A New York Times article offers an outsider perspective on Grand Rapids' growth, particularly surrounding the Downtown Market currently under construction.
According to an excerpt from the article.
The Downtown Market, in effect, is the newest piece of civic equipment built here since the mid-1990s to leverage the same urban economic trends of the 21st century -- higher education, hospitals and health care, housing, entertainment, transit, and cleaner air and water -- that are reviving most large American cities.
Few small cities, and possibly none in the industrial Midwest, have been nearly as successful. One reason is the distinctive partnerships formed between this city’s redevelopment agencies and wealthy industrialists and philanthropists. Hundreds of millions of private dollars have been raised here to build a downtown that encourages entrepreneurs, develops career-track jobs and attracts new residents.
Read the complete story
here.
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