Author: johnrothwellblog

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Photos from the 2018 Lunar New Year celebration

Hundreds of people gathered at Gillette Bridge in downtown Grand Rapids on Friday February 16, 2018, to welcome in the Lunar New Year. The Year of the Dog started with a bang with the lighting of 4,000 firecrackers.

The event being held in downtown Grand Rapids was the first time for the Chinese Association of West Michigan with the affair open to all West Michigan residents.

Participants followed a short parade that ended up at DeVos Place leading with a dragon which represents power, boldness, and excellence, including lions that symbolize strength, stability and superiority in the Chinese Culture. The creatures are meant to chase away evil spirits and welcome prosperous times during festive occasions.

Eight-hundred people purchased tickets to a sold out celebration, while many others were turned away at the door. The main auditorium where the show took place was standing-room only with people lining the walls to catch a glimpse of the performers.

Some food vendors ran out of certain items as they catered to the larger than expected crowd.

“I am happy that Grand Rapids is embracing this,” said Chinese Association of West Michigan committee member Ace Marasigan. “We will definitely need a bigger room next year.”

Inside the hall, Andrew Wu, 10, makes tea the way a friend of his mothers’ taught him while visiting his grandparents on a recent visit to China.

“It is very fun to make tea and tea taste very good,” Wu said.

The night was filled with events and performances that showed off not only Chinese traditions but also many Asian traditions.

“It was very good having a selection of so many nationalities,” said Herbert Welz, who attended with his wife and family friend. “The best thing is how you bring people together.”

The Chinese culture goes by the Lunar calendar. Lasting some fifteen days, the Chinese or Lunar New Year usually begins with the new moon that occurs between the end of January and early February and ends when the full moon arrives with the Festival of Lanterns.

The Chinese zodiac which is the included in the Chinese calendar contains twelve signs as the sun makes it path through the cosmos. Each year is represented by one of the twelve zodiac animals: the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.

If you missed this year’s celebration plan on celebrating Lunar New Year next year on February 5, 2019 for the Year of the Pig.

Chi Benedict informs residents of the purposed zoning changes during a meeting held at the West Grand Neighborhood Organization

Neighborhood associations are worried that the city of Grand Rapids is pushing through new changes to the zoning ordinances without community engagement under the guise of creating more affordable housing. Meetings on Saturday, February 17, 2018 informed residents of the proposed changes to zoning ordinances that could take neighbor’s say out of the mix on future development in their own neighborhoods.

Don Lee, Executive Director of the Eastown Community Association, addressed residents from multiple south side neighborhoods during an early afternoon meeting at the Seymour Church. Lee unveiled a Powerpoint presentation allowing the concerned residents that attended a chance to see and discuss the zoning recommendations.

Don Lee, Executive Director of the Eastown Community Association, addressed residents from multiple south side neighborhoods.

A capacity-filled space at the West Grand Neighborhood Organization was a much more heated meeting that took place later in the same day. Staff member Chi Benedict also presented a Powerpoint allowing the concerned residents the chance to and understand the plan. At times residents became vocal, speaking up and engaged in heated discussion with others in attendance.

View the West Grand powerpoint presentation here: https://johnrothwellblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/8b4d6-housingnow21recommendationswest.pdf

After the meeting, West Grand Neighborhood resident Margo Johnson and I continued our conversation regarding the potential changes and pitfalls.

“One of the frustrating things that I see happening at the planning commission level is that there isn’t a lot of training and the longevity, that history that goes into the process there are usually six standards when it comes to a planning decision and approval and we can go up there and show them that it does not meet those standards and it still gets approved; that’s a problem,” Johnson said.

Jim Davis, Executive Director of the Westside Collaborative and Planning Commission member, also took the time at the end of the meeting to meet with me.

“I want to just let everyone be reminded that the conversation that manifested surrounding the ‘Housing Now’ proposals, that is now before the city commission with amendments from the planning commission that the conversation record in the minutes and the video posted online will represent a heart beat for the affordable housing that we need to see in the city. that we’ve lost or that we need to add given our current needs,” Davis said.

