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1 hour ago, Chisox said:

I guess that's a problem for most cities that aren't on the coasts in context to media. Although just in my travels I got the feeling that INSIDE the state there was a perception problem, which is more concerning. That's just my observation.

Maybe GR is just going to be that place that manages well with the under promise and over deliver mantra. That only gets you so far though, eventually you're going to need to be a bit of showman. 

So you haven't seen the Rob Bliss videos?? :)

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2 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

So you haven't seen the Rob Bliss videos?? :)

Was that the lip dub thing that was on CNN and all the other national news programs some time back? I vaguely remember a viral video from Grand Rapids and a bunch of people singing Don McLean's American Pie or something. Lol I didn't make the connection till now that the movie American Pie was a Grand Rapids thing.  

Edited by Chisox
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My daughter is an engineer with the 2nd largest AE firm in the country. Used to go to some of the other offices for projects when MI was in the lost decade. Now she can work on these long distance projects right from her desk in GR. The stereotype with her coworkers in distant states is MI is Detroit. She has to explain Detwa is 150 miles east, we're 30 miles from Lake Michigan. Even more incomprehensible is she went to MI Tech in the beautiful UP 600 miles from Detwa.

But you know what, I've lived here in GR from 69 years (except for 4 years at Tech in the UP myself). I might be selfish, but I don't want another 100,000 people here. Our commuter congestion is minimal we have decent retail, great local restaurants. I like it here and don't want to share :).  We're 3 hours from Detwa and Chi town for those big city activities. Pretty nice spot for me.

Segway - part of the greatness of this town is due to the DeVos and VanAndel families, the Meijer family and there's others. These families and others privately held companies  have heavily invested in elevating and keeping GR the metro area it is.  If they were publicly held, I don't think we would be the metro area we are. I attended a presentation on the Van Andel Institute. I don't think 95% or more of the area population realize we have a world class medical research institute here in little GR. The Van Andel family was determined to make it happen and made it happen.  Anyways, end of segway:)

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6 minutes ago, Raildude's dad said:

But you know what, I've lived here in GR from 69 years (except for 4 years at Tech in the UP myself). I might be selfish, but I don't want another 100,000 people here. Our commuter congestion is minimal we have decent retail, great local restaurants. I like it here and don't want to share :).  We're 3 hours from Detwa and Chi town for those big city activities. Pretty nice spot for me.

It's wild now to remember just 30 years ago when seeing an out-of-state plate was like seeing a UFO. We were really this modest outpost that no one showed up to unless you HAD to come here. When I used to watch the weather report on the old 10pm news on WKBD, GR didnt even appear on their weather map, nor did their news ever mention us. That's how little we registered.

Now, I can drive all over the area and see cars from all over the nation every single day! East Hills alone is full of cars from Colorado, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, New Jersey and a slew of other. Nice for the area's image, but I'll admit I still miss the anonymity sometimes. The city that is 10 minutes away from working farms.

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43 minutes ago, Raildude's dad said:

My daughter is an engineer with the 2nd largest AE firm in the country. Used to go to some of the other offices for projects when MI was in the lost decade. Now she can work on these long distance projects right from her desk in GR. The stereotype with her coworkers in distant states is MI is Detroit. She has to explain Detwa is 150 miles east, we're 30 miles from Lake Michigan. Even more incomprehensible is she went to MI Tech in the beautiful UP 600 miles from Detwa.

But you know what, I've lived here in GR from 69 years (except for 4 years at Tech in the UP myself). I might be selfish, but I don't want another 100,000 people here. Our commuter congestion is minimal we have decent retail, great local restaurants. I like it here and don't want to share :).  We're 3 hours from Detwa and Chi town for those big city activities. Pretty nice spot for me.

Segway - part of the greatness of this town is due to the DeVos and VanAndel families, the Meijer family and there's others. These families and others privately held companies  have heavily invested in elevating and keeping GR the metro area it is.  If they were publicly held, I don't think we would be the metro area we are. I attended a presentation on the Van Andel Institute. I don't think 95% or more of the area population realize we have a world class medical research institute here in little GR. The Van Andel family was determined to make it happen and made it happen.  Anyways, end of segway:)

I can understand the selfishness of not wanting more neighbors, but on the other hand as policy you risk the potential for sliding into economic irrelevance without it. Just humming along doesn't cut it in a market that values change, growth and consumption. 

