Posted on 09/24/2010 8:51:05 AM PDT by rahbert
Looking at relocating for work. What is Grand Rapids/Zeeland MI like?
“And the Lake Michigan shore is an hour away”
When I read that I got a whiff in my nose of Lake Michigan. Nice.
I need to go back up there for a vacation. I haven’t been there for 20 years of so.
LOL almost too embarrassed to point that out since its in the hood these days.
For those who know, Michigan is actually a great state despite our current political situation.
Of our 83 counties, less than 10 consistently vote democrat with a handfull more flipping back and forth. The majority of Michigan governors have been republican and Jenny Granholm is the firt multi term democrat in a while. John Engler was last governor and did a pretty decent job.
We have a GOP controlled state senate with democrats in control of the house. 7 of our US representatives are GOP and 8 are democrat till we pick up at least two seats in november. (Wish we had a senate race this year)
Conservatives who want to cede michigan to the democrats are no better than Obama ceding the southwest to mexico.
I think we have the 7th district wrapped up too.
I’m down here on the edge of the Irish hills in the Sharon Valley.
I’m down here on the edge of the Irish hills in the Sharon Valley.
It’s true Michigan’s gov. sucks (Granholm). But she will be out of office. And, the Republican is leading in polls.
Detroit is run by the unions, but the rest of the state is ok.
Beautiful area. And far enough away too.
Yes, it’s very windy today. As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of taking a “field trip” to check out the waves on the lake. You can see them at www.surfgrandhaven.com
“Michigan is actually a great state despite our current political situation.”
Agree!! I prefer the western side of the state over the eastern side. I lived in N. Muskegon for quite a few years after relocating from Adrian. I don’t know a lot about the Grand Rapids area other than getting to the airport is very easy and the prices are competitive to flying out of Chicago.
I currently live in CO. The taxes (on everything) in MI were outrageous. The property tax I paid was tripled (or more by now)compared to CO. I think I was being taxed on the clean lake breezes coming off of Lake Michigan. But having said that, I loved living on the lakeshore and nothing beats a Michigan summer and nothing is worse than a west Michigan winter.
The people in MI are great and for the most part very welcoming even if you are a Buckeye:) Well they probably were welcoming to this Buckeye because I lived in MI for the entire reign of John Cooper!
Check out Jenison (between Zeeland and GR). Good compromise between rural and suburbs. Quiet, conservative, family friendly, close to the expressway to get to anywhere you want to go. A couple of miles off of 28th Street if you need something more more citified once in a while. Nice parks, close shopping. Large new-ish mall 5 miles away. Used to live there many years ago... if they had any jobs I would go back.
New Buffalo in the SE corner is nice to visit in the summer and fall. Lake Michigan is nice on the Eastern shore.
Try a Redamak’s Burger:
http://www.redamaks.com/site/stuff.htm
You might have to wait 20 minutes for it, but it’s worth the wait.
I swear that stretch of Lake Michigan shore from Saugatuck up through Traverse City and Petoskey is the biggest secret in America. People in Michigan and Chicago know about it, but past that, no one seems to know it exists. Pine woods to beach grass covered dunes to the finest white sand beaches I've ever experienced...
...for eight weeks in the summer. Beyond that, you'd better take up snowmobiling and cross country skiing.
Winters relatively mild compared to the Tahoe/Truckee area.
Zeeland isn’t anything like GR, it’s growing, but still pretty rural.
The suburbs have been spreading along I-196, and the Rivertown Crossing mall drew a lot of commercial building nearby. M-6 is the “south beltline”, and it merges with I-196 not far west of Rivertown. Zeeland is west of the junction (I believe... hmm, I haven’t driven that far out on M-6). The Metropolitan Hospital is located right at Byron Center Rd and M-6, and Zeeland Hospital was refreshed in the past few years (I drove out to Holland in the spring of this year and saw it). There’s considerable new housing and everything else along M-6, particularly at the exits, and the crossing streets have been upgraded. M-6 links I-196 with I-96, and also has an interchange with US-131.
Holland (w of Zeeland) is like a lot of lakefront towns everywhere, but especially in Michigan it seems — they grew every which way, with no actual planning, and without a view toward modern traffic needs. To top it off, the folks who wind up in office seem to resist the idea that any changes are needed to accommodate summer resort boom traffic, which means, basically, they have their heads up their asses. Holland’s downtown is an old-style shopping district, kinda charming. There’s a lot of stuff by the new hotel, clubs and restaurants and whatnot, again, I was pretty surprised when I strolled through it early spring 2010.
Holland’s Ottawa Beach (like western Michigan beaches in general) has really nice sand. Sounds goofy, but it’s true. That’s a state park, and unless things have changed recently, there’s insufficient parking; regardless, there’s basically no on-street parking to compensate for the lack of capacity in the park itself. That’s the main reason I rarely make the drive out there.
Despite the name, Holland isn’t very Dutch, it’s mostly Hispanic, or a hybrid blue-eyed fair-haired Spanish kind of town. There’s gang activity (more in some parts of Holland than in others) but anyone from a big city would just laugh at the crime rate in western Michigan anyway. The big story today was a Rockford chiropractor indicted for tax evasion.
While we’re at it, western Michigan is also not very Dutch, despite the reputation. A good many “Dutch” families started calling themselves Dutch during WWI when in fact they were German. If memory serves, of Michiganders (Michiganians my ass) answering the census question in 1990 regarding their ethnic group, the largest (bar none) single group was German. Still there are Dutch ancestry folks (including me, if I look back about seven or eight generations, just not from around here) as one will notice by the weird pants sizes that still get stocked in the stores. Dutch men tend to be long in the torso and short in the leg, and give or take getting a paunch, inseam can be smaller than waist size; the big-and-tall shirts work the best for them, even though they aren’t necessarily tall. A lot of the real Dutch I know are fairly short.
