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 had a great Thanksgiving week and got to enjoy a few days off.

Updates

This week we continued our neighborhood meetings, and made visits to our neighbors in Roosevelt Park and Creston. Last night we also held the North East Sub-Regional at City High Middle School. Overall, there has been good attendance, but it would be great if you could help us promote this meetings within your networks so we can make sure everyone is aware of the opportunities to participate. Next week we will be continuing our meetings with visits to Heritage Hill and SWAN / JBAN, on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.

Last night we also had our second installment of the GR Forward Thinking Speaker Series. Don Edwards, Principal and Founder of Justice and Sustainability Associates, gave an inspiring speech about equity and economic development. He spoke of the importance of building a collective and shared vision that the entire community agrees on, and, equally important, establishing agreed upon metrics to measure progress toward the vision. We will have a video of the presentation available in the near future, and I will be sure to share that once it is ready. As a reminder, our next speaker will be Theresa Reno-Weber, on Thursday, January 15 at 6pm. Theresa is the Chief of Performance Improvement for the Louisville Metro Government, and will be discussing performance based governance. Again, the event is free and will be held at Kendall College’s Federal Building (17 Pearl St. NW). Be sure to share the attached flyer among your networks.

Related to the Open House, we are continuing to hold tours for any interested groups until December 19. This week, we welcomed in a group of students from Grand Rapids Montessori High School. If you have not had a chance to stop down, we would love to see you. Also, if you have any upcoming meetings that you would like to use the space for, please let me know.

Lastly, we are continuing to push for increased survey responses. As such, if everyone on this email could help circulate the surveys using the links below, that would be immensely helpful (note: both surveys are also available on the GR Forward website). Also, if you live or work within Downtown and have not completed the surveys, please take a few minutes to do so. The feedback is extremely important to the work we are doing.

Live Downtown (Resident):

https://openplans.typeform.com/to/yWWQdL

Work Downtown (Business):

https://openplans.typeform.com/to/EQ494E

Presentations

Another good week of getting out to give presentations in the community. Again, if anyone has suggestions for meetings that we can attend please let me know.

• Lowell City Council

• Grand Rapids City Commission (video from the presentation can be seen here: http://media2.grand-rapids.mi.us/media/2014/SB/120214/)

Web Numbers

As with the previous weeks, the website and our Facebook account continue to get heavy traffic. Instagram and Twitter also saw positive spikes this week. 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#

Resources

Two links for you this week.

First, this week students from Grand Valley State University published a report on attracting and retaining talent which can be found here: http://grcity.us/Documents/Attracting%20and%20Retaining%20College%20Graduates%20%20A%20Student-Driven%20Model.pdf The report was developed based on a request from Mayor Heartwell for students to provide recommendations to City leadership on the things that would keep them in Grand Rapids following graduation. I have listed the recommendations below, but encourage you to read through the entire report as there is a lot of good insight provided.

1. Develop a “Why Grand Rapids (YGR)” smartphone application

2. Build neighborhood branding

3. Launch a “Make Your Mark” branding campaign

4. Adjust city planning to millennial tastes

5. Establish a Millennial Advisory Board

6. Create a Diversity Network

7. Initiate more park related activities

8. Cultivate a “Welcome Wagon Network”

9. Implement initiatives to connect college students to local jobs

10. Increase support for entrepreneurial incubators

Second, Grand Rapids made another list this week, this time as a top city for millennials to purchase a home. The list was developed by the National Association of Realtors, and was not based solely on median home price, but also on the strength of employment. The profile cites the number of jobs in the Grand Rapids Metro Area grew 4.2% over the past year, which was tied with Austin, TX for the highest growth among the other 10 cities. http://money.cnn.com/gallery/real_estate/2014/08/03/housing-markets-millennials/2.html. Both are great indicators for the future of our City, and hopefully the continued growth of Downtown.

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