Enhancements for Grand Rapids' West Side include more tax dollars from recently approved CID

A West Side Corridor Improvement District (CID) approved in March will allow specific business districts to capture incremental tax increases on properties and use that money for capital improvements like streetscaping, economic growth, and even making the areas under the US-131 underpasses safer for pedestrians. The advantages allow CID areas to use tax money that's already being paid and use it as reliable, sustainable funding for improvements.

The CID covers main corridors running along Seward from Leonard south to Butterworth, and extends along westward along Leonard, Bridge, and Fulton streets. A three-year planning process by a steering committee of West Side business owners, residents, and city leaders created the basis for the CID, but it also revealed that, if economic growth was to keep the character of the West Side while moving it into the future, there needed to be an overall plan for the entire neighborhood.

That plan, the West Side Area Specific Plan (ASP), has been under development for months and wrapped up with a final neighborhood input meeting last Monday.

"If Seward's going to be the connecting piece, can it be the playground where people meet, can you create some green space, some walkability and some kind of green beltway?" asks City Commissioner and steering committee member Dave Shaffer. "If you want to make Leonard Street more walkable, it's a long stretch of concrete, and vehicles go fast, how do you team up with the schools to create a safe route to school, how do you pay for bump-outs, add some green space?"

Shaffer says the proposed ASP, once approved by the City, will answer those questions by getting more West Siders involved and submitting ideas. The whole point is to be able to use the tax money collected a few years from now to make improvements that the people who live on the West Side want -- and that make sense for the overall community as well as the business corridors.

"It's a neighborhood thing; we're all in this together," says Mike Lomonaco, who works on the West Side and owns property there at Union Square Condominiums. "It's not difficult to do business here. The residents are passionate about Grand Rapids, we want the West Side to be as vibrant as it was decades ago, and it's in everyone's best interests to work together. In past years, it has been adversarial and people have picked up their toys because they weren't going to play anymore. But now we're talking to new business owners who are jazzed about the possibility of being able to look out of their stores and see new trees and people walking the streets."

Writer: Deborah Johnson Wood, Development News Editor
Images courtesy of West Side CID Committee