Crain’s Grand Rapids Business story on AmplifyGR omits critical information on the organization’s early years as a creation of the DeVos family

On Monday Crain’s Grand Rapids Business posted a story about a new development project in the Boston Square neighborhood that involves the DeVos-created and financed group known as AmplifyGR.

Early in the Crain’s article is states:

Amplify GR has tapped Habitat for Humanity of Kent County to build 22 affordable townhouses at its massive Boston Square Together project, the first homeownership component of the 9-acre redevelopment on Grand Rapids’ south side.

Later in the article it states what the townhouses will be sold at, stating:

The townhomes would be sold primarily to households earning up to 80% of area median income, which is about $85,120 for a family of four people in Kent County, per the latest U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines. Some of the units may be sold to households earning up to 120% of AMI, or $127,680.

This means that families will pay between $85,120 and $127,680. To put into perspective, if you make $25 an hour in Grand Rapids you would make $52,000 a year. There are thousands of people in Grand Rapids who do not make anywhere near $25 an hour and that barely qualifies as affordable, especially for families. If there are two income families it would be more affordable, but again it depends on how much people are earning, which is not reflected in area medium income, which takes averages, thus ignoring the massive wealth gap in this city. African Americans are particularly impacted by this wealth gap. An article from MLive in February stated:

the five-county Grand Rapids-Wyoming metro area’s Black population had the worst homeownership, educational attainment and business ownership rates among the big metros.

The developer that is being tapped for this project is Pure Architects, which also developed the newer AmplifyGR space. It is also worth noting that the CEO of Pure Architects is Zachary Verhulst, who is the son of Michael B. Verhulst. Michael B. Verhulst runs V2 – Verhulst Ventures, is the CEO of Spesh Construction Company LLC, and a former VP of Rockford Construction, which worked with the DeVos family to purchase 37 different properties in the southeast part of Grand Rapids, which is the AmplifyGR target area.

The Crain’s article also states that AmplifyGR has already built a food incubator, which is a space for food entrepreneurs to start food businesses. I wrote a post in 2023 as a response to the food incubator project, primarily asking why they would not use it as a community kitchen space, since food insecurity is a significant issue in that part of the city.

There are only two sources cited in the story, someone with Habitat and someone with AmplifyGR, specifically Jon Ippel, Amplify’s executive director. Towards the end of the article Ippel says, “Amplify GR has engaged about 400 Boston Square neighbors and stakeholders since the nonprofit began planning the redevelopment in 2019.” This might be true in terms of numbers, but AmplifyGR actually began doing community engagement in 2017, which didn’t go so well.

I have been tracking the DeVos-created and funded AmplifyGR since 2017 when I first heard about them. In May of 2017, I wrote an article entitled, The DeVos Family now wants to remake part of a southeast Grand Rapids neighborhood. In late June of 2017, AmplifyGR hosted it’s first community forum, which was well attended, but there was also lots of push back from the community, as I noted in another post.

There was a second town hall style meeting in July, which I also attended and reported about. Here is an excerpt from that article:

Tempest Warfield, an afro-Latina,  just made it plain when she given the chance to speak. She spoke passionately and called out who is running this process. She said that a lot of what this boils down to is race and class. “People want to just stay in their homes, but people are feeling bullied by the wealthiest family in the area. People want to keep their homes and leave a legacy for their kids. We do have purpose here, even if it doesn’t look like it to the DeVos family.” John Ippel, from AmplifyGR, responded by saying he gets it. Tempest came right back and said, “be careful about practicing white savior politics.”

Because there was significant pushback from the community at these town hall style meetings, AmplifyGR decided to shift tactics. In a 2019 article I wrote:

AmplifyGR has shifted their tactical approach to meeting with small groups of people and individuals in the southeast area, thus eliminating community accountability. When organizations like AmplifyGR, which has the backing of the wealthiest family in West Michigan, chose to operate with limited transparency, you can be sure that they still are committed to their original agenda, an agenda reflected in the graphic below.

I included this information as a direct response to AmplifyGR’s executive director who made the claim that the DeVos-owned and financed organization had engaged the community since 2019. As I documented, AmplifyGR began engaging the community in 2017, but because of significant community resistance, they decided to approach community engagement in more isolated and behind closed doors fashion. None of the background information I provided here was part of the Crain’s Grand Rapids Business article.