Tagged: Grand Rapids

The Grand Rapids area economy will continue to grow at a modest pace in 2012. Economists at Grand Valley State University are predicting employment growth between 1.5 and 2-percent this year.

GVSU Professor of Economics Hari Singh surveyed close to 300 business owners in Allegan, Ottawa, Kent and Muskegon counties to compile his report. He says 70-percent of employers told him they plan to hire permanent employees this year.

“The bright spot is really exports,” Singh said. “Our respondents say that our exports are going to go up around 7-percent in spite of the slowing markets in Asia; China and India are supposed to slow down, but exports are still relatively robust.”

The Rapid busses start a new schedule Monday that will better serve riders late at night, on the weekends, and more frequently during the workday. The bus service is improving thanks to a millage voters passed back in May.

Grand Rapids resident Mike Ewer and his wife don’t have a car anymore. He says about a year and a half ago both of their cars broke down within a span of two months.  “We just said ‘well, we get about okay on the bus so why are we spending money on cars, on maintenance, taxes, gas, insurance and all that stuff?’ So we said ‘let’s just ride the bus.”

Kent County is saving tens of thousands of dollars a year on supplies thanks to a customized online auction. The program is like the online auction site eBay in reverse.

When Kent County needs office supplies, like printer paper, it opens an auction online. It lists a maximum price it’s willing to pay based on previous bills. Vendors offer to sell the county printer paper at that price or lower.

The auction runs in real time so businesses can name a lower price if they’re outbid. The auction may last an hour or so but if there are last minute bids the time will extend. After ten minutes go by with no new offers, the lowest bid gets the county’s business.

 A federal judge’s ruling is opening the doors of Michigan’s homeless shelters to registered sex offenders.  

 Two years ago, a 51 year old homeless man was found frozen to death in Grand Rapids.  He was turned away by a   local homeless shelter because the man was a registered sex offender.   The shelter was less than a thousand feet from a school, which would have been a violation of a Michigan law barring sex offenders from living that close to a school.   

This week, a federal judge ruled seeking an overnight stay in a homeless shelter did not violate the law.  

The Amway Hotel. Van Andel Arena. The Grand Rapids Public Museum. What do all these things have in common? Yes, they're all credited with helping turn downtown Grand Rapids around. But they also owe their existence, at least in part, to something else: philanthropy.

"Everybody recognizes that Grand Rapids' downtown has been revitalized in these dramatic ways," says Michael Moody, who studies family philanthropy at the Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University.