GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — It turns out that infrastructure can be complicated.
That’s why Division Avenue in downtown Grand Rapids has been torn up since March and will be torn up again next year.
And the intersection of Fulton Street and Division Avenue will be closed for three months beginning July 15.
That’s complicated: Currently traffic coming up Monroe Center turns south to the Fulton intersection because all the construction on Division to the north.
When the Fulton/Division intersection is closed, traffic from Monroe Center has to go somewhere, so the plan is to have the intersection of Division at Library Street open. Drivers can then find their way back to Fulton Street using Sheldon or Ransom Avenues. Or leave downtown via Fountain Street.
The whole project has been a long time coming.
“Infrastructure that’s in there was installed in the 1940s,” notes Grand Rapids City Engineer Tim Burkman. “Some of the water main is from the late 1800s. And so, we’re replacing some infrastructure that’s over 100 years old.”
What’s more, the city’s stuff isn’t the only stuff down there. Burkman lists off the other parties involved: Consumers Energy, AT&T, Vicinity Energy (they own the thermal power plant next to Van Andel Arena).
Coordinating four infrastructure projects to run at the same time and compressing the work down into one construction season took some time. The project was originally planned for 2020. And Covid did not factor into that delay.
And Burkman’s department has been trying to consider the people who normally drive over that invisible stuff under the street. “We made the commitment with this project and also with next year's project that between the intersections of Fulton, Fountain, and Lyon, we would only close one of those intersections at any given time,” he says.
“Access is difficult without Division,” admits Bruce Tinker, executive director of Grand Rapids Civic Theatre, located at the corner of Division Avenue and Library Street. “There’s only one way to the theater now, down Library Street off Ransom or Sheldon.”
But Tinker is not very upset by the inconvenience, even two years of it.
“Projects like this are really important,” he says. “Once it's redone and repaved, it's going to be pretty, pretty good.”
The city’s plans for the reconstruction of Division Avenue are complicated in themselves, notes Burkman. “New street pavement, new curb and gutter, new sidewalks, six new traffic signals, decorative lighting, and we're going to put bike infrastructure up so that it's elevated with the sidewalk level ... just to provide a safer experience for cyclists.”
Paying for the combination of necessary repairs and replacements and the decorative items to upgrade the look, that’s complicated, too. There’s $5 million from the city’s capital improvement fund for street lighting, telecommunications, and power. Sewer and water updates are coming out of sewer and water funds. Road reconstruction on Division and on Fulton is $10 million, of which $1.4 million is federal transportation grants and more comes from the city’s Vital Streets program and the capital improvement fund. The decorative street lighting is being paid for by the Downtown Development Authority.
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