GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — In the 1960s, building a big stone wall along Lyon Street in downtown Grand Rapids seemed like a good idea to city planners. Now, the plan is to rip it out and put in storefronts.
The wall stands along Lyon Street between Monroe and Ottawa Avenues in front of what used to be called the Old Kent Bank Building. It was built between 1966 and 1969 during a time when old, gothic-style buildings were making way for utilitarian, Soviet-style edifices widely praised as the height of modernity, a philosophy that grew as people fled the cities for the suburbs.
Fifty years later, the city continues to recover from what was then called urban renewal.
Sam Cummings is a managing partner with downtown’s largest commercial developer CWD Real Estate Investment, which has been primarily responsible for helping reverse some of those 1960s decisions. He said that while it is easy to be critical in hindsight, those choices did create spaces for things like the Festival of the Arts.
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