Khorasaurus1

I figured that the reason that building is a 12 story blob is so the rest of the skyline (including Charley's Crab/Fulton-Market, please!) will be visible.

I'd rephrase this as "the era of GR being a mature urban market that doesn't need big, 'transformative' projects and instead has a stready pipeline of medical, hospitality, residential, and neighborhood infill going all the time."

Slightly odd that they didn't put any conceptual buildings on the Chatlie's Crab/Fulton-Market sites. I would assume those will actually develop before the non-Amphitheater sites at 201 Market given their location and the lack of demo/amphitheater construction needed.

I wonder if the billboard pre-dates the historic district. Clearly there was a time when tearing down entire blocks, modernist hospitals with big setbacks, and theme park " Bavarian" buildings (as much as I miss the Schnitzelbank) were OK in that area.

They're probably planning to use the billboard income to help finance the project.

Very cool! The location stinks, but that's not going to change. There are two reasons to not put a stadium downtown - either "no one goes downtown" or "downtown land is too expensive." When the ballpark was planned, the first one was true. Now, the second one is true. So if it's going to be sandwiched between 131 and the river, far from downtown and even disconnected from Comstock Park, at least it can be a state of the art facility.

MLive published it a decade ago. It was 1960's vision for 1975 Grand Rapids. I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the Jefferson "Freeway" (?)

I think Heritage Hill's historic designation came about to prevent this from happening:

I agree it probably needs to be changed. I suspect they thought 4 stories with an option for a fifth was pushing the market when the ordinance was written several years ago. Apparently that was actually an undersell. A 4 story limit if you don't provide riverfront access, and unlimited height if you do, would probably make more sense. That's the defining urban form of Midtown Atlanta, too. And GR already has a mini-version with Heritage Hill and the Medical Mile being right next to each other. If you stand at the corner of Lyon and Lafayette, you are surrounded by trees and front porches, but with two tower cranes looming overhead.

I think the height limits in that area are set artificially low so developers opt-in to the optional height bonus that comes with allowing public access to the river.

Honestly, hiring John Gibbs is the biggest red flag to me. Again, not because he's a Republican or even a politician, but because he has zero experience in local government. County Administrator is not a political job. It's a management job. Management of the people who make everyday life work - snow plow drivers, sheriff's deputies, parks maintenance people, planners, engineers, economic development professionals, health department professionals, environmental regulators, etc. They fired a highly competent (by all accounts) professional and hired someone completely unqualified. It makes it look like they don't care about County services functioning, which is bad news for businesses. Especially, as I said, with the housing shortage and water table problem, which require serious solutions from competent, experienced people.

No, this is new. Ottawa County has always been Republican, obviously. But the problem with these people isn't that they're Republicans. It's that they clearly have no interest in running the County effectively and they're just going to do outlandish things that will get them attention nationally on cable news and social media. That's a stark contrast to the "small but effective" government that has long been the County's guiding philosophy. It's particularly troubling given the County's water table and housing issues - two problems that are making each other worse. I doubt Ottawa Impact even cares. Ottawa County is actually less Republican than it used to be. Rick Snyder won the county by 60 points (!!) Tudor Dixon only won it by 18.

It's not clear to me why this didn't happen 20 years ago, but better late than never.

While it's definitely true that ADU regulations frequently end up being "of course you can do that! Just follow this list of a couple dozen byzantine rules!" as an attempt to compromise between the NIMBYs and the housing activists, there's also an economic problem with building them in GR. While rents are certainly high here, relative to the past, they aren't at California/East Coast/Chicago levels. Plus materials costs are still high and interest rates are rising. All of that means that buying an existing house and then building a quality ADU on the same property costs a lot of money - far more than can be recouped in renting out a single housing unit. So ADUs are much more likely to happen because someone with disposable income or a lot of equity in their home wants the extra space for a relative - generally a retiree or young adult - to be able to live rent-free but still have their own space. But even that is getting squeezed by interest rates and materials costs.

This is all predicated on those dingy buildings being redeveloped as currently proposed. I agree that every solution other than tunneling the freeway will have the major flaw of .... the freeway existing in the first place. But that's not changing.

Here's the 131 discussion: There's definitely no plan to put traffic lights on 131. But right now it goes under MLK, over the tracks, under Wealthy, and over Cherry, and probably has too many exits/entrances, which makes it dangerous for drivers and creates literal walls for pedestrians. Elevating it continuously and removing some ramps would allow more connections underneath and safer driving above. The big question is which ramps to keep and how to align them. Also, removing the big Wealthy overpass would restore intersections at Wealthy/Commerce and Wealthy/Century, which is really important given the hundreds of new residents in the projects proposed near those intersections.

This also creates some urgency to the redesign of 131 and bringing Wealthy down to grade.

It was originally half the width it is now along Scribner. I don't remember exactly when it was expanded, though. I think the culprits for that are 131 and 196, which cut that area off from everything around it.

Hard to figure out where to start, especially because the State, Feds, and Courts have no interest in spending just for "better urbanism", and the City and County are unlikely to do much, either, since their buildings are "part of the Calder sculpture." The parking lot next to 5/3 might be an opportunity to better enclose the plaza. And there might be some opportunities to pull storefronts to the curb adjacent to the private office buildings, like the RDV HQ building did.

Yes, that's correct. Part of the idea that Calder Plaza was the "new downtown." Downtown came to a hard edge at Fulton (or even Louis) in those days.

The center of gravity has moved down closer to where Central Station is, though. Calder Plaza is now one of the least active/vibrant parts of downtown. Plus it's served by plenty of transit as is. But the gigantic parking lot where the old GRATA station was seems like a great opportunity for medical expansion, housing, etc. And yet no one ever talks about it as a possibility.

At least Ottawa got the fronts of those buildings. Ionia was ruined so badly that we don't even talk about the old GRATA bus terminal as a development opportunity...

Acrisure can make the corner of Ottawa and Oakes a "prominent location" simply by building there. Studio Park, Founders, Van Andel Arena, etc are already close by, as well as hotels, other major white collar employers (Miller Johnson, Meritage, etc), and a whole bunch of housing, restaurants, entertainment, etc. They can make that area one of the economic cores of the City! Leave the riverfront for housing.

Great site for solar. These leftover spaces in suburbs are perfect for that kind of land use.

I'm pumped that they are even open to something like this, because I figured those parking lots would be there for decades. But it doesn't seem imminent because it doesn't seem to have the necessary legwork done to start construction in the next 1-2 years. But I could totally see a crane in the air in the middle of the decade.