Western Michigan has a LOT of RINO politicians, because the Democrat name brand is not all that popular, so a mighty large number of people across most of the political spectrum run as Pubbies.
Zeeland and other towns which were dry on Sunday? They aren’t dry on Sunday any longer. The last of those dry-Sunday ordinances in this part of the state have fallen, as far as I know. This has to do with the pattern of growth, which is in the younger demographic. Hell, Michigan had the medical marijuana BS on the ballot in 2008, and it passed. Another recent bust of a doctor (for DUI) that was even an FR topic I think had the [characterization omitted] claim that his own behavior had nothing to do with the arrest, that it was retaliation for his medical marijuana peddling.
As someone noted, the real estate prices will probably look so reasonable as to be crazy. This is partly because it’s always underpriced around here, and a good value; it’s partly because the economy in Michigan has been in the tank; also, a great many people took on way too much debt to build way too much house for themselves, and there was a raft of foreclosures.
As in any town, if you have kids (or plan to), buy the house based on the school district.
Also take into account the proximity of places of worship, but that’s kinda nutty to worry about — you’ll see why when you get here. There’s nearly a church on every block in the old core of Grand Rapids, and in the country there are just loads of small local churches in amounts that amaze when one considers the low population density of that time. Some of the reason involves transportation (people couldn’t drive twenty miles to go to church in the horse and buggy days); some of the reason has to do with the ethnic diversity and differences here (which is quite contrary to the way west Michigan is often portrayed — people who aren’t from here don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to that).
Regarding transportation, you’ll want to take the proximity of the on-ramp into account. The quicker you can get to the freeway, the quicker you can get around to the places you need to go.
If you want a place to flop first, rather than investing in a house, perhaps consider housing near Rivertown Crossing, there’s loads of apartments, condos, townhouses, etc for rent in all directions, and every kind of store is there, including one of the small-template Meijer stores and a D&W. There’s a Costco, Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowes, BB & Beyond, all the familiar chains. Nationwide and regional chains is what you’re likely to find around Rivertown, because it was a cow pasture just over ten years ago. Everything is new. Rivertown is also close to the hospital, and to the freeway. Driving up to 28th St is only a matter of a couple of miles.
There’s a first-run theater complex in the mall, and an express Barnes & Noble, plus the usual scads of clothing, sporting goods, shoe, and home furnishing stores. I haven’t been out there more than a half-dozen times, but it’s a bit of a hike from here, and there’s more than enough shopping around here. The best bookstores in the city are Schuler’s, one just east of 28th and Breton, one downtown in GR, and one on Alpine just NW of GR in Walker.
I guess that’s more than you really wanted to know, sorry. :’)
Regarding the weather... GR gets some big snowfalls sometimes; generally when it happens it’s no more than once per winter. Of course, that can involve continuous snowfall for anything from one to seven days straight, with an accumulation that from a safe distance looks daunting.
People from the Buffalo NY area would just laugh at most of the worst blizzards here. I’ve seen theirs, and seen ours, and I’ll take ours, no contest.
There seems to be heavier snowfall south of here, like near Kalamazoo. Also, the closer one is to Lake Michigan, the more snowfall one can expect, it’s called Lake Effect, and it is no joke. There’s substantially, and noticeably, more snowfall in the shoreline towns, and even in Zeeland, than there is in GR.
Rainfall is a different story. Sometimes on a beautiful summer day it will rain out of a mostly clear sky. That comes as a surprise to some people. Also, a totally calm day will suddenly turn windy, the cloud banks are moving in from the west at a rate that is obvious to the eye, and rain pours down so hard that the streets fill up because the storm sewer system is already filled and can’t take out any more. Lower city crossroads have piles of water. I’ve seen one nearby low spot where the water was still going down (the rain had stopped about fifteen minutes earlier) and I could see the roof of a car, that’s all that was visible. No one had a gun to their head to buy a house down there. :’)
There’s an old song (probably 19th c) that has words something like, “Michigan, Michigan, the beautiful state, the roads are deeper than the Lakes”. That’s a slight exaggeration of 19th c conditions. What it still means is, there are lots of lakes, streams, and rivers everywhere, as well as quite a few remaining wet spots (wetlands, which everyone would call swamps if we weren’t in a PC age).
Off toward Zeeland and Holland, and quite a few other places west of here, you’ll see some dead flat areas. Those are the former lakebeds of vanished glacial lakes, and the jet-black soil is known as muck. They’re terrifically fertile and they help explain the one-time, quite early appeal of western Michigan to the Dutch, who were used to that kind of terrain from the redeemed seafloors or polders.
All the shoreline cities, and larger cities like Grand Rapids and its suburbs, get drinking water out of Lake Michigan. Literally. At the spot where Lake Michigan Drive reaches Lake Michigan, there’s a large water treatment facility for Grand Rapids, and Wyoming (a suburb) has one of its own. Allendale, which is on Lake Michigan Dr, and it sits in the muckland, hooked into the GR waterline years ago. The larger the town, the more problem it is to serve the water needs by drilling more wells, and the closer one gets to the Lake, the more likely the well is to be salty (that’s left over from past ages, when the Lakes were an inlet of the ocean).
Allendale is the hometown of Grand Valley State University (formerly GVS Colleges) and has been in a bit of a boom in recent years because of the proximity. GVUS is actually up by the Grand River and a few miles east of Allendale; but the strip along Lake Mich Dr is quite built up now.
As it happens I’ve been extended for another 6 mo, so
I can stay in Nevaaadaa. Guess I’ll do my shooting on BLM
range.
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