Midtown- A Comfortable Streetcar Era Grand Rapids Neighborhood only 2 Miles east of Downtown

Until the early 20th century Midtown was known mostly for farming and the City’s  oldest Cemetery (Fulton Street). With the advent of the downtown trolley running through Midtown development picked up and the neighborhood is now filled with  1910s & 1920s bungalows and foursquares. Fulton still has a relatively intact streetcar business district but Michigan unfortunately became mostly autocentric. Midtown is overall a comfortable urban district with convenient access to Dwtn, decent retail and cultural amenities, affordable housing, thick  tree canopy, decent park amenities, and high levels of safety.

For Midtown to become a premiere urban district it needs more density and continued quality urban infill on Michigan Ave. This would help drive better retail and cultural amenities. Midtown also needs better bike and public transit infrastructure and more walkable schools.

Click here to view my Midtown album on Flickr

URBAN STRENGTHS:

• Very convenient access to Dwtn being only a 20 minute bus ride and 10 min bike ride.
• Excellent economic diversity and decent racial diversity.
• Generally good sidewalk and ADA infrastructure. About 75% of all curb cuts are modern standard.
• Overall a pretty safe community with limited blight.
• Decent rental inventory especially 2&3-bed options. 1-bes lease in the low-medium 1Ks, 2-beds btwn 1.5K-2K. 3-beds lease btwn 1.8K-2.5K. A handful of 4 beds as well.
• Few 1-bed options but good diversity of other for sale options and pretty affordable. 2-beds sell btwn 125K-350K. Pretty good variety for 3 & 4 bed homes selling anywhere between 175K-450K.
• Decent park amenities including Midtown Green, a large cemetery, several ballfields and the extensive Hillcrest park on the eastern edge.
• Excellent tree canopy.
• Decent cultural amenities including several restaurants, bars & cafes, and a couple art galleries.
• Pretty good urban massing along Fulton but Michigan is pretty autocentric. This is slowly getting better however.
• Decent retail amenities include a supermarket, a couple smaller gourmet grocerias, a year round farmer’s market, a couple drug stores, several salons, a handful of clothing/gift stores, a couple book stores, a hardware store, a couple bakeries & gyms.

URBAN WEAKNESSES:

* Pretty mediocre transit service for an urban neighborhood.
* Bike infrastructure is limited to a couple block stretches of dedicated bike lanes. No bike sharing stations either.
* Not a ton of family households and a disproportional # of college students and young adults living here.
* No schools within Midtown but some good  walkable options on the edges of the neighborhood.
* Not much dedicated affordable housing in Midtown.
* A good amount of the urban infill is autocentric but more and more urban infill is coming especially to Michigan street as larger apartments.
* Missing some key retail amenities such as a post office, public library, and medical offices. Also few boutiques, churches, and banks.