“I am disappointed that so many people have misconstrued that as a land grab under the guise of affordability. No one went into this process hoping to give opportunity to people that have a bunch of money and property already. We were trying to eliminate the barriers and divides to the common neighbor to allow opportunities for people like me and my neighbors, to provide an additional unit for a family or neighbor who can’t afford the ridiculous rents we have right now.”

For those citizens who want their voice heard, neighborhood organizations are encouraging residents to attend the City Commission meeting at 7:00 p.m. February 20, 2018 in the Commission Chambers on the ninth floor of City Hall located at 300 Monroe NW.

The house at 257 Richards SW once was located at 269 Garfield SW was moved due to a sinkhole forming at the Garfield address

Imagine being awakened at 3 a.m. to the sounds of loud popping. The sounds you hear when there is a hail storm, but there is no hail storm happening. It is the sound of your house being sucked into a sinkhole.

Krystyna Czarnopys-Sweeney was twelve years old on the night of September 27,1965, when at 3:20 a.m. the family was awakened by that popping sound at the home on 269 Garfield SW.

“It was 3 o’clock in the morning and we heard this loud popping. Literally, it was like this huge large hail storm that woke us all up, so we all jumped out of bed,” said Czarnopys-Sweeney, speaking over the phone from her home in Nashville, Tennessee.

Czarnopys-Sweeney described what took place after that.

“My mother looked outside and then went to put her foot on the step and the steps caved in then she started screaming ‘Get out! Get out! Get out!’ We ran out the door. She grabbed my little sister out of the crib. “Everybody got out,” said Czarnopys-Sweeney.

“It was an experience I wouldn’t wish on anybody. It was the most frightening thing I have ever gone through.”

“Then we started hearing this loud pounding. You’re standing there watching your house as the sinkhole gets bigger and bigger and bigger and finally cave in. The entire basement was gone yet the structure of the house was still there. All of our belongings were in the basement…my Barbie dolls and all my dad’s tools. Everything was lost; everything sank into the ground and was gone.”

Arriving a decade before, Czarnopys-Sweeney’s father, Joseph, arrived from Poland with his three brothers. The four of them purchased four lots in the 200 block of Garfield SW to build homes.

The “Mystery Lot” at 269 Garfield SW

Czarnopys-Sweeney feels the city was uncomfortable right from the beginning with the selling of the property.

“The land should have never have been built on. The topography was okay but underneath there they knew that something was wrong,” Czarnopys-Sweeney said. “There was some kind of stipulation with the purchases of the lots from the city.”

Neighbors called the lot the house was built on the Mystery Lot. Before being built on the area, kids would place piles of twigs, rocks and even toys on the lot and they would often be gone the next day according to Czarnopys-Sweeney.

Czarnopys-Sweeney remembers that when it rained the sewers would back up and their basement would flood.

“The insurance company said that the sinking was an act of God. No one received a penny of insurance from the incident. It was a year before the family saved up the money so they could move the house to a lot at 257 Richards NW.

During that year the hole was still open at Garfield, the sound of flowing water could be heard.

“You could hear the waters moving, so we thought it was an underground river,” said Czarnopys-Sweeney.

After the house was moved, the sinkhole was filled, it opened up again and filled in again. Joseph Czarnopys maintained the empty lot, cutting the grass every week and paying the taxes every year until his death in 1987, when the family deeded the property back to the city.

The city owned the property until it was sold to the Kent County Land Bank. It was then in the summer of 2017 real estate broker Joshua Schaub looked into purchasing and building a property on the lot.

The northeast prospective of the development that was planned for 269 Grafield SW /Courtesy photo from a resident on Garfield SW

“I believe back in the 1970’s the previous home there just collapsed as a sinkhole ate away at the front of the foundation. I found this out at a neighborhood meeting as I was trying to get the community’s thoughts on my project. Some of the nearby neighbors had pictures and articles on the whole event. I eventually consulted with a geological digging company (don’t remember their name, I just Googled some) and they recommended I don’t build there because it could have a small risk of happening again. They stated you never know what the weight of the new home will do,” wrote Schaub in an email.

The Czarnopys believe that the city knew that they sold their family a bad property decades ago. With the recent request to build, what does the city know about this lot?

It was the neighbors who went to the Planning Commission when they heard of a development proposal in their neighborhood. Many asked why a house with the past experience of a sinkhole at that site should be allowed to be built on that location.

