Chester Cheeto

GVSU will be presenting plans for their first building on their "Belknap" campus at the Coit school gym on Wednesday April 13th at 6pm for any interested parties.

A few update shots of the projects going up. First is Clancy Lofts. The second building is now going vertical. The Gateway corner opposite the restaurant site. And finally the fourth brownstone by Artesian is going much faster than I had realized.

An update shot of the Gateway.

Is this going to coincide with the restructuring of the on and off ramps to I-196?

This reminds me of the Gateway in Salt Lake City. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_District. Outdoor mall with a movie theater among other things, although since the City Center mall a half mile away opened in SLC this place seems to have fallen on some hard times. http://www.sltrib.com/news/2063536-155/slump-deepens-at-salt-lake-citys. That's a shame, my wife and I really enjoyed strolling around that place when we lived in Ogden, made for a nice day trip.

Some progress on the Gateway. Walls being framed around the restaurant area and a second stairwell is going vertical.

F. (2:40 p.m.) Clancy, Matilda, Lafayette Rezoning Address: 57, 126, & 128 Coldbrook St NE, 915, 1025 & 1027 Clancy Ave NE, 201 Matilda St NE, and 904 Lafayette Ave NE Applicant: City of Grand Rapids Requesting: To rezone the subject properties from SD-IT Special Districts – Industrial Transportation and TN-LDR Traditional Neighborhoods – Low-Density Residential to TN-TCC Traditional Neighborhoods – Transitional City Center to facilitate future mixed-use development This caught my eye looking at that agenda. Maybe somebody with better posting skills could put together a map that shows where all these properties are in the neighborhood. I wonder if somebody has a project or two waiting in the wings for those lots. Also, there is a neighborhood meeting March 8th to discuss a potential development at 613 Fairview, again. Last time the developer had quite a lot of pushback from neighbors regarding his project, I would love to attend this again just to watch tempers rise, but some recent family additions have made getting out of the house rather difficult.

Adding some back lit lettering similar to what is in this picture sure could make the building 'pop' at night.

I wonder if it was intentional to not have a rendering of the south elevation of this building. I'm guessing they are secretly hoping to not have to do anything with that hideous mass of metal wall panel (in my amateur architectural opinion) that covers it right now since it will be covered up by a parking ramp.

How rude!

I believe I first heard about it last Sept/Oct or so, so anywhere from 4-6 months... I think he said his plan was for a spring/summer start. And I saw your project update post from last week, but with how fast they are moving, especially on the Gateway project, I'll try to get a weekly update.

I'll try to get some new pictures of both the Gateway and Clancy Lofts projects sometime this week, with the weather being a bit nicer it's been easier to motivate myself to get the dog out for a walk. In new development news, the Artesian Group has released a nice video showing their newest project: http://www.theartesiangroup.net/untitled.html This is the block between Trowbridge/Fairbanks and Coit and the shared alley with the Clancy Lofts project. The garages shown at about the 30 second mark are the alley side of the project (in case it isn't that obvious).

Has anybody heard what else might be going up on this site, besides maybe a parking ramp? I thought I read somewhere proposals were being asked for sometime late last year.

There was this artical on MLive last year. http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2015/06/roundabout_reconfigured_i-196.html

Great! I can actually park in front of my house again instead of 2 blocks away. In the winter, the hospital employees didn't pay attention to the odd/even parking signs on the streets, so when a plow would eventually make its way to our street they would just plow in the cars that lined both sides of the street. On Wednesday nights I would pull my trash/recycling bins out to the street for the Thursday morning pick up only to come home from work to find them still full of trash because some hospital employee had pulled my bins up off the street back into my yard so they could squeeze into a spot that half blocked my neighbors driveway, it was infuriating. I still see plenty of people in scrubs everyday walking a few extra blocks to take advantage of the streets further north that don't have the permit parking requirement. Funny story, ok, maybe funny for me only, but here I go. Sometime in the summer last year, a city parking employee came to our street and mistakenly removed the permit parking signs right in front of my house, and they came swarming back like mosquitoes. I had a couple go arounds with the parking department pleading with them to get the signs back and thankfully they realized their mistake. A day or two after the signs went back up, some girl, who loved to park in front of my house at 6:30AM and would sit there on her phone for like 20 minutes with her music blaring, decided one day that she was going to just back up into my car and park, with her bumper using my bumper as a rest stop. I was walking down my stairs so I saw this happen, so I run outside in my PJs and start yelling at her through her rolled up window. After a few seconds when she actually notices me outside her car screaming, which she couldn't her because of the music and all, cracks her window and I let her know what just happened, so she assures me her car comes with a back up feature that beeps when you get too close to something. I let her know what I think of such a feature and that this street is again permit parking, so she goes screaming off somewhere never to be seen again. After reading that story, I feel I should explain I'm not some 60 year old man who goes running after kids in a bathrobe telling them to stay off my lawn, I'm a 31 year old man who does that (just kidding)

