Khorasaurus1

Very cool, but kind of surprising. I would have thought in-building delis in stand-alone, isolated office buildings were an antiquated business model post-Covid.

I would assume the biggest impediment to a parking garage/retail/housing on the backside of the arena is keeping the loading docks operational during construction. It wouldn't be hard to design the building around them, but during construction it might be hard to get events staged. Little Caesar's Arena is a good example of how loading docks can be hidden in parking garages. Of course, that green space/blank wall was supposed to be residential, but Ilitches gonna Ilitch.

Interesting! I'm not a huge fan of the massing or implied architecture, but I love the land use, which could definitely just have been a parking garage. The liner building on the south will face a pedestrian walkway, which is interesting. I wonder if they'll try to put restaurants/bars there. Could end up being kind of a boom/bust thing, and might have to be inside the ticket gates in order to make sense. Interesting that all the light industrial buildings on the block bounded by Summer/Winter/Douglas/Blumrich are still standing in this picture. Generally with stadiums/arenas, anything like that nearby gets knocked down for parking/"future development." We'll see if those businesses stay in place. The housing along Seward would be great, but seems likely to be separate and not on the same timetable as the stadium. The fire station garage/liner building I could see happening quickly though, assuming the city will agree to move that fire station.

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.

What the hell? Iowa Barnstormers was a great name and brand (really cool helmets, especially), and the Rampage were ours. Makes no sense. Never take down the banner. The 2001 ArenaBowl was an amazing moment for the city. Packed house, thrilling pick 6 by Jojo Polk, and the crowd rushed the field afterward, all live on ABC. I mean, Brent freaking Musberger!

Better late than never. Having traffic and street lights powered by a dedicated solar farm seems really smart. They'll stay on when other power is out.

The US-31/I-94 interchange, while a huge improvement over what was there before, is not interstate standard. It's not even technically a freeway-to-freeway interchange. But I agree that routing is more likely for a future I-67 than upgrading 131 from Schoolcraft to the Indiana Toll Road.

Well, the biggest factor is that it doesn't actually go all the way to Indianapolis, like I-67 was originally planned to do back in the 1950s. But it's also not an interstate standard road from 28th Street to I-196. This project will eliminate a lot of the aspects that don't meet interstate standards, like the lack of shoulders and short ramps, but will leave that little ramp in place. It's highly unlikely to be re-numbered anyway, since that would cause confusion for no real purpose except to please road geeks.

It's possible when this is done that that ramp is the only thing preventing 131 from Schoolcraft to Cadillac from being numbered as an interstate.

I agree that having Wealthy go under 131 is the best option. A couple other things from the renderings: It looks like the current northbound ramp to Cherry is going to be converted into a surface-level roadway running from Wealthy to Cherry. So there would be one Wealthy/Cherry ramp from northbound 131. There's still a southbound ramp from Century to 131 under the MLK overpass. Like a little secret entrance for those in the know.

To make the river walk more seamless. But I figured the new "skywalk" would be covered. Weird that it's outside.