“The Planning Commission and Zoning don’t look at whether soils are suitable for development,” Grand Rapids City Planning Director Suzanne Schulz said. “That is the responsibility of the property owner to do their own due diligence.”

Are there other areas of the Westside in danger of sinking? This is the third article in a series exploring what it means to have an extensive network of mines and filled in wetlands in the same area where a lot of new business development is taking place on the Westside.

This multi-unit building going up on the corner of Lake Michigan and Seward NW tore down existing homes to be built

Neighborhood associations along with concerned citizens throughout the City of Grand Rapids are worried that under the guise of creating more affordable housing, suggested changes to zoning ordinances could take neighbor’s say out of the mix on future development in the neighborhoods.

During the January 25, 2018 Planning Commission meeting, the Commission recommended the City Commission pass changes that would mean people would not need to have a public hearing to get a zoning variance.

So-called “by right” developments would allow developers to build qualifying projects in some areas of the city without going to the planning commission, avoiding public hearings.

“With chickens or fire pits or building a fence up to the property line I have to ask my neighbors if I can do those things,” West Grand Neighborhood Association’s Annette Vandenberg said. “If I have to ask to do those minor things in my own backyard then I should have to ask to put a 800-square-foot dwelling unit in my backyard.”

Under the new by right development rule, it would mean developers do not have to put in for special land use, but they would still have to go to the planning commission. They would still have to go through the permit process but they do not have to seek neighborhood engagement any longer.

“The fear of the neighborhood associations, and frankly me, is that what this will result in is houses getting demolished,” Second Ward City Commissioner Ruth Kelly said. “Bought up by investors and then taken down.”

Kelly added that with some houses being in a deteriorated state some people may feel that it is a good thing to tear them down. Yet she worries about the people living in those houses.

“There are people living in those houses and where are they going to go once they are displaced, while they build new four to eight units?” questoined Kelly.

Marie Cimachowicz, Community Organizer at John Ball Area Neighbors, hears the horror stories of people in her area that are losing their homes in the name of growth.

“People are getting evicted and losing their homes … there is nothing affordable in the area,’ Cimachowicz said. “Single mothers cannot afford five hundred dollars a bedroom.”

According to the Planning Commission meeting minutes from January 25, 2018, City Planning Director Suzanne Schulz mentioned projects on Diamond and several off of Fourth Street where they are demolishing single family homes for multifamily units. “They are building them as pods where there is a duplex that is really four bedrooms for students in each bedroom. It isn’t that that will happen in all cases but it is something to be aware of because it is currently a practice,” Schulz is noted as saying.

The City Commission is likely to discuss the Planning Commission’s recommended changes at their next meeting.

“It is really important that we hear from the public,” Kelly said. “Zoning changes can have unintended consequences so I think that it is really important that we hear from the neighborhoods before we make any such changes.”

The next City Commission meeting will be February 20, 2018 in the Commission Chambers on the ninth floor of City Hall located at 300 Monroe NW.

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Grand Rapids, Mi— Firefighters battled flames at a house fire on Grand Rapids’ northeast side monday February 12, 2018.

The fire started around noon in 1500 block of College Avenue NE.

Several stations called to the scene. A large presence of firefighters worked to put out the fire, as well as to protect the neighboring home.

Firefighters could be could be seen tossing household items and belongings from an upstairs window.

It’s unclear what started the College street fire.

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On Tuesday night, February 6, 2018 a core number of issues commanded a majority of the meeting for Grand Rapids City Commissioners, ranging from the retirement of City Clerk Darlene O’Neal, a unanimously approved pedestrian-vehicle ordinance, the announcement of a reset for the City Manager search, to a highly contested property rezoning proposal.

Veering from the usual agenda, Mayor Rosalynn Bliss opened the meeting by honoring outgoing City Clerk Darlene O’Neal on her retirement after 33 years of public service.  O’Neal recognized her daughters as “deputy clerks” who supported her public service.  Deputy City Clerk Stephanie McMillen was appointed Acting Interim City Clerk.

