The "Develop Indian Trails or Not" Poll

[tamias6]

...Done.

Here's a quick Sketchup file of my idea for Indian Trials that might strike a happy medium. I've reduced the course to a nine hole course to make room for inserting a mix use development designed around the fairways. The mix use development would consist retail and office up front, an apartment/condo mid-rise, followed by row houses between the fairways.

[mejane]

Nice idea, but I've heard through the grapevine that it's Meijer that wants the property.

[foo_gr]

Meijer wanted the course so WalMart didn't get it. I'd prefer they rebuild the Meijer across the street already.

The course is currently managed by a private company (I understand). Cost to golf is $20. Profit for the city is $50K per year.

If the city comes to the point where it doesn't use Indian Trails as a golf course, then it needs to be converted to parkland. It is counted as parkland (in the Master Plan/Parks and Rec Plan) for the Alger Heights/Garfield Park area.

All areas of our city are deficient in parkland. Cities like Paris and Chicago and New York are going to great effort and expense to add new parkland. The last land that Grand Rapids acquired for a new park was 200+ (I think) acres on top of the former Butterworth landfill - a clay capped superfund site. There are no more large pristine tracts of land to be had in the city.

We should not be selling parkland; we've done so too many times in the past, and no conversion has ever proved to be to the advantage of the citizens of Grand Rapids. There will come a time when, in order to become the world class city we should be, we will go through great effort and expense to add more parks, and we will be glad that we have preserved the parks that we have.

Further, there are plenty of vacant business on 28th street, and plenty of areas on South Division, that could use redevelopment.

[Sunlover38]

Keep it GREEN.

[tamias6]

Nice idea, but I've heard through the grapevine that it's Meijer that wants the property.

[gvsusean]

Here's an underground Meijer I did in an attempt to reduce the amount of land a supercenter takes up. Notice how half of the surface lot is under the building ala Rivertown Mall Cinemark while the whole building itself is buried. Just make the roof into one or more of the fair ways and presto Meijer gets a new store and we still keep the golf course. I still have to figure out how to work in the garden center though.