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Medical Mile/Michigan Street Developments


joeDowntown

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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.

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12 hours ago, mielsonwheels said:

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.png), 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.

 

I just use "Snipping Tool" on Windows and then "Copy" the image over to Paint. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've always loved that little building. My parents would stop there on some weekends before we went down the street to the 5&10 in the 80s. Always hoped it would be reused as a drive-up pharmacy or Starbucks.

 

It fit really well in that spot, and I'm never thrilled with taking down part of a street wall for such a goofy reason as "safety for vehicles and pedestrians, trying to create better viewing angles,". How about just a sign telling people to look both ways before crossing?

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  • 1 month later...

There's a very comprehensive "Memorandum of Understanding" being reviewed by the City Commission on Feb. 9th, between GVSU, NOBL and the city of GR related to developing a master plan for all of the land that GVSU now owns North of I-196. 

If you want to read the whole thing:

http://grcity.us/city-clerk/CityCommission/020916epsec.pdf

(starts on page 101. 

GVSU has hired SmithGroupJJR to develop the master plan. It sounds like the main goals are not to completely demolish the entire 5 blocks, when GVSU only plans to do the project in phases. It also mentions GVSU working closely with the city and neighbors to make the project harmonious with its surroundings. 

Good on them (whoever is pushing for this), and good for GVSU for being open to this dialogue. 

GVSU Property (2).jpg

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2 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

There's a very comprehensive "Memorandum of Understanding" being reviewed by the City Commission on Feb. 9th, between GVSU, NOBL and the city of GR related to developing a master plan for all of the land that GVSU now owns North of I-196. 

If you want to read the whole thing:

http://grcity.us/city-clerk/CityCommission/020916epsec.pdf

(starts on page 101. 

GVSU has hired SmithGroupJJR to develop the master plan. It sounds like the main goals are not to completely demolish the entire 5 blocks, when GVSU only plans to do the project in phases. It also mentions GVSU working closely with the city and neighbors to make the project harmonious with its surroundings. 

Good on them (whoever is pushing for this), and good for GVSU for being open to this dialogue. 

GVSU Property (2).jpg

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. :blink:

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.

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36 minutes ago, mielsonwheels said:

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. :blink:

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.

 

So the first building would be in the Lafayette to Prospect block, and not the Clancy to Lafayette block? That's interesting. 

There aren't any renderings or site plans in the city's packet, that I could see. 

 

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5 hours ago, arcturus said:

Curious about the neighborhood ... is it primarily rental homes?

From what I know of, the neighborhood is about 1/2 and 1/2. I believe that GVSU only had to buy out a couple of landlords in the blocks they bought to tie up the whole area. But as you get over by Coit Academy, I think it's more owner occupied. 

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  • 2 months later...

WP_20160423_12_43_23_Pro.jpg

The new "park" at the corner of Michigan St. and Lafayette Avenue. I'll withhold final judgement, and give it a chance, although I would like it better if the opposite side of this busy intersection wasn't populated with a walled parking lot and some ragged abandoned car repair shop that looks to never be redeveloped. Those street lights dont add to the ambiance either.

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24 minutes ago, john_denver said:

Yeah, still a very bleak corner but did you Photoshop all the cars out?

I think Martha's Vineyard owns that form gas station on the SE corner.  Also, I think someone is still living in the house next to the old gas station.

 

They are definitely the last vestiges of the old neighborhood.  With the gang busters developments going on i'm suprised those eyesores along with the Spectrum parking lots haven't seen proposals.

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13 hours ago, GR_Urbanist said:

WP_20160423_12_43_23_Pro.jpg

The new "park" at the corner of Michigan St. and Lafayette Avenue. I'll withhold final judgement, and give it a chance, although I would like it better if the opposite side of this busy intersection wasn't populated with a walled parking lot and some ragged abandoned car repair shop that looks to never be redeveloped. Those street lights dont add to the ambiance either.

That wall looks like a perfect spot for a mural, gateway into the medical mile. ArtPrize is coming up. 

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  • 1 month later...

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2016/06/gvsu_receives_state_support_fo.html#incart_2box_news_grand-rapids

GVSU Receiving a $29million boost from the state for a new health sciences building.  This to go on the parking lot east of the Cook-Devos building at Michigan and Lafayette.  I didn't realize they were also in the progress of building next to their facility on Michigan as well.  All the news I have heard over the past few months was they were progressing on a spot at Lafayette and Hastings.  

It would be bad ass to have the rest of the parking lots and old buildings on Michigan transformed into 6-10 story buildings up to Mcdonald's I wonder how long we'd have to wait to see that. :) 

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On 6/10/2016 at 5:28 AM, MJLO said:

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2016/06/gvsu_receives_state_support_fo.html#incart_2box_news_grand-rapids

GVSU Receiving a $29million boost from the state for a new health sciences building.  This to go on the parking lot east of the Cook-Devos building at Michigan and Lafayette.  I didn't realize they were also in the progress of building next to their facility on Michigan as well.  All the news I have heard over the past few months was they were progressing on a spot at Lafayette and Hastings.  

It would be bad ass to have the rest of the parking lots and old buildings on Michigan transformed into 6-10 story buildings up to Mcdonald's I wonder how long we'd have to wait to see that. :) 

Wow, when I saw that headline, I thought it was referring to the project North of 196. Can't believe we haven't seen any renderings yet for a project that just got a huge boost in funding from the State. 

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1 hour ago, GRDadof3 said:

Wow, when I saw that headline, I thought it was referring to the project North of 196. Can't believe we haven't seen any renderings yet for a project that just got a huge boost in funding from the State. 

It'll be interesting to see if they work on both buildings at the same time. Definitely  would go a long way to building a full Health campus on the hill. 

Joe

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On 6/11/2016 at 10:08 AM, joeDowntown said:

It'll be interesting to see if they work on both buildings at the same time. Definitely  would go a long way to building a full Health campus on the hill. 

Joe

Here's the capital outlay request. Describes the programs and size a bit more but no imagery. Would it make sense to create a building that compliments the current building? Or do totally different? 

https://www.gvsu.edu/cms4/asset/83D77566-0FCE-1482-0E85CB93ACE30B91/capital_outlay_request_2017_priority_1_final.pdf

So the properties would be across the highway from one another. 

27611657886_9a80afb48f_b.jpg

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  • 1 month later...

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