Commissioners unanimously passed a new ordinance that requires vehicle operators to fully stop for pedestrians in uncontrolled crosswalks. The previous ordinance only required that motorists yield the right of way.  The worldwide campaign “Vision Zero” is aimed at lowering pedestrian vulnerability and was adopted in Grand Rapids in January.  The movement became more relevant after the vehicle-pedestrian related death of philanthropist and civic leader John Canepa on January 25, 2018.  Between 2012 and 2015 Kent County reported 790 pedestrian related crashes, the third highest in the state with 439 of those incidents occurring in Grand Rapids.

The City of Grand Rapids started working with a search firm in October to create a community profile candidate for the City Manager’s position with significant feedback from the community. In that process, over one thousand citizens and more than 300 city employees weighed in to create the community profile.  The search firm went out and actively posted and recruited for the position.  With sixty-one applicants, the City Commission saw a pool of five semi-finalists, then ultimately three finalists had final interviews on Tuesday afternoon.

First Ward Commissioner Jon O’Conner moved that the city reinstate the search for a City Manager and that they repost the job. Second Ward Commissioner Joe Jones seconded the motion, opening up a dialogue that lasted over twenty minutes between Commissioners on how and when to re-work the selection process. The end result was the board voting unanimously to re-initiate the search process.

“I want to apologize to the three candidates,” Commissioner David Allen said. “This is a process that we created and we should own it.”

Commissioner Jones added that  he was in favor of a “reset” in the search for a new City Manager.

“To me, re-initiating a search is telling of our commitment to wanting to finding the absolute best candidate,” Mayor Rosalynn Bliss said. “I have a lot of faith and have always had a lot of faith in this body and the collective wisdom around this table.”

The search will resume once the Commissioners have agreed on the process.

Many residents along with members of the Northeast Citizens Action Association raised concerns and voiced opposition against a proposed project at 843 Maryland Avenue NE and 2128 and 2129 Chesapeake Drive NE. The project would require a rezone from modern neighborhood low density residential to special district-planned redevelopment district where the developer wants to build 134 condominiums.

“Our board does not see a legal reason upon which we can oppose this project,” NECAA board member  Paul Greenwald read from a letter addressed on December 5, 2017 to the City Planning Commission. “We, however, ask for close scrutiny on this project as it moves forward.”

“Worcester would become a shortcut between Leonard and Maryland,” area resident Tim Nowak said. “We have kids and bicyclist along with neighborhood activities there.”

Tuesday’s meeting was broadcast on Facebook Live.  When contacted, a city official said that the city will be trying to broadcast all future meetings via Facebook Live. Click here to view this meeting.

The next City Commission meeting will be February 20, 2018  in the Commission Chambers on the 9th floor of City Hall located at 300 Monroe NW.

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Tuesday night’s City Commission meeting, on January 30, 2018, had City Manager Greg Sundstrom Retire and Eric DeLong sworn in as interim manager. Citizens also talked about affordable housing and the search for a new city manager.

Exactly eight and a half years ago, to the day, Greg Sundstrom was sworn in as Grand Rapids City Manager. Tuesday night’s City Commission meeting was his last.

Sundstrom announced his retirement last August. He addressed the Commission for the final time at the start of the January 30, 2018 meeting. Thanking his wife Audrey Sundstrom, Sundstrom let her know that he would never be late coming home on a Tuesday evening, ever again. He went on to thank many of the people that he worked and served during his tenure with the city.  He concluded his speech by challenging the City Commission staff along with the entire community to focus upon their collective energy to eliminate poverty in Grand Rapids.

“Imagine a Grand Rapids where zip code does not eliminate opportunities and restrict your life choices,” Sundstrom said. “This is not beyond what city employees are capable of accomplishing. We can change outcome that can improve the lives of children and families across our city.”

Wishing Eric DeLong the best as interim manager, Sundstrom vacated his seat  allowing for the swearing in of DeLong until a permanent replacement can be found.

The meeting continued with an open discussion by members of the audience raising concerns about affordable housing within the city of Grand Rapids.

“People can’t get as job, hold a job if they don’t have housing,” Grand Rapids resident Martha Cooper said. “Saying that you cannot set a policy saying that sixty percent of AMI (Area Median Income) is really a failure of leadership and integrity”.  AMI, or Area Median Income, is an economic classification related to the median household income.

