It's up to advocates to fund green initiatives

Date: October 30, 2009

Grand Rapids wrapping up 'green plan,' but lack of funding means it will be a grass roots effort

By Jim Harger | The Grand Rapids Press

October 25, 2009, 1:01AM

Rex Larsen | The Grand Rapids PressStacy Vance, with her children, Emmett, 1, and Greta, 4, shops for produce and a pumpkin at the Fulton Street Farmers Market from Case Visser of Visser Farms in Zeeland. Vance, of Grand Rapids, is a regular at the market that operates Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. "We come weekly and absolutely love it. It's nice to have local produce and it's good for the kids," she said. "They know what they're eating and where it comes from."

GRAND RAPIDS — After more than two years of “Green Gatherings,” dozens of PowerPoint presentations and endless subcommittee sessions, the future of “Green Grand Rapids” will depend on its grass roots.

The ambitious rewrite of the city’s master plan is nearly complete, and city officials are telling the hundreds of citizens behind it there will be no green cash from City Hall to make their dreams a reality.

“The state of Michigan is melting down,” City Manager Greg Sundstrom told the project’s final “Green Gathering” at Creston High School last week. Tax collections are down across the board and city officials are struggling to keep basic services intact, he said.

“We have lost the capacity to make any of these wonderful things happen,” Sundstrom said.

Despite his somber words, Sundstrom left the group cheering. He gave them license to push for more bicycle-friendly streets, bring whitewater rapids back to the Grand River, re-forest the city’s urban core and revitalize city parks.

“The city is going to help create and facilitate the platform,” Sundstrom said. “We need you to make it happen.”

Jack Hoffman, 60, a new urbanist and lawyer who chaired the project, evoked the 1960s as he challenged the volunteers to create a local “Green Power” movement.

“We have rich soil, plentiful rainfall, a healthy climate and in the Great Lakes, over one-fifth of the planet’s fresh surface water,” Hoffman said. “We can make this valley a garden again.”

City officials created Green Grand Rapids in 2007 after citizens protested a City Commission proposal to raise money by selling Indian Trails Golf Course to developers.

City Planning Director Suzanne Schulz, who argued the city needed more parks and green spaces, was put in charge. She had overseen the rewrite of the city’s 40-year-old master plan in 2002.

In its final form, Green Grand Rapids is a set of priority statements aimed at achieving six goals. The plan now heads to the city’s Planning Commission for final adoption.

Getting around
Early on, local bicycling enthusiasts started showing up at “Green Gatherings” to demand more bicycle-friendly streets.

The effort helped create a Bicycle Summit, which resulted in the creation of a Greater Grand Rapids Bicycle Coalition that achieved a “bronze” designation from the League of Bicycle Enthusiasts, a national group that advocates for bicycle-friendly streets.

The League designations and the standards it sets are expected to drive new bicycle-friendly street designs, generate new support for bicycle-related facilities and provide the basis for future government grants for bike paths.

“We all recognize that bronze is the starting point, and we will have the coveted Platinum award,” Mayor George Heartwell said.

In City Hall, the plan calls for more “road diets” that convert four-lane roads to three-lane roads with bike lanes, Schulz said. A design team that reviews all city street projects will make sure bicycles are considered, she said.

CONNECT: facebook.com/bikeGrandRapids

Grand River
Flowing through the center of downtown, the Grand River has shifted from an industrial power source and drain to a tourism destination for fishermen and water sports.

Kayakers and canoeists quickly became enchanted by the notion that you could put the “rapids’ back in Grand Rapids by taking out the old Fourth Street Dam. They quickly ran into fishing enthusiasts who have developed the water beneath the dam as their own tourist spot.

Green Grand Rapids compromises by proposing to keep the big dam and several smaller “beautification dams” downstream while creating a navigable whitewater run. The plan calls for piling rocks below the dams to create currents on which kayakers and tubers can float.

“If everything goes as planned, we’re going to have a little piece of Colorado right here in Grand Rapids,” said Chip Richards, co-founder of Grand Rapids Whitewater. Next steps include finding $1 million to build runs over the smaller dams and $2 million for the Fourth Street Dam.

Green Grand Rapids also calls for more access points and portages along the riverfront. The plan also asks improved riverfront access on city property at 201 Market Ave. SW.

CONNECT: grandrapidswhitewater.com

Parks and recreation
After city cuts took away 60 percent of the funding for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, a new generation of urban residents are demanding more investment in public green spaces.

Steve Faber, director of Friends of Grand Rapids Parks, said Grand Rapids spends $44 per resident on parks. San Francisco spends $300; Seattle spends $254 and Portland, Ore., spends $160, he said.

“This is the kind of city I want to live in, this is the kind of city I want to raise my kids in,” Faber said. “This is going to take an investment from private and public dollars to make this dream come true.”

Green Grand Rapids wants an accessible, well-maintained park within a quarter-mile of every city resident, Schulz said. Achieving that goal means partnerships with private and nonprofit groups.

CONNECT: friendsofgrparks.org

Lost Waterways
When Green Grand Rapids organizers asked participants to identify the city’s stream corridors, Schulz said they sometimes would get blank looks. The city has streams, but they often are ignored and sometimes buried.

Groups such as the West Michigan Environmental Action Council are hoping to raise awareness of how stormwater drainage affects the Grand River watershed and the network of streams that feed into it, said Rachel Hood, WMEAC’s executive director.

WMEAC promotes green roofs, rain gardens and rain barrels as ways to reduce water consumption and the stormwater runoff into local streams. By early December, WMEAC will produce a document to guide the city’s future in stormwater management, Hood said.

The city has adopted ordinances that favor developments that include green spaces and porous parking lots that reduce runoff.

CONNECT: wmeac.org

Greening
Octavian Cantilli | The Grand Rapids PressFall colors at Creston Riverside Park.Just when the Urban Forestry Committee concluded the city’s neighborhoods need more trees, the emerald ash borer came along, threatening the ash trees that line many streets and parks.

Dotti Clune, chair of the Urban Forestry Committee, is undeterred. Plant a tree, she says. And save the ones we already have.

Trees have tremendous potential to save energy with their cool shade and prevent stormwater runoff with their deep roots.

“As you go through the Green Grand Rapids plan, trees are part of almost every aspect,” Clune said. “We’re looking at what we need to do in terms of our policies, what we can do to preserve trees.”

Green Grand Rapids wants the city to add 500 trees a year plus replace ash trees that die.
Meanwhile, the West Michigan Environmental Action Council has created a program aimed at helping residents save their ash trees.

CONNECT: wmeac.org/saveyourashgr

Local food
Local food markets and community gardens provide healthy food for city residents and encourage local food production.

Green Grand Rapids wants the city to encourage the creation of more markets and back expansion of the Fulton Street Market.

Ideas include installing community gardens on raised beds at the former Butterworth Dump, an EPA Superfund site whose redevelopment has been stalled by the restrictions on uses that penetrate its protective clay cap.

Green Grand Rapids also supports efforts to put a year-round farmers market downtown. Grand Action, a nonprofit development group led by area business leaders, has hired an expert in urban markets to explore the feasibility of such a facility.

CONNECT: fultonstreetmarket.org

This article can be found at Mlive.com