Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. Planning Manager Tim Kelly emails a weekly GR Forward update to the project Steering Committee. Here's this week's communication:

Happy Friday All:

Despite the frigid cold, I hope you are finishing up a great week.

This week we continued our community engagement by kicking off our 3rd round of neighborhood meetings with our friends in SWAN/JBAN, and Roosevelt Park. We had great participation at the meetings, and we had some really good discussion around the draft strategies. In Roosevelt Park, we also had the pleasure of following the breakdance crew Aerial Tactic, who put on a great show (see attached).

Below is a listing of the dates, times, and locations for our upcoming meetings. Aa reminder, the meetings are open to anyone, not just those that live in the neighborhood. We hope you can join us!

  • West Grand: Monday, February 23 at 6:30p at Harrison Park Elementary
  • Creston: Wednesday, February 25 at 6:30p at Riverside Middle
  • Black Hills: Thursday, February 26 at 6:30p at Black Hills Community Center
  • Heritage Hill: Tuesday, March 10 at 5:30p at Cornerstone Church
  • Belknap Lookout: Wednesday, March 11 at 6:00p at Belknap Commons

Along with the neighborhood meetings, we also provided updates to the groups listed below. Again, if anyone is interested in having a representative of GR Forward come give a presentation, please let me know.

  • Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. Board of Advisors
  • Alliance for Vibrancy

In addition to the meetings and presentations listed above, we also found time for a host of other GR Forward activities, including Steering Committee meetings for both the Downtown and River Corridor. There were a lot of new strategies and conceptual designs presented, all of which are being prepared for presentation at the upcoming public forum in March. We also conducted five focus groups on business, diversity, social services, art, and water quality. These efforts are all helping with the refinement of the vision, goals, and strategies, and will ultimately help us shape the content of the GR Forward Plan.

Web Numbers

The latest web and social media numbers are below. Though we continue to see positive trends, our activity slowed a bit this week. We expect those numbers to pick up a bit with our upcoming activities.

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/grfwd

Twitter - https://twitter.com/grfwd

Instagram - http://instagram.com/grfwd#

Website Views

Facebook Likes

Instagram Followers

Twitter Followers

29,131 (+137)

989 (+30)

211 (+3)

229 (+4)

Resources

I enjoyed this article from City Lab about New Haven, CT and the next generation of complete streets. The article describes the new approach to street enhancement taking place there despite the lack of funding and opposition from engineers. It also highlights some of the benefits of identifying improvements that can be completed using the faster, quicker, cheaper approach to urbanism.

http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/02/the-next-generation-of-complete-streets-is-unfolding-in-new-haven/385649/?utm_source=SFFB

As always, if you have any questions let me know. Otherwise, have great weekend!