Big project(s) coming for downtown?

[NorthEnder]

Progress on the North Monroe hotel?

[GRDadof3]

Whatever it is, i hope it adds to the skyline.

[Mark Miller]

Whatever this is will most likely not have a dramatic impact on the skyline, will not be medical related and will not be civic in the sense of a public institution.

But that is fine, we don't need anymore tall buildings. What we need is more 3 to 4 story buildings that fill in all of those empty spaces and blank walls that exist downtown. Tall buildings do very little to make the DT more pedestrian friendly and livable.

[GRDadof3]

Whatever this is will most likely not have a dramatic impact on the skyline, will not be medical related and will not be civic in the sense of a public institution.

But that is fine, we don't need anymore tall buildings. What we need is more 3 to 4 story buildings that fill in all of those empty spaces and blank walls that exist downtown. Tall buildings do very little to make the DT more pedestrian friendly and livable.

[Jocar]

One sounds like a "plan" for a specific area of downtown, and the other sounds like a building of some sort (not a high-rise). I think I'm beginning to piece together the meaning/intent of the plan, and it'd be pretty sweet if I'm right.

[GRDadof3]

GRDad...any time frame when we may hear an announcement?

[metrogrkid]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't it recently been stated on UP GR that there is still a demand for hotel space in downtown?

[metrogrkid]

Whatever this is will most likely not have a dramatic impact on the skyline, will not be medical related and will not be civic in the sense of a public institution.

But that is fine, we don't need anymore tall buildings. What we need is more 3 to 4 story buildings that fill in all of those empty spaces and blank walls that exist downtown. Tall buildings do very little to make the DT more pedestrian friendly and livable.

[suydam]

Absolutely! Grand Action commissioned Deloitte & Touche of Detroit some years ago to research how many rooms a new one-million square foot convention center in GR would need in a five minute walk radius to compete with the larger markets that surrounded it (i.e. - Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Columbus, Louisville, etc.).

The findings were simple: GR needed to build 1,500 to 2,000 NEW hotel rooms within a 5 minute walk of DeVos Place (plus, of course, destination high-end retail, late-night entertainment, etc.). With the JW's 340 rooms online, we're still short 1,160 to 1,640 of the requisite rooms.

[GRDadof3]

Though your premise of infill is well taken, your writing-off of additional tall buildings in downtown is "old think" at best.

We need infill of all types of height downtown. Granted, in areas away from the river, limit highrises to one or two per city block (to allow light diffusion). In large open areas like the Dash West/WMCA Lots or the Market/Fulton Lot, take a page from Rockefeller Center in NYC and develop (for GR) streetrail-served vertical urban villages with a small number of highrises, a slightly larger number of midrises and a dominent selection of lowrises. The Dash West/YMCA Lots, in particular, would be DYNAMIC under such a higher use as both a student-oriented urban enclave and as a hip mixed-use west downtown hub of entertainment, hotels, destination retail, etc. (think GR's merging of Boston's Back Bay and Chicago's Fullerton/Broadway/State intersection - all sandwiched conveniently between GVSU-Pew and the Bridge Street Entertainment/Retail District).

[metrogrkid]

While I would support such hotel rooms, I'm have to question the accuracy of that study.

I just spent a week at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando.

There were, as far as I could tell, 2 hotels within walking distance of this place. Even if they had 400 rooms apiece we'd be talking about 800 pedestrian-accessible hotel rooms attached to a convention center that was over 10 times as large as DeVos Place.

OCCC lists itself as 2.1 million square feet of exhibit space (plus 100s of 1,000s of square feet of other stuff, meeting rooms, etc)

DeVos lists itself as having 160,000 square feet of exhibit space (plus a nice mixture of meeting rooms and ballrooms in-facility).

So, while there are 113,000 hotel rooms in the area of the OCCC, there are very few within walking-distance. This in a climate where it's nice enough to walk most mornings (when conventioneers head to the hall).

