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 enjoying this beautiful afternoon.

Another busy week for GR Forward related activities. We finished up the last of our 23 neighborhood meetings this week with stops in Heritage Hill and Belknap. A big thank you to everyone that was involved in helping coordinate, as well as to everyone that gave their time and input at the meetings. Close to 300 people participated at the meetings which started back in November. If you are interested in seeing some of the other results from our engagement efforts, we put together the attached memo summarizing our activities to date. Obviously there is more work to be done, and there will be additional engagement efforts between now and the end of the GR Forward process, but I think it is important to acknowledge some of the great work that has taken place to involve approximately 3,000 people in the process.

In addition to the neighborhood meetings, we also found time to for presentations to leadership from the local philanthropic community, the Grand Rapids Planning Commission, and the Monroe North Business Association. As a reminder, if anyone is interested in having a member of the GR Forward project team give a presentation, please let me know.

Next week we will continue our work with our consultants who are in town from Tuesday - Friday. We are looking forward to putting more detail to our goals and strategies, and preparing for our second Public Forum in April.

Web Numbers

The latest web and social media numbers are below. Be sure to share the links below within your networks so that everyone can stay up to date with our GR Forward activities.

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

Twitter - https://twitter.com/grfwd

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

Resources

Given our discussions in GR Forward around the importance of public space, as well as the launch of our Downtown Parklet Program in 2014, I found this article from City Lab on what makes a successful parklet interesting: http://www.citylab.com/design/2015/03/why-some-parklets-work-better-than-others/387406/?utm_source=SFTwitter

As the article describes, research is showing the most successful parklets are located adjacent to businesses with modest interior seating and large windows, which tend to increase the sense of connection between the business interior and the exterior parklet space.

Research is also showing that in general parklets attract the same number of men and women (an indicator of perceived safety), and that owners of adjacent businesses report a 20% increase in sales in the two weeks following a parklet installation.

These are important elements to keep in mind as we think about improving our public spaces and identifying areas to increase utilization of our own Parklet Program.

As always, let me know if you have any questions. If not, have a great weekend!