Ted

Nobody struggles more with our friends at the city and our neighbors on citizen committees more than me, but, I think we need to keep proper score here. At Cherry and Eastern, the neighborhood and the developer are trying to thread a needle. Everyone has been working in good faith but it obviously hasn't come out of the ground yet. I expect that it will. The HPC doesn't have anything to do with the delays at that site. The HPC approved the new building at the Dollar General site. A cynical lawsuit put an end to that project. And, Valley City Linen's expansion lies outside any Historic District. Their expansion complies with the zoning ordinance and they've been willing to make changes based on community comments - all stuff good neighbors do. Valley City is a critical employer of people in our neighborhood. I'm thankful that they've decided to expand in place rather than leave the city. Pretty or not, that expansion is important and good.

Rendering by Interface Studio as part of GRForward. http://interface-studio.com/projects/grand-rapids

+1 No way this project happens.

Hey, Ryan! We've been through this before, haven't we? There have been no changes to the Secretary's Standards since we did our project. You're wrong.

It's true.

Skateboarding is not a crime.

Wyoming and Kentwood are trying to change but I don't think they've succeeded yet.

One reason apartments haven't been built along Division is that our zoning ordinance hasn't been modified to align with our transit investments. Any project of any size and will be a site by site battle for density increases. Costly and time consuming. It's a problem.

GRBJ has quite literally been writing this same opinion piece since the '80's

I suggest something like this...

Shouldn't this process to have some consistency?

I don't see it in their submittal, do you?

42 stories is a big deal. The idea that they're not able/willing to invest in their public presentation graphics to properly showcase their design changes in the best possible light is short sighted and ridiculous.

Funny that nowhere in the submittal do they show a full color rendering of the building, on the proposed site, with its neighbors. Not cool that they're able to even get an audience with this level of detail.

That was an old rendering from an old competition. Not valid for this current effort. Design work has not started yet.