Imagine all the things in Grand Rapids that people enjoy TODAY that wouldn't be possible without the growth that took place. 

Population growth is both the answer and the problem.

I might be off, but you can see this in Ionia County. I briefly lived there and the old folks I met like to talk. Intersting enough they didn't want to make the connection between the kids leaving and growth in their community.

That's a conversation taking place in hundreds of rural towns and exurbs in the great lakes region everyday. 

 

 

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13 hours ago, Chisox said:

I guess that's a problem for most cities that aren't on the coasts in context to media. Although just in my travels I got the feeling that INSIDE the state there was a perception problem, which is more concerning. That's just my observation.

Maybe GR is just going to be that place that manages well with the under promise and over deliver mantra. That only gets you so far though, eventually you're going to need to be a bit of showman. 

It's my fault.  I just don't care what other people think of Grand Rapids.  I don't need their approval of GR in order to feel good  about myself.

Edited by walker
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  • 3 weeks later...

Drone video footage of Downtown GR on March 26th. Ghost town (reminds me of downtown on a normal day back in the 90's. LOL). 

I noticed people still working on the glass facade at the Amway Grand. Essential work? :) Have most of the other projects shut down (other than GVSU, MSU, etc. which are Government and Healthcare projects). 

Stay safe out there people!

Joe

 

 

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4 hours ago, joeDowntown said:

Drone video footage of Downtown GR on March 26th. Ghost town (reminds me of downtown on a normal day back in the 90's. LOL). 

I noticed people still working on the glass facade at the Amway Grand. Essential work? :) Have most of the other projects shut down (other than GVSU, MSU, etc. which are Government and Healthcare projects). 

Stay safe out there people!

Joe

 

That's a breathtaking video.

Question:  What's that Penobscot-shaped thing on the corner of Louis and Monroe? 

582369988_ScreenShot2020-03-30at1_00_28PM.png.45c341be5a8397d8a949b0a57fd4344f.png

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7 hours ago, joeDowntown said:

Drone video footage of Downtown GR on March 26th. Ghost town (reminds me of downtown on a normal day back in the 90's. LOL). 

I noticed people still working on the glass facade at the Amway Grand. Essential work? :) Have most of the other projects shut down (other than GVSU, MSU, etc. which are Government and Healthcare projects). 

Stay safe out there people!

Joe

 

 

That's pretty sad but kind of cool at the same time. I like the sounds of all the birds, definite sign of Spring. 

And still in the shutdown you can hear the loud roar of 131 in the background. 

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14 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

No it's not. Originally that was the interpretation but the AG is cracking down, and so are the police. 

I thought it was essential if it had to do with unfinished projects that could be affected by weather when being open to elements. IMO Construction should be considered essential if you can do it applying proper distancing and other safety measures, great opportunity to keep the economy going and get some road construction projects done.

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1 hour ago, GR8scott said:

I thought it was essential if it had to do with unfinished projects that could be affected by weather when being open to elements. IMO Construction should be considered essential if you can do it applying proper distancing and other safety measures, great opportunity to keep the economy going and get some road construction projects done.

Some of that was allowed if a home, for instance, was in the middle of framing and was unstable with wind and the elements. 

I thought now would be a good time to do highway projects but the State has put the brakes on any expenditures that aren't directly Covid-19 related. Kent County Road Commission may be able to do some work. 

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  • 5 weeks later...
20 hours ago, joeDowntown said:

Here's another eery video of Grand Rapids during the Stay at Home order. I think it's really well done. A good "time capsule":

I love the horror movie atmosphere of this one.  I couldn't find any human beings or moving vehicles in any of the shots.  So do the zombies show up after 28 days?

EDIT:  Watched again and actually did find a person in one of the shots.  I won't say where if anyone else wants to go looking.

EDIT #2: And no, I don't mean the Jay Van Andel statue in front of the arena.  There's an actual person in one of the shots.

