Grand Rapids Amphitheater forum: Misleading economic impact numbers and no discussion on how much public money would be funding this 31 acre project

On Monday, a headline from MLive read, Parking, sound generate conversation at Grand Rapids amphitheater open house. This article was based on a public forum that Grand Action 2.0 held regarding the 12,000 seat amphitheater that will begin construction in May of 2024.

I get that issues like sound and parking are of concern to people, particularly those who live near the proposed Market Ave SW site, but the MLive story, like most of the coverage since 2020, when the first announcement of the about the amphitheater, has always talked about the project in favorable terms without asking larger, more investigative questions.

I attended the zoom meeting on Monday, which was held earlier in the day, with only a dozen people participating, not including a Grand Action 2.0 spokesperson and two people with Progressive AE, the firm that is doing the design for the project. The session only lasted 30 minutes and provided very little new information. I was the only non-business person on the zoom call.

The Progressive AE person had lots of fancy slides to show, but not much information, particularly on what the project will cost or how much public money was going to be used. However, I do want to address some of the content in the slides, plus a few additional points that have pretty much been ignored since we first learned about the amphitheater proposal in 2020.

In the first slide, with the heading Economic Impact, we are led to believe that the amphitheater project will be good for the economy. I would argue that these numbers are misleading at best, even irrelevant to most people in Grand Rapids. First, $7 million in annual wage earnings doesn’t tell us much since, we do not know how many people will benefit from this $7 million. Like many of these projects, a large percentage will go to those in charge, which will be booking the musical acts and managing the site. The people who tend to maintain the space, those who take tickets or work concessions often do not make a living wage. Second, there are numbers for job creation, but again, we don’t know if they are full-time or part-time, if they pay a living wage, what kind of benefits will people get, etc. Third, there is this $490 Million projected economic impact for the City over a 30 year period. Again, no mention of how much of that money will go to downtown hotels, restaurants, private parking companies, bars, etc. We know who owns most of the companies that will be the primary beneficiary of this 30 year economic impact and it won’t people those who are currently experiencing poverty or housing insecurity.

In this second slide we are provided with another laundry list of so-called benefits from this development project – more housing, river activation, local, minority-owned pop-up restaurants, shops, etc, plus the added claim that the whole project “will generate lasting community and cultural enhancements.” I’ll address housing in the next slide, but lets start with minority-owned pop-ups, etc. It seems rather fashionable for projects like these to make claims about hiring Black contractors or claiming it will create minority-owned business opportunities. Such claims are part of the whole DEI rhetoric that ultimately doesn’t benefit the majority of people from BIPOC communities. If the City of Grand Rapids and Grand Action 2.0 really want to do something that would benefit BIPOC communities, how about giving the “expected to exceed $116 million” cost of the amphitheater to BIPOC communities and let them do what they want with it.

In this third slide, we see a more detailed look at the larger development project, both of the amphitheater and the adjacent areas, particularly proposed housing. Now, the previous slide it says mix-income housing, but that is rather vague and often means that a very small percentage of the housing will be listed as “affordable.” So, we don’t know if these will all be apartments or condos. More importantly, we don’t know how much the rent will be for the proposed apartments. Then there is the issue of a private developer being involved with the land just south of the amphitheater, where it says 300 – 400 units, 600 spaces. During the Progressive AE presentation, the design firm spokesperson said that this was going to be a private developer project, without any additional information. All of us on the zoom were given an e-mail of one of the Progressive AE representatives, so I sent them a message, asking who this private developer was. I have yet to hear back. Lastly, there is the issue of what impact will this development project have on neighborhoods, particularly to the south, along the Grandville Avenue corridor or the Black Hills neighborhood. Both of these neighborhoods are primarily Latino/a and Latinx, with medium to lower incomes. What impact will the cost of housing in the new 31 acre Market Avenue corridor have on these adjacent neighborhoods? Will raise property taxes and rental costs? Will it begin a process of gentrification? These questions have not been explored in the presentations by Grand Action 2.0 and Progressive AE, nor the commercial news media, but these questions need to be explored. 

Lastly, I wanted to address the issue of how much public money is going into this ever growing development project. When GRIID first wrote about this issue in the fall of 2020, I made the point that these types of projects are met with such enthusiasm by the business community and local government officials. However, the same kind of enthusiasm and funding is rarely applauded when it comes to investing in BIPOC communities.

More recently, I looked at how much this project will cost the public and I came up with $58 million from local and state government, which means it’s public money. On top of that it was reported in the business press that Grand Action 2.0 will be seeking brownfield development incentives. This means that public money will be used to clean up the site, before new development happens, which translates into even more public money being directed to the amphitheater project, even though the public has no say it the matter. But this is always the case, since such projects are always designed to benefit the wealthiest people who want to continue to create a downtown play space for themselves and to entertain other privileged people – ie tourists, who come and spend money at businesses in the downtown area that are primarily owned those with deep pockets.