Sparty97

For those that missed it, Gravel Bottom is re-opening on May 11th in their new location. They will have 20 beers on tap that day. https://www.facebook.com/GravelBottom/videos/1847096478687075/

Speaking of restaurants near that corner, another restaurant is planned for this fall. Bonchon Chicken (Bonchon is an international chain known for its Korean fried chicken and wings.) http://www.grbj.com/articles/90513-south-korean-restaurant-chain-entering-west-michigan-market?utm_source=MagnetMail&utm_medium=email&[email protected]&utm_content=2732%3A%20GRBJ%20Daily%3A%20Holding%20company%20shutting%20down%20fu&utm_campaign=GRBJ%20Daily%3A%20Holding%20company%20shutting%20down%20furniture%20brand

RE: Knapp's corner - That makes a few empty restaurants on that corner with Bagger Dave's and Menchie's closing recently. I'll be curious to see if Potbelly and Freshii make it much longer. They never seem busy when I am over there. Is the "Building D", where Bar Louie is slated to go, being built right now? Can't tell what all is being constructed over there...

I will be interested in seeing the plans and the specific location (on the property). Could be a really nice setting. That property borders the White Pine Trail but it seems like it is set on a pretty steep hill. Might be able to attract a lot of the runners, cyclists, etc. that are on the trail if it is close enough. Might be able to work with some organizations like LLS Team in Training or JDRF Ride to Cure to do some of their team rides/runs starting there.

I'm trying to imagine what that might look like. There would be little need to do something that goes East/West with 96 running so far North of town. I would assume it would just be the Beltline made into a freeway, extended up and cutting over to 131 around Post Drive or so. I think we are more likely to see the East Beltline add a couple of lanes or maybe even eventually turn into something like Lakeshore drive in Chicago (quasi-freeway) to help speed people North to Rockford/Cedar Springs after working in Ada, Kentwood, Lansing, Caledonia, etc..

The difference is that the HopCat crack fries have a cult following in GR. Crack Fries are something that everyone knows about and people will go there just to try it at least once. I know people like my dad have never been to the downtown location (and probably never will) but I can see taking him there when he is visiting us on the NE side. I've never been to the other locations (tried to get into the East Lansing location once but the line was 2 hours...) and I'll be curious how it compares. Next, they need to bring a Stella's to us somewhere in the burbs (or maybe bring The Queso Jalapeno burger to the new HopCat). :-)

This will be extremely busy. We will be frequenting this location often. Can't wait.

Parking is not obvious. For people that just Google the address and then try to find parking after they are there, it can be very confusing. I've been there 3-4 times and never thought to park in Lot 7 or 8. I've always circled the next few blocks (West and North) (& complained to everyone in my truck) until I found something on the street.

I'm trying to understand the parking details. Maybe I missed some of the initial details but there does seem to be a significant change from what has been initially reported. Right now the City of Grand Rapids has Arena Lot 4 and Arena Lot 5 with a total of 595 spots. All of these will be gone during the construction (we knew this) and now we're hearing that the City will only have a lease for around 300 spots after the construction (reduction of 295 spots). The city has always insinuated that they would have more spots and not less after construction. They even still have something to this effect on their website. http://grcity.us/enterprise-services/Parking-Services/Pages/New-Area-4-and-5-Options.aspx. Has anyone heard anything on how will the other 610 spots (of the 910 total) be managed? Is there some other arrangement for public parking that makes up for the almost 300 lost spots? Specifically, regarding the monthly parking passes for people working downtown. I'm assuming that some of these 610 spaces will go to the new residents living in the apartments/condos on the property and then some others will be for the businesses going into this development (Loeks employees, etc.).

I'm rooting for them to come through in their datacenter buildout. I think the impact to Grand Rapids can be significant. I'm just pointing out the stark difference between what we were told in the sales cycle and what has actually happened. When we visited in the fall of 2016, they told us that they would be full in the pyramid by December 2016 (State of Michigan was already in there) and would have availability in their new SuperNap by summer of 2017... They also said that Grand Rapids was the site for the entire East Coast, but now I see Atlanta. We saw a lot of red flags (they had some obvious engineering challenges with building out all the datacenters in the Pyramid) and went in a different direction.

A year ago they promised one of their larger Tier 5 colocations would be built by summer of 2017. They still haven't broken ground on that. The fact that they are only 54% full in the pyramid may be is a sign of slowing sales or maybe a lack of commitment to Grand Rapids (I noticed that they are building another location in Atlanta).

It does sound like it is just about a done deal though. "Michels said he’s about “90-percent sure” ". Also found this interesting in the MIBIZ article https://mibiz.com/item/25133-ada-brewery-eyes-closed-mc-sports-store-in-gr-for-satellite-taproom,-production-facility : The drive to open a satellite brewery outside of Ada came as Michiels started doing the math for expanding production within the village and realized it didn’t make financial sense — or fit the character of the walkable, retail-driven area — to build a larger manufacturing facility there. According to Michiels, rents in Ada fell in the $23-per-square-foot range, while the new satellite location gets the company closer to the $6-per-square-foot range needed to keep overhead low to make distributing beer economically feasible. It's hard to argue with costs at only 26% of the new rates in Ada.