In public comments, Russell Olmsted asked the Commission if there was a way to get questions to the potential new city manager candidates in advance of the forum to consider and answer. The forum is to be held on February 5, 2018.

“It’s a great idea,” Mayor Rosalynn Bliss said. “We will follow up on that.”

The next City Commission meeting will be held February 6, 2018  in the Commission Chambers on the 9th floor of City Hall Located at 300 Monroe NW.

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On January 20, 2018, the one-year anniversary of the Trump inauguration, around 50 people representing groups from West Michigan’s Far-left joined together on Calder Plaza in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They were there to raise awareness that they are organizing in West Michigan and hold a rally against Trump and show support of the J20 (January 20th) defendants that were arrested the previous year protesting the Trump inauguration in Washington, D.C.

“A number of protesters people who were just in the vicinity were rounded up and arrested just for being there,” event organizer and leader of the Grand Rapids Branch of Socialist Alternative Philip Snyder said of the 2017 Washington, D.C. arrest. “It has been a year of their lives being disrupted by the federal government conspiracy with charges being raised against them for just being in the vicinity, reporters included.”

Several speakers addressed the crowd on topics that have become issues in the past year since Donald Trump was sworn into office. The issues highlighted included I.C.E. raids taking place around West Michigan, treatment of Native Americans, women, Jewish people and members of the LBGTQIA+ community.

As the last speaker was winding down a small group of individuals burned both a Trump and American flag.

“Burning the flag you know there is such a stigma around it and people think that it is this horrible thing to do but that’s because their view of nationalism is distorted,” Local activist Liz Kurdziel said. “We do not owe allegiance to any flag and if Trump’s flag represents a disgusting ideology where we encourage racism, sexism, and homophobia of course we are going to burn it the hell down.”

After the burning of the flags the many members of the protest marched from Calder Plaza to Rosa Parks circle and back chanting “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.”

As a photojournalist I try to let my photos do the talking.  On January 20th, 2018 I was covering a J20 protest in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The protest was referring to the one year of Donald Trump being in office.

Looking away from the event speaker at the time,  I thought I saw A Trump supporter counter protesting the event. I soon realized it was a group of protesters setting fire to both a Trump and and American flag.

Afterwards a person involved in the burning said this to me.

“We Burned two flags today. We burned the American flag and the Trump flag. Flag burning we find very symbolic because the American flag is suppose to supposedly stand for freedom and justice and all that. It clearly doesn’t so we burned the flag to indicate that is doesn’t stand for what it is suppose to. Therefore it is a useless symbol that people rally behind. Burning the Trump flag obviously to show we do not agree with the Trump administration and want that to go down in flames.”

 Christy S. Coleman, CEO of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia speaking in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Grand Valley State University’s Loosemore Auditorium on the Pew campus in downtown Grand Rapids was filled with over 200 people on Tuesday evening, January 16th.  Christy S. Coleman, CEO of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia gave an emphatic presentation titled “How Shall We Remember”, her insights into modern day questions about history, identity, and democracy of the American Civil War.  Prior to her position in Richmond she headed the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.

Starting the lecture Coleman told the audience “you cannot have meaningful conversation if you cannot get the history right.”  Calling the American Civil War perhaps the most contested period in American history, Coleman said that the meaning of the war differed vastly depending on who you were speaking to.

Coleman alluded that the Civil War was America’s trauma unlike any we have seen before or since, noting there were two folds to the upheaval.  First, the loss of over 750,000 soldiers, then the second trauma being at the time there was over two hundred years of slavery on the American psyche along with the establishment of white supremacy.

“This war was the clash of our ideals as a nation,” Coleman said, “Was it really going to be the place that all men are created equal?”  

Coleman went on to explain more about the symbols of flags and monuments that are direct results of the war, raising the question of whether the statues and monuments built in the South are really a remembrance or hate.   

“Hearing an African American woman talking about the Civil War was righteous,” said John Crowley, Director of Resident Living at the Gerald R Ford Job Corps in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “I got extremely excited by her passion, depth and breadth of the knowledge of the Civil War.”

At the conclusion of the presentation Coleman left the audience with a provocative thought. “The deeper we dig, the more we understand”, and in the end she warned to beware of half-truths, as “you will get half of the story wrong.”