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:

I hope you have all had a tremendous week.

Updates

Similar to last week, the majority of our ongoing work surrounds preparations for the upcoming Open House. Our consultant team will be in town early next week to make final preparations to the space, including installation of the exhibits. As a reminder, the opening event will take place on Friday, October 17 from 4 – 8p at 50 Louis St NW. I have attached a flyer for the event, which I hope you will share with your respective networks. We hope to see all of you there!

Presentations

In addition to the Open House preparations, we are continuing to hit the presentation circuit to get the word out about our efforts. Below are the groups we met with this week. Again, if anyone has suggestions for meetings that we can attend, please let me know.

  • Downtown Development Authority
  • Chamber of Commerce’s Inside Grand Rapids Program
  • Downtown Improvement District

Web Numbers

Related to our online presence, website numbers continue to rise, while our social media followings grow at a slower pace. Our expectation is the Open House will drive further traffic to those mediums. As always, be sure to share the links below with anyone that might be interested so we can continue to promote GR Forward.

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

Twitter - https://twitter.com/grfwd

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

Website Views

Facebook Likes

Instagram Followers

Twitter Followers

9,095 (+392)

422 (+3)

110 (+0)

90 (+1)

Resources

This week, the American Planning Association announced their newest additions to their “Great Places in America” in the categories of neighborhoods, public spaces, and streets: https://www.planning.org/newsreleases/2014/oct1.htm. I encourage you to read through the profiles for as many of the places as you can, as you will find some great examples among them.

In addition, I thought you might enjoy this profile of the CicLaVia event in Los Angeles: http://www.planetizen.com/node/71395. For those of you not familiar, CicLaVia is an event in Los Angeles where streets are shut down to automobiles for a portion of one day to promote vibrant public spaces, active transportation, and healthy communities. The event, which draw up to 50,000 people, found its inspiration from the Ciclovia event in Bogota, Colombia, which have been held for over 30 years.

If you are interested in learning more about the event, here is a link to their website: http://www.ciclavia.org/

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