I stopped in this morning to grab some coffee from Rowsters. It has some of the same feel as the Plainfield store but a lot more light and open space. Decent beer selection (like Plainfield) and they had the same wall of bulk food (like Plainfield). I didn't check out Fish Lads or Carver's.

The direct route requirements were New York, Washington D.C, Seattle and the Bay area. GRR has direct flights to New York (LaGuardia and Newark) and Washington D.C. (Nat'l and Dulles) but it lacks the direct Seattle and Bay area flights. I could see those two cities added if they came, but I don't know if one of the requirements is that they are already established routes. We do have direct flights to Phoenix and Las Vegas, I imagine it would not take a lot more effort to get those established. http://www.grr.org/nonstop-routes.php The cost of living, proximity to the Switch datacenter, proximity to Lake Michigan/beaches, cool beer/art scene, etc. could help.

I'm assuming that the (P) means proposed? That would mean that only Neruorcore and Chow Hound are confirmed/signed.

I keep hearing of business after business in Ada shutting down. Saburba being one of the latest due to construction, traffic flow, etc. Their revenues were down something like 35-40%. I've also heard that a few other successful businesses, that will be losing their current location, are researching leases in buildings outside of Ada due the drastic increase in costs with the new construction. I'm wondering how long after construction is complete before Ada can get back to where they were a year or two ago. Is there a lot of interest from other businesses to move in??

I'm sure that app is great but that only works for people that are downtown randomly. The issue is that people who work downtown (9-10 hours a day) don't want to pay for parking by the hour or by the day. $151/month for the Pearl Ionia is a lot cheaper than paying $18/day for the 20-22 days a month ($360 to $396) we're there.

Management Business Solutions moves out of downtown partly due to parking. http://www.grbj.com/articles/88132-staffing-firm-moves-out-of-downtown Moving Floriza Genautis, MBS owner and founder, estimated the former space was about 1,200 square feet. The firm’s eight employees and two interns didn’t have enough desk space, and the firm’s planning to grow its staff. Genautis also said the lack of access to affordable and convenient parking was a factor in the decision to move. “As we increase employees and start hiring…we pay for parking for everyone,” Genautis said. “It’s gotten a little harder for employees to go to DASH lots, especially in the winter time. It was making it harder to attract talent. It was a small portion of the decision but not entirely.” She said the decision to leave downtown was not easy. “We love Grand Rapids, and we wanted to stay there, but there was a shortage of properties available to purchase,” Genautis said. “We looked at downtown, near downtown....I love downtown and being able to be there and be walking distance to clients, festivals, events, but there wasn’t anything available. We needed parking and space.”

My wife gives me grief about this all the time... I think the original name of the supercenter's was Meijer's Thrifty Acres .... or that is how I remember it. Everyone I know from the olden days adds the "S" when they say the name... Also, one of the originals was called Meijer's Thrift Super Market (see below). I grew up just outside of Ionia (3rd Meijers store after Greenville and Cedar Springs...). I've also seen that they used names such as Meijer's Super Market and Meijer's Thrift Market.

So, we considered moving one of our DR sites to Switch early last fall. We toured the facility and didn't think the pyramid would be ready in time for us (Late 2016). We also got the impression that the pyramid building was taking a lot of new engineering since it wasn't purpose built for a data center (with the exception of the space Steelcase had used). They were building out racks in a very high ceiling room with lots of windows... They also did a lot of things "for show". An example is that they had wallpaper that made it look like walls were re-inforced concrete. The security guards looked like they were ready for a gun fight (think SWAT team) which in the cybersecurity world is not the biggest vulnerability... Our needs for this co-location data center was small (3-4 racks) and we got the impression they really were focused on the very large customers like Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. and not focused on smaller clients (ie. their response to our questions was very delayed or nonexistent. We will definitely reconsider them once they have their purpose built buildings done (and our contracts with other colocation providers are up for renewal). I did like the fact they had lots of workspace recovery options and I think this could be a real cool spot for an office if you were a cloud company.

Here is a drone video just released by the Ada Business Association...

We love Saburba also (great food and great people), but we are only in downtown Ada every so often. I'm hoping that once some of the road construction lessens, then the foot traffic will find them again.

Not sure that Ann Arbor is the best example. Ann Arbor built a new ramp (677 spots) in 2013 and still have a multi-year wait list for almost all of the lots. They are now worried about growth and considering more parking. http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2016/07/dda_might_build_more_public_pa_1.html The fact there are 40,000 students attending UMAA and living in downtown Ann Arbor does skew the public transportation numbers a bit...

People in suburbs are not going to take a bus to work. They will just select jobs outside of downtown where they can drive to. Time is precious and people move to Grand Rapids in part because "everything is only 20 minutes away". This seems like a disaster waiting to happen. There will be less parking spots when some of these construction projects take off (example: Celebration Cinema and Lots 4/5).

I saw this the other day. I'm still not 100% sure where Area 8 and 9 are. I'm almost certain they are not right downtown. So, essentially, if you get a job downtown, you will have to take a bus or have someone drop you off. Not a good situation to be in. Thank goodness I already have my monthly pass.