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 Everyone:

Hope you all had a great week.

Another important milestone for GR Forward this week. Yesterday, the Planning Commission voted to send the draft plan to the City Commission to be reviewed and released to the public for the official 42 day review period. Many thanks to the Planning Department for their continued partnership during this process, and to all the Commissioners for their thoughtful review and comments. As a reminder, we are scheduled to be at the City Commission on August 11, and are very much looking forward to that conversation, as well as initiating the official public review. You can review the plan online.

In addition to our meeting with the Planning Commission, we also had the opportunity to participate in a 616 Development “Community Conversation” on Tuesday. Thanks to Monica Steimle, Jenna Morton, and the rest of the 616 team for helping to organize the event. There will be a video recording available soon, which we will be sure to share with all you.

Lastly, following up on some questions we received at the DDA Board meeting on July 9, last night we held an informational discussion with community leaders about how GR Forward sets forth a number of goals and strategies intended to shepherd a new era of diversity, equity and inclusion for Downtown and the Grand River. While there is a lot of detail surrounding this important topic throughout the document, we received good direction on how make the diversity components more prominent, and more importantly, how to turn the discussion in the plan into action during implementation. As more people review GR Forward, we look forward to continuing our conversations on diversity and inclusion, and the other elements of the document. In the end, we want to make sure we get things right, and so our team is deeply interested to hear more thoughts and fresh ideas about how GR Forward can help advance the essential work of tying inclusion, growth, equity, and justice together in a Plan poised to change our city for the better.

Web Numbers

The latest web and social media numbers are below. Be sure to continue to share the links below in your network so everyone can stay up to date with our GR Forward activities.

Resources

Two additional resources for you this week.

First, I enjoyed this podcast from the FiveThirtyEight website with former New York City transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan (note: the interview starts at the 4:41 mark).

Much of the discussion focuses on changes to the New York transportation landscape and the role data played in making some dramatic changes. One of the projects Sadik-Khan highlights was closing down Times Squares to cars. By using data from the GPS devices in taxis, the Department of Transportation was able to demonstrate prominent travel patterns and voice their confidence the project would work. In addition, the project was initiated as a pilot, meaning after six months if it did not work, they could change it back. Measuring the impact to bus routes, and business sales, they were able to show how the closure actually improved performance, and the reclaimed space has become a prominent destination in the City.

In addition, and on much smaller scale, I thought this article from City Lab on new technology being used for parking signs was really interesting.

The electronic portion of the signs can be altered depending on events, and help to de-clutter the often confusing information on traffic signs. In addition to enhancing clarity for motorists, the signs also have the ability to save municipalities a significant amount of money. As the article says, the city of Los Angeles puts up 558,000 temporary signs each at a cost of $9.5 million. While about half of those signs are for filming purposes, it demonstrates how much is spent on non-permanent infrastructure.

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