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Grand Rapids Then and Now


6th Gen local

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10 hours ago, EastownLeo said:

Was digging and saw this Downtown Development Projects document from 2006.  A good portion were completed.

http://grcity.us/design-and-development-services/Economic-Development/Documents/3403_Attachment%208%20-%20Downtown%20Development%20New%20Projects%202006.pdf

Ah, Tall House. Kind of glad it didn't get built with that huge setback. I also like the sketch of Gallery on Fulton better than what was built. 240 Ionia never got built (in that form) and the Tower Pinkster building would have changed the corner of Division and Fulton would have looked much different, but a lot of the proposed buildings now feel like they've been there forever. Hopefully the current crop of buildings slated make it and we all look back in awe at how much has changed. 

Joe

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On 5/30/2014 at 8:26 AM, mpchicago said:

Yes, it's painful to see all that was destroyed, but I'm fascinated by the historical background and pics.  It's interesting that both City Hall and the Court House, probably the most significant architectural structures in the area, where replaced with parking lots.  The site of the Court House remains partially parking today.  Unbelievable.

It's remarkable how many structures were turned into parking lots during the period of urban renewal.  When looking at that picture of Hong Kong Inn, it becomes equally remarkable to me how many of those parking lots have disappeared over the last 20 years.

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1 hour ago, MJLO said:

It's remarkable how many structures were turned into parking lots during the period of urban renewal.  When looking at that picture of Hong Kong Inn, it becomes equally remarkable to me how many of those parking lots have disappeared over the last 20 years.

I remember coming downtown for the West Michigan Grand Prix and all of the parking lots had some activity going on, like a half-pipe for skaters, carnival type rides, etc.. The ramp where Leo's is now wasn't there, and GRAM wasn't even under construction yet. The parking lot where the JW is now was the kid's activity area. The parking lot at Market and Fulton was a huge hospitality and grandstand area, but now it's....oh wait... :)

Oh hey, I found a video. 

https://vimeo.com/40951061

Grand Prix.JPG

 

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19 minutes ago, WMrapids said:

IMG_2503.PNG

That's and interesting looking traffic light. I had someone come in from out of town and ask why we just have them hanging from wires unlike other larger towns.

This is probably going to sound weird, but we just moved here this past summer and we constantly talk about how junky all of the traffic lights look. Why are they just strung about hanging at different points and swinging around? It all looks so temporary and run down feeling. Meh - there are worse things in the world but it sure does drive us crazy! (Don't even get me started on driving down Fulton downtown and looking ahead at the wire-y mess. haha)

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48 minutes ago, GVSUChris said:

This is probably going to sound weird, but we just moved here this past summer and we constantly talk about how junky all of the traffic lights look. Why are they just strung about hanging at different points and swinging around? It all looks so temporary and run down feeling. Meh - there are worse things in the world but it sure does drive us crazy! (Don't even get me started on driving down Fulton downtown and looking ahead at the wire-y mess. haha)

The cost to bury utilities is humongous. A piece of property I was looking at a few years ago, it was $100,000 to bury about 150' of overhead wire. 

If the city is doing a streetscape rebuild, especially in the DDA, they can afford to slap it into the budget. Outside of the DDA zone where there's no TIF, it's pretty costly. 

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Traffic lights vary a lot on a state by state basis, and cities seem to mostly follow what the state does. MDOT loves using spanwires because they're cheaper. That's why you see some wires even downtown - Division and part of West Fulton are maintained by MDOT and not the city. MDOT did switch from the single diagonal wire to having one wire across each leg of the intersection (the "box span") in December 2005, but it takes many years to replace every traffic signal in existence, especially when they're working fine and the only problem is that they're ugly.

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1 hour ago, joeDowntown said:

Very cool pics! It is interesting to see the changes in buildings (and amazing that not so long ago, Monroe Center was covered in metal). 

Does anyone know what the curved brick building was? I assume it's gone. 

Joe

It's gone.  It was an old railroad warehouse along the tracks just east of the blue bridge  The photo in the earlier post is looking east and you can see just the corner of the 50 Monroe building before it was sheathed.

Here's a photo of the building from 1975 that I copied from the book Pictorial History of Grand Rapids, this is facing west towards the blue bridge which is out of the photo:

 .   

RR WAREHOUSE.jpg

Edited by walker
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