Weekly Brief – March 29

Michigan’s two largest metro areas are exceptionally different.

I had the opportunity to spend time in the Grand Rapids metro area in the past week. Metro Grand Rapids development is reminiscent of the sprawl in metro Detroit in the 1990s through the early 2000s. New subdivisions and neighborhood shopping centers are under construction in many areas of metro Grand Rapids. Grand Rapids remains in a growth and sprawl mode.

The Detroit metro area, on the other hand, has matured in its development. Development in metro Detroit (excluding, perhaps, northern Macomb County and the far western edges of Oakland and Wayne Counties) is infill or reuse. Redevelopment, rather than new development, is the primary project.

Grand Rapids still has plenty of greenfield development. Those developments have the potential to be less expensive to develop, as there is less assemblage to negotiate, and fewer legacy development issues to resolve (such as utility relocation).

Grand Rapids may, in a few decades, have to deal with the reuse and infill development issues that Detroit currently confronts. However, for the time being, development in metro Grand Rapids raises entirely different issues than development in metro Detroit.