Edited by RegalTDP
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/30/2020 at 3:25 PM, joeDowntown said:

Here's another eery video of Grand Rapids during the Stay at Home order. I think it's really well done. A good "time capsule":

 

That is an awesome video!  I love the eerie apocalypse vibe.  I posted an Austin apocalypse video in the Austin section of the forum that was just so depressing.  I like the eeriness of this one better. 

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That is an awesome video!  I love the eerie apocalypse vibe.  I posted an Austin apocalypse video in the Austin section of the forum that was just so depressing.  I like the eeriness of this one better. 
Can you link it here? I went over to the ATX thread and couldn't find it.

Sent from my Acer Chromebook R11 (CB5-132T, C738T) using Tapatalk

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  • 2 months later...

Last week's issue of The Economist (July 25) features Grand Rapids in an article "America's Mittelstand," part of their special report on The Midwest. GR is held up as a model, citing Tim Bartik from the Upjohn, "the most successful intensive manufacturing city in America." The article goes to explain the region's German connection where Birgit Klohs gets a great quote: We're still a manufacturing centre, like the Mittelstand. The bulk of our success is in advanced manufacturing in family-owned, mid-sized firms in their third or forurth generation of ownership, just like in Germany." (Germany? well that's one reason for our beer, I suppose. )

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18 hours ago, wmrharris said:

Last week's issue of The Economist (July 25) features Grand Rapids in an article "America's Mittelstand," part of their special report on The Midwest. GR is held up as a model, citing Tim Bartik from the Upjohn, "the most successful intensive manufacturing city in America." The article goes to explain the region's German connection where Birgit Klohs gets a great quote: We're still a manufacturing centre, like the Mittelstand. The bulk of our success is in advanced manufacturing in family-owned, mid-sized firms in their third or forurth generation of ownership, just like in Germany." (Germany? well that's one reason for our beer, I suppose. )

Thank you for flagging this.  It's a nice article.  Here's link, but you might have to register with the site: https://www.economist.com/special-report/2020/07/23/americas-mittelstand.

Here's the kicker at the end:

Quote

The city [Grand Rapids] is a model for deployment of social capital. Researchers have tried to understand why some collaborative efforts succeed but not others. Part of the answer is that, as with the Mittelstand, many firms in the Midwest are owned by families with a passion for their home towns. Mr Katz says Midwesterners benefit from a “deep commitment to place”. He notes how many institutions with huge endowments there are, including MacArthur in Chicago, Heinz in Pittsburgh, the Cleveland Foundation and the Howard G. Buffett (son of Warren) foundation in Decatur.

One research paper contrasts the fortunes of Allentown in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, with the dim outcomes in Youngstown, Ohio, in the years since the 1970s. In Allentown the main concern, as in Grand Rapids, was to create conditions so firms would stay and grow. In Youngstown (as with Foxconn in Wisconsin) there was a narrower focus on helping a particular industry, in its case steel. The long slog of creating the right eco-system seems more likely to pay off than the short-term effort to pick a winner in a declining business.

 

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  • 9 months later...

Obviously this is a click bait article (as most of these listicles are since you have to scroll through multiple pages to get to your state) but its says we're #1 in Michigan.  The link is right to the page that includes Michigan:

special-report: this-is-the-city-in-every-state-with-the-most-covid-19-cases 

Note - when they say Grand Rapids, they are not just talking about us sophisticated urbanists here but they are also lumping us in with the whole MSA which includes of course a lot of crazy people in Ottawa county and other outlying areas. 

Edited by walker
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This falls in the category of People NOT Talking about Grand Rapids. WSJ did an article about Greenville SC, Provo UT, and Des Moines IO as the darling cities of post-COVID recovery. I wonder how Grand Rapids fared based on their metrics. They talked about a mix of "affordable (but steeply increasing)" housing, manufacturing bouncing back early, diversification, proximity to nature (not Des Moines). I was actually surprised to NOT see Grand Rapids in this article:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-breakout-cities-on-the-forefront-of-americas-economic-recovery-11620584178?mod=searchresults_pos1&page=1

Joe

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