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:

This week we continued our neighborhood engagement efforts, meeting with our friends in Roosevelt Park. We also held meetings with the East Grand Rapids City Commission, Disability Advocates of Kent County, the Monroe North Business Association, and made an appearance on the Robert S Radio Show on 94.9 WYGR. Next week our work continues as we have scheduled meetings with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (Thursday at 8a) and the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce’s Black Women Connect and Outpro groups (Friday at 12p).

As a reminder, the public comment period for GR Forward ends two weeks from today. You can find a list of upcoming events on the Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. website (scroll halfway down the page). Please continue to promote these meetings within your networks to ensure we get as many participants as possible. Also, if anyone has additional ideas for partners that we can meet with, please let me know.

Web Numbers

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

Resources

There is a lot of interesting civic discourse happening in Seattle these days, particularly around issues of affordability. This article from the New York Times expands on that issue, and places it in the context of a city struggling to find the appropriate balance between encouraging growth and new high paying jobs, and maintaining the culture that makes it unique.

The article looks at San Francisco, with its skyrocketing rents and “hordes of 20-something millionaires” as a cautionary tale. But other cities with growing tech industries, such as Austin, Boulder, and Portland are starting to experience similar situations. Seattle is attempting to be proactive on the issue, and over the past year became the first major city to approve a $15 minimum-wage law. Their mayor is also pushing an ambitious affordable housing plan, and he has committed to expanding the city’s manufacturing and maritime industries.

Clearly this is a complex issue without a single solution, but I think it is instructive to see the dialog happening in Seattle, and to understand the tools other cities are employing to address some of the challenges that accompany growth and economic progress.

If you have any questions please let me know. Otherwise, have a great weekend!