. Honestly, the simplest thing might be to call the whole thing Plainfield from the underpass north.

I think completing the bowl would help the concourse issue. The dead ends make the cramped feeling worse. Plus there's actually space to complete the bowl, and no space to widen the concourse.

What's going on here on the 1943 map? Louis, Pearl, and chunks of Ionia and Ottawa missing? They exist on earlier maps, and exist today. Is this just an error? Or were they closed to traffic for some reason in the 1940s?

Low Income Housing Tax Credits are competitive. It may be that they keep coming up short every time they go for funding, and they've finally found the right combination of factors to actually get the tax credits. Just speculating.