Khorasaurus1
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Posts posted by Khorasaurus1
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3 hours ago, Cookin_peacocks said:
Yeah, there was a goal of turning that lot into a ramp with linier retail spaces.
I'd have to imagine that's still a long term goal. Hopefully it'll be done soon ish with the amphitheatre going in and parking going to be squeezed. With air rights.
I still think this type of project is going to be on the wedge lot on Cesar Chavez owned by Ellis and soon.
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.
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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.
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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?
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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
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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?
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4 hours ago, RegalTDP said:
Question for the civil engineers in this forum: Is there an infrastructural reason for putting retention ponds by the road? Or is it an aesthetic landscaping choice? Seems like a lot of large suburban developments do this. Or maybe Wyoming's zoning won't allow for commercial developments there. I agree with GR8Scott as I would think there's a lot of traffic at this intersection coming up from M-6.
Generally they default to the lowest spot on the property to avoid having to regrade. Which is frequently near the road.
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4 hours ago, joeDowntown said:
I love the idea that there could soon be tall buildings on both sides of the expressway (as both most likely will be on the west side of US-131.
JoeThe view coming south on the S-curve as you go over the river will be amazing. You'll be driving right into the skyline.
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18 hours ago, Prankster said:
The problem that I have with their statement on expansion is the same thing they said when they built the arena.
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).
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5 hours ago, gvsusean said:
it looks like a somewhat nicer high school football stadium with a jumbotron (unless that gets value engineered out).
The jumbotron is a major revenue generator. They'd take out one of the grandstands before they take out the jumbotron.
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19 hours ago, arcturus said:
It doesn't seem to be an impediment to cities half our metro size with much taller skylines.
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).
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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.
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17 hours ago, walker said:
Well, the current owners, Matt Urbane and his wife, took it over in February of 2009 after it had been closed by the previous owner for about six months. They have done a lot of work and remodeling over the years. Maybe they are tired and think it is time to retire.
Back when it was closed in 2008 we had a discussion about it here and I contributed the comment and cartoon strip below -
I haven't seen this comic strip, Zippy the Pinhead, in a newspaper in years although it apparently still exists. It has sort of a hipster vibe to it and around here the Detroit News, one of the least hip newspapers ever, used to print it.
Here is a link to the urbanplanet post that Wingbert started about what looked to be its demise in 2008:
And if anyone cares, here is proof that Zippy the Pinhead is still around even though I haven't seen it in years in a newspaper:
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.
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1 hour ago, GR_Urbanist said:
GR has got to learn that if you want these places to remain in a central location, you have to support them, or else they will leave and park themselves out on some cheap suburban strip.
These places may love to wrap themselves in the "hip urban vibe", but if they cant make money, they arent going to remain to just be background scenery while paying high rents and taxes.
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.
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22 minutes ago, Cookin_peacocks said:
Looks like they are tearing a half mile stretch of Division out and turning it into a bike path while reconfiguring Ionia to carry that traffic.
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.
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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.
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15 hours ago, joeDowntown said:
For any history/map nerd out there, I just found a really cool site that takes old maps and superimposes them over Google maps. You can turn the opacity up or down to see now vs then. They have a pretty good collection of Grand Rapids maps. A lot of fun:
Joe
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?
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2 hours ago, joeDowntown said:
EDIT: I did a little more digging and it still seems like the "Keeler Flats I + II" concept from 2017 is still in play. They had proposed 132 apartments in 2017, and seem to still be going for funding.
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.
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11 hours ago, gvsusean said:
Yeah, they even used the same red and black color scheme… this is the true nail in the coffin for me in regards to arena football in GR (my favorite pro sport we ever had).
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!
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8 hours ago, joeDowntown said:
Looks like the solar power project is a go:
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.
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On 11/9/2023 at 10:39 PM, MJLO said:
Now that the US-31 interchange to I-94 is complete, the most likely route a hypothetical I-67 would take is along US-31 from Indy through South Bend. Then up the lakeshore along I-196. They are almost finished upgrading it to full freeway through Indiana.
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.
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43 minutes ago, Zads said:
Why is that the only thing preventing 131 from becoming an interstate? Are there other factors?
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.
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2 hours ago, arcturus said:
Just put pedal to the metal. It's one of the shortest on-ramps I've experienced.
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.
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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.
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3 hours ago, gvsusean said:
Just out of curiosity, why do they want it separated from the museum?
To make the river walk more seamless.
But I figured the new "skywalk" would be covered. Weird that it's outside.
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Grand Rapids Restaurant Rumor Mill
in Grand Rapids
Posted
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.