I was at the neighborhood meeting at Coit Creative Arts back in Nov/Dec of last year where GVSU had SmithGroupJJR come in and just talk about how they were going to go about putting together a master plan, their due diligence process, and a time table for certain milestones they would like to meet. Nothing concrete, no plan, just kind of an introduction of GVSU and SmithGroup to the neighborhood and how they were looking forward to working with the neighborhood to create a plan that benefits GVSU, the city, and and the neighborhood. And let me tell you, I applaud the people of GVSU and SmithGroupJJR for their patience and restraint. In the powerpoint presentation, there was a picutre like what GRDadof3 included of the property GVSU bought, only much simpler, with a single line indicating the roads. One observant member of the audience stands up and asks how they plan on incorporating the new construction into the neighborhood if they are putting fences up around everything to block themselves off from the neighborhood. The GVSU rep just kinda looks dumbfounded at this individual, looks at the screen, and as graciously as possible lets this individual know that the line shown in the graphic around the GVSU property is a line indicating the street, not a fence. Anyways, GVSU had a preliminary layout of the block between Lafayette and Prospect, where, roughly, the bottom third of the block would be a new academic building, the middle third would be a 2(?) story parking deck, and the top third would be left open to a private developer to put in some sort of housing, their rendering showed a 2-3 story apartment building with retail on the ground floor along Lafayette. I meant to take a picture of the site layout but I had to leave the meeting before it was done. I'm pretty sure the timeline for that block was to start sometime this summer, maybe somebody with more know how will be able to get their hands on the rendering they had at that meeting.

This is just a pipedream, but that surface lot just south of the Keeler has a lot of potential. If they were to do a ramp there with ground floor retail/restaurants, I imagine anything that would go in there would have to try really hard to be unsuccessful. First of all, whatever they do with the Keeler (offices/residential) would put a large number of people just next door, then you have the Civic across Library, where people could stop in for a meal before or after a show. Across Division is 82 Ionia, which KCAD/Ferris could very well turn that into student housing, with some retail hopefully on the ground floor as well. Then just a short hop away is the newly populated Morton. That lot is somewhat central to the Civic, the public library, Childrens museum and the Veterans Memorial Park, they could do something to try and make this a cultural 'hub'. Like I said, just a pipedream of mine. As someone who lives in Belknap and walks downtown fairly often, the stretch of Division from Michigan to about Fulton is rather uninspiring and boring to walk. I will typically either walk through Heritage Hill or head on over to Ionia/Ottawa before turning south.

Well I sure was surprised on my way home from work yesterday to see steel going up on the Gateway project. Also they have dug down quite a bit under where the apartment portion of this project will be and have started a rather tall foundation wall along Clancy, does anyone know if there will be underground parking for this project? It was tough to get a good picture of the size of the foundation wall. And across Trowbridge there is now this: They have started going vertical on the right most building on the previous picture with the foundations going in for the two middle buildings.

FB comment: "Building in transition, city closing the sidewalk indefinitely, and especially slow sales" I guess I was hoping you could fill in some more details regarding the building transition part.

Anything you can or are willing to share?

Foundations for both projects are going in. Every morning when I'm leaving for the office, there are usually a few trucks outside the lofts project waiting to haul away mounds of dirt. Clancy Lofts: And the Gateway: This is from the corner of Coit and Hastings where they say the restaurant will be. I took that pic a few days ago and they have already made a ton more progress on the foundation.

Sorry for the crappy quality photo, but it gives you an idea of the size compared to the Rowe.

I could have sworn that was going to be green space, not a parking lot.

They have started moving dirt on the Clancy Lofts project!! A crew has been out there staking and leveling the site for the past week or so. I guess the plan is to build the rowhouse building first nearest the convenience store at Clancy and Fairbanks. After that, it's any bodies guess when they will do anything else on this site. The Artesian Group is also gearing up for another big project on the 600 block of Coit. If you go to their Facebook page they posted some renderings of the condo buildings that would fill the entire block. Essentially that entire block would come down except for a house or two. I guess there is going to be a ground breaking ceremony next Monday, the 23rd, for the Gateway project by Orion. At least that site won't be a dirt pit eye sore like the Clancy Lofts has been for the past year and a half. And lastly, there was a neighborhood development meeting about a month ago where a developer was planning on putting in townhomes/condos along Fairview just north of the houses where Trowbridge dead ends at the bluff, which I thought looked nice and would've been a nice addition to the neighborhood with the condos overlooking Monroe North, but the home owners of the Trowbridge houses literally said "not in my backyard"... And just like that they essentially ran that developer out of the neighborhood.

I meant to post this earlier, but I've been busy with some new additions to the family. GVSU had a neighborhood meeting a few weeks back and showed the tentative plan for their first building in Belknap. Their plan is to start with the block between Hastings/Trowbridge and Lafayette/Prospect. The academic building would be on the corner of Hastings and Lafayette and run the length of the block along Hastings. North of the building would be a parking ramp (no mention if it was screened in [emoji57]), and then they said they were going to designate 140' from Trowbridge going south to some sort of private development of mixed use buildings, trying to replace the units they would have to tear down with an increased density multilevel apartment/condo building and ground floor retail. I didn't get an opportunity to snap any pictures of their renderings unfortunately. If someone has a tutorial on how to do the fancy maps I see on this site using what I assume is Google maps and Microsoft paint, I can try my hand at making a crude site plan.