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 are wrapping up another fantastic week.
Yesterday, both the River and Downtown Steering Committees met, and got a first glimpse at some of the proposed strategies for achieving the vision and goals that are being refined through our ongoing community events. Those strategies will be part of the discussion as we move into our next round of neighborhood meetings and community events in February and March.
Along with the Steering Committee meetings, yesterday we also held the third installment of our GR Forward Thinking Speaker Series. Theresa Reno-Weber provided a wealth of insight into performance based governance, and the great work that is going in on her home town of Louisville, KY. Immediately following Theresa’s presentation, we held the first GR Forward Public Forum to present and discuss our draft vision statement, and the goals aimed at helping us achieve that vision (attached). More than 150 people turned out for the events, and there was a lot of great dialogue and feedback, all of which will help us refine our vision and move the project forward.
For those of you that were not able to join us last night, there was a lot of great news coverage on the events, some of which are linked below.
http://woodtv.com/2015/01/15/gr-forward-to-share-future-vision-for-downtown/
http://fox17online.com/2015/01/15/gr-forward-presents-future-vision-for-downtown-grand-rapids/
Presentations
In addition to the events yesterday, we also found time to keep up with our regular schedule of neighborhood and community presentations. This week we met with the following groups:
- Downtown Development Authority
- Black Hills
- Neighbors of Belknap Lookout
Web Numbers
The latest web and social media numbers are below. The Public Forum and news coverage appears to have helped continue our positive momentum.
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/grfwd
Twitter - https://twitter.com/grfwd
Instagram - http://instagram.com/grfwd#
| Website Views | Facebook Likes | Instagram Followers | Twitter Followers |
| 28,147 (+896) | 892 (+21) | 191 (+7) | 200 (+8) |
Resources
I enjoyed the following two articles this week. The first, related to digital tools available to engage communities http://www.governing.com/gov-institute/voices/col-digital-tools-engaging-public-input.html,
The second about a concept proposed in Melbourne that introduce surf waves right in their urban center: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3038839/in-melbourne-a-new-floating-pool-will-let-workers-go-surfing-on-their-lunch-breaks
As always, if you have any questions please let me know.
Have a great weekend,
