Tag: MI

Heritage Hill- Arguably Michigan’s best Historic District

The Heritage Hill neighborhood is located just to the east of Downtown Grand Rapids and is the City’s oldest residential district. It also has Michigan largest concentration of nineteenth and early twentieth-century homes, with many of them as mansions for the City’s elites. However, this neighborhood was under threat from the recking ball as City officials threatened to demolish huge swaths of the neighborhood in the 1960s. Thankfully tactful community organizing resisted these efforts and one of the best Historic Distracts was created in Grand Rapids. Heritage Hills in the present day is one of the City’s more desirable communities, retaining its historic fabric, amplified by great access to Dwtn, good housing diversity, and decent schools and food & beverage businesses. But to become a top notch Midwestern neighborhood it needs more retail and walkable amenities. This can start with rebuilding Michigan Avenues as an urban mixed-uses corridor instead of autocentric business district, and allowing more mixed uses along Fulton, Cherry, and Wealthy Streets. 

Click here to view my Heritage Hills neighborhood on Flickr

URBAN STRENGTHS:

  • Almost all intersections have modern ADA curb cuts.
  • Respectable density at just under 10K per square mile.
  • Great historic homes.
  • Solid public transit access and great access to Dwtn being only 1 mile away.
  • Great Tree canopy.
  • Decent # restaurants, bars, and a couple cafes, a couple art galleries, a couple museums & historic houses and convenient access to all the cultural amenities dwtn.
  • Decent # of schools within the district and public schools have ok ratings
  • Overall pretty safe with limited blight.
  • Pretty good rental diversity and also affordable. 1-beds lease in the low 1Ks, 2-beds btwn 1.2K-2K, and only a handful of 3 & 4 bed rentals.
  • Decent # of 1-bed condos that sell anywhere from 150K-300K, decent # of 2-beds sell btwn 200K-500K including many units carved out of historic mansions. Pretty good variety for 3 & 4 bed homes selling anywhere between 250K-750K.

URBAN WEAKNESSES:

* One east to west dedicated bike lane and not dedicated bike stations here nor in Grand Rapids as a whole.
*  Some poor urban form along Michigan Ave with large surface parking lots but improving with better urban infill. Rest of the neighborhood is pretty good.
* Not great park space within the community. Only a couple of smaller parks but more parks surrounding it.
* Retail amenities are pretty limited but include a Dollar Store, a couple clothing stores, a couple dessert joints, a couple gyms, a couple churches and a major hospital.

Downtown Ann Arbor, MI

Downtown Ann Arbor is really the convergence of several historic commercial streets that create a small rectangle just west of the University of Michigan (i.e. Main Street, Huron, State, and Liberty Streets). Each one of these streets has a slight different character but all have great urban form and mixed-use development. One can easily argue that Downtown spills out a block beyond these streets as dense mixed-use development continues into adjacent urban neighborhoods and newer, more dense development has sprung up. Ashley, William, and Ann streets all have segments that feel increasingly as part of Downtown.

Downtown Ann Arbor captures the inputs of a large college town, burgeoning economy and growing MSA into a vibrant and compact urban environment. It shows that you can create a wonderful urban environment with a mix of low-rise and medium rise buildings as long as you have consistant mix-use buildings. Downtown also stiches together so well to the University of Michigan and other attractive urban districts (Old 4th Ward, Old West Side, Kerrytown, Germantown, and Burns Park) creating a pretty seamless urban environment.

Click here to view my Downtown album on Flickr

URBAN STRENGTHS:

* Great mixed use environment.
* Vibrant, lots of people on the streets.
* Great cultural amenities including many restaurants, bars, cafes, a couple movie theaters, and several museums.
* Great architecture including many historic properties and quality urban infill.
* Very bike friendly and walkable environment.
* Very dense environment- about 20K per square mile.

URBAN WEAKNESSES:

* Not a huge jobs center.
* Only a couple walkable schools.
* Park space is limited.
* Housing is expensive