Wattrick: Sorry Detroit, but Grand Rapids is better than you

[Novine]

Grand Rapids has a functional transit system that goes out into the suburbs. Detroit's never going to realize its "potential" when we can't even get our act together on transit.

[claudia_22]

The real estate market has been getting battered and industry have decimated the markets in Detroit and Grand Rapids.
grand rapids homes for sale

[gameguy56]

Grand Rapids does seem to have a nice downtown and adjoining neighborhoods. Consider Heritage Hill or Eastown. 2 Functional and walkable city neighborhoods of the type Detroit could only dream of now.

[Artistic]

Grand Rapids is a wonderful city. Detroit is an interesting and very different city. Whats the object of comparing them.....sounds juvenille to me.

[rb336]

Grand Rapids is a wonderful city. Detroit is an interesting and very different city. Whats the object of comparing them.....sounds juvenille to me.

Grand Rapids shows what can happen to a medium-sized city when two families with huge fortunes decide to remake it.

[gameguy56]

Grand Rapids shows what can happen to a medium-sized city when two families with huge fortunes decide to remake it.

Well, I guess Gilbert and Illitch better get busy then.

[cmubryan]

Doesn't GR also have a dwindling population? If it is so great, I would think their population should be growing at leaps and bounds.

[Ray1936]

I lived in GR as a child 1938-1941. Recently I stopped back there while driving from Traverse City to Chicago and looked up the house we lived in. The house, as well as the neighborhood, was immaculate.

No comparison to Detroit whatsoever.

[DetroiterOnTheWestCoast]

As a native Grand Rapidian, one thing that really struck me when I moved to Detroit was the incredible stock of brick houses. The neighborhoods of GR are mostly made up of wood sided homes. I always wondered why there was such a difference.

That being said, the neighborhoods are also a bit boring there. Perhaps it was the conservative Calvinist influence. Heritage Hill is certainly nice; My grandmother lived just outside of Ottawa Hills which is interesting. But there is nothing comparable to neighborhoods like East English Village or Rosedale where you have houses that are not huge or fancy but yet have interesting architecture, let alone the tudors of the University District, Sherwood Forest, etc.
The now "hip" area of Eastown has modest and somewhat bland housing stock.

[DetroiterOnTheWestCoast]

Where is that house, Ray? I grew up in Alger Heights.

[Ray1936]

Where is that house, Ray? I grew up in Alger Heights.

1108 Beechwood, NW.

[Novine]

"Doesn't GR also have a dwindling population? If it is so great, I would think their population should be growing at leaps and bounds."

Down about 5% since 2000 but compared to most large Michigan cities, that wasn't too bad.

[rb336]

Well, I guess Gilbert and Illitch better get busy then.

If Detroit were the same size, then the improvements those two have made would have made as big a difference to Detroit as a whole as the impact of the Meijer and Amway money has in GR. We need, essentially, at least 6 giant fortunes pumping money into redevelopment AND a way to figure out what to do with all the excess space Detroit has

[gameguy56]

If Detroit were the same size, then the improvements those two have made would have made as big a difference to Detroit as a whole as the impact of the Meijer and Amway money has in GR. We need, essentially, at least 6 giant fortunes pumping money into redevelopment AND a way to figure out what to do with all the excess space Detroit has

Metro Detroit has other billionaires that don't seem to care too much about the place. What have Roger Penske, Bill Ford Sr., Alfred Taubman or [[ugh) Matty Mouroun ever done for the city itself? I know Taubman's given some money to CCS, Ford moved the Lions downtown and Mouron holds MCS hostage, but otherwise those guys seem to be not so concerned with the state of Detroit.

[Sailor Rick]

As a native Grand Rapidian, one thing that really struck me when I moved to Detroit was the incredible stock of brick houses. The neighborhoods of GR are mostly made up of wood sided homes. I always wondered why there was such a difference.

That being said, the neighborhoods are also a bit boring there. Perhaps it was the conservative Calvinist influence. Heritage Hill is certainly nice; My grandmother lived just outside of Ottawa Hills which is interesting. But there is nothing comparable to neighborhoods like East English Village or Rosedale where you have houses that are not huge or fancy but yet have interesting architecture, let alone the tudors of the University District, Sherwood Forest, etc.
The now "hip" area of Eastown has modest and somewhat bland housing stock.

Familiarity must breed contempt.
Interesting comment since we recently moved to GR from our native Detroit.
We've found GR to posses a wide range in style of housing stock including plenty of interesting MidCentury and Mission style homes in various neighborhoods.

Detroit designed cars-Grand Rapids designed furniture.
It's styles look similar to Detroit in progression but on a much smaller scale of course, but with no acres of empty blocks.
[[A Russian family told me after taking an older relative on a tour of Detroit, she shook her head after seeing the Michigan Central train depot muttering, "It looks like Stalingrad after the war.")

We're in a process of buying a 1927 brick Tudor in East Grand Rapids for about half the cost of a comparable one in Grosse Pointe or Birmingham.

"Boring", compared to the manic/depressive energy of Detroit? Unquestionably. But "boring" at this point in our lives is good and Michigan's "real" city is only two hours away. [[And Chicago about three!)

Sweet childhood digs Ray. I'll have to check it out. Did you have relatives in GR?

[p69rrh51]

As a native Grand Rapidian, one thing that really struck me when I moved to Detroit was the incredible stock of brick houses. The neighborhoods of GR are mostly made up of wood sided homes. I always wondered why there was such a difference.

That being said, the neighborhoods are also a bit boring there. Perhaps it was the conservative Calvinist influence. Heritage Hill is certainly nice; My grandmother lived just outside of Ottawa Hills which is interesting. But there is nothing comparable to neighborhoods like East English Village or Rosedale where you have houses that are not huge or fancy but yet have interesting architecture, let alone the tudors of the University District, Sherwood Forest, etc.
The now "hip" area of Eastown has modest and somewhat bland housing stock.

Belgian brick makers and masons came to Detroit after WW1, one of the main sources of bricks in the city,

[Ray1936]

"Sweet childhood digs Ray. I'll have to check it out. Did you have relatives in GR? "

Nope. Pop moved us to GR shortly after I was born when he went into partnership in a camera shop on Monroe Avenue. The shop specialized in Agfa film and cameras. Along came WW II, and Pop couldn't get needed supplies so the place went under in 1941. We moved back to Detroit, where Dad took a job in the camera department at Monkey Wards in Dearborn until his death 20 years later.

[Wesley Mouch]

Grand Rapids' advantage? I think one of them i that it is a more or less racially homogeneous place where taxpayers don't have to worry about their money going to "them" in the city. I wonder how Detroit's suburbs would feel about Detroit if it were suddenly a majority-Dutch population of 711,000...

Take a perfectly reasonable discussion and somehow it turns back to race.

This is must change for 'moving Detroit forward'.

Your post is quite insulting. Us vs. them. Do you think the residents of Detroit are incapable of success without money from 'us'?

Most placed I see success, its not the result of 'us'. Its because of 'them'.

We are all Detroiters.