What Happened?
Grand Rapids, MI, used a feasibility study to help it understand how to capitalize on the 12,000+ farms in its region. The result is a new “Downtown Market” complex being built that should gross more than $25 million annually while creating 600 new jobs.
Why Is This Important?
The City was languishing as recently as 1980, due to an declining manufacturing base and aging population. And like other cities that have comeback using a mix of industries such as health care and higher education, Grand Rapids has been successful adding new downtown housing, entertainment and transit. But the key has been healthy relationships between private industry and public redevelopment agencies. Prior to embarking on the ambitious project, Grand Rapids hired Market Ventures, which had worked with other cities such as Fort Wayne, Louisville, Baltimore and Milwaukee (EfficientGov recently covered the Brew City’s food-focused efforts).
Finding a Niche
Recognizing that as younger people came back to the City, they wanted pedestrian driven development, developers are continuing to add office, retail and residential space downtown. At the same time, the concept of tying local farming, fresh food, restaurants, jobs, chef training and start-up incubator came about.
According to Ted Spitzer, Market Ventures CEO, “The city’s partnership approach of solving problems is an important aspect of success. The redevelopment team worked directly with Grant Action, a non-profit made up of business leaders who are results oriented. Together they’ve made important improvements to the city in recent years including a new arena and medical. Their goal for this project was how to improve cultural life in the city and how do we add one more great downtown attraction?
As soon as we were hired it became apparent this was a high quality agricultural region - Grand Rapids back in 1900s had the second largest farmers’ market in the country. We set forth on a mission of wanted recreatng an older way of how markets operated in a new environment. So many of these markets went away as cities developed downtown corridors.
The result is a new 130,000 square foot destination expected to attract half a million visitors annually.
Multi-Faceted Thinking
In addition to an actual food market with room for 60 vendors, there will be a commercial kitchen available for use by start-up food businesses (in Jamaica Plain, MA, CropCircle Kitchen has been operating a non-profit culinary business incubator), with another kitchen used for education. A rooftop greenhouse, restaurants, and indoor/outdoor event space are all planned as part of the development. With on-site energy and waste systems, developers and the City have left no idea untouched.