The new downtown GR Soccer Stadium will be named the Amway Stadium, which should surprise no one who has been paying attention

MLive posted just minutes ago that the soccer stadium that will be located just west of US 131 by Pearl St. will be named the Amway Stadium, after the company pledged $33 million for the stadium.

Not surprising, the MLive story is celebratory and uncritical of the soccer stadium, as they have been all along with other major downtown development projects that have used hundreds of millions of public dollars to subsidize these so-called transformational projects. 

The MLive article omits the fact that Amway is owned by the DeVos and Van Andel billionaire families, but they also omitted several other realities regarding the Soccer Stadium:

• They omitted the fact that Grand Action 2.0 is essentially run by the DeVos family
• They omitted the fact that the DDA – which approved using lots of public tax money for the project, has a DeVos family operative on that unelected board.
• They omitted the fact that the Kent County and Grand Rapids City Commissions are in the pocket of the DeVos family. Both of these governing bodies approved $100 million in public subsidies for the Soccer Stadium. 
• They omitted the fact that the Grand Rapids-Kent County Convention/Arena Authority (CAA) is chaired by a DeVos employee – Richard A. Winn AHC Hospitality . 

MLive also does not include a statement from the CEO of Amway, Michael Nelson, which reads: 

“We are a people business, and sports bring people together. It’s often a source of community and connection—offering shared experiences and points of pride. Those ideas are part of Amway and the thousands of communities around the world that Amway Business Owners create.”

These flowery words should not be confused with what real community looks like, especially when you consider the fact that the DeVos family owns the Grand Rapids Griffins, the Orlando Magic NBA team, the now defunct Grand Rapids Rampage, the Grand Rapids Rise (women’s volleyball team) and the Orlando Squeeze, a Major League Pickleball franchise owned by Ryan DeVos. The DeVos family doesn’t care about community, they care about expanding their wealth, and owning sports teams will do just that.

Lastly, it is ironic, that a $33 million pledge by the Amway corporation, which is a multi-billion dollar global corporation, is only one third of the amount that taxpayers are contributing, even though the public had no say in the use of the $100 million that Kent County and Grand Rapids approved.