[metrogrkid]

Let me just add, to temper everyone's enthusiasm, is that I haven't heard of anything on the books of this kind of scale that you're talking about metrogrkid. Things can be smaller scale and be really exciting for downtown. You're going to be hard-pressed to see any kind of high-rise construction in the U.S. for a while, like we've seen over the past 5 - 7 years. Things have changed drastically.

[GRDadof3]

The 160,000 square feet of DeVos Place refers to its Grand Hall (the big "three football field sized" space under the wave roof. The entirety of DeVos Place is 1-million square feet.

[CK1]

Does anyone know if GR is losing out on potential conventions due to a LACK of hotel rooms? I'm assuming that the Big 3 downtown (Courtyard, JW, Grand) aren't at 100% capacity too often.

[arcturus]

Though your premise of infill is well taken, your writing-off of additional tall buildings in downtown is "old think" at best.

[OneSweetWorld]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned a major national chain. Probably not something along the lines of Nordstrom or Saks (not downtown, anyway), but what about an Urban Outiftters, or Hard Rock Cafe or Rainforest Cafe...? I would consider any of those chains coming to West Michigan not only very significant, but pretty realistic at this point in the game.

[yankee_farmer]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned a major national chain. Probably not something along the lines of Nordstrom or Saks (not downtown, anyway), but what about an Urban Outiftters, or Hard Rock Cafe or Rainforest Cafe...? I would consider any of those chains coming to West Michigan not only very significant, but pretty realistic at this point in the game.

[OneSweetWorld]

I think that many pople have mentioned national chains in another thread, but I disagree that some of these high-end chains would be realistic at this point in the game, especially restaurants. I tend to think that downtown has somewhat of an abundance of higher-end dining for the current traffic levels, and more needs to be down on other fronts (retail, office, etc) to justify investment given current economic conditions. Of course, urban areas with predicted steady growth will be more likely to receive financing than suburban projects. However, I still have lingering doubts that this kind of project would occur right now. I do think that an ikea or an REI would do well downtown GR, regardless of current economic conditions.

[CK1]

What about a something going into the old Margaritta Grill spot? A BDubs or something similar could do wonders there, and I would consider that pretty significant news!

[jas49503]

That's my reaction too. Check out what they're doing in Vancouver. Fascinating read. Great city.

Pay particular attention to social bonus zoning.

http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/Feature177.htm

[GRDadof3]

you need to be careful what you ask for though. the ren cen was not good for detroit when it opened. it led to a lot of vacant office space downtown by overwhelming the market. the other thing is that when you consider a lot of great cities around the world, it isn't thier number of high rises that makes them great. A skyscraper isn't a necessary component of making a city walkable and dense. I think that GR would better served by filling in all the empty space than building some giant thing surrounded by parking lots.

[arcturus]

you need to be careful what you ask for though. the ren cen was not good for detroit when it opened. it led to a lot of vacant office space downtown by overwhelming the market.

[yankee_farmer]

I disagree. I would consider Hard Rock Cafe, for example, a destination restaurant. Unlike most existing downtown restaurants, it doesn't require much existing foot/vehicle traffic to make it profitable. People will come in from the suburbs or from other areas to visit it. I think a major national restaurant would be very realistic right now.

[wingbert]

I absolutely disagree with you on this one. I'm sorry, but it would be a stretch for a company that depends on disposable income to attract dining customers to locate in GR right now. Most, if not all, Hard Rock Cafes are located in major cities or tourists destinations. Mark my words, Grand Rapids will not get a Hard Rock Cafe. There simply isn't the traffic or demand for it. Especially right now.

[yankee_farmer]

I think you're right. For locals, that kind of restaurant tends to be a visit once and never go back type of place. There are too many more cost-effective choices for a burger than the overpriced, middle of the road fare they serve. They rely dramatically on tourist turnover for the patronage.