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Originally Posted by Velvet_Highground
It’s great to see Kalamazoo getting a event center it’ll help open the doors to even more opportunities with its already remarkable run of downtown development over the past decade or so.
Great set I picked out a few favorites. Downtown has come a long way from my school days when we’d pack up for the weekend and decide to hit up wastern for a spot of drinking. The difference in Western’s campus is night and day from what I’ve seen it was a bit bleak with the 60’s-70’s era student housing and student center especially if your walking hungover for some T-Bell in the am.
Downtown improved in ever way shape and form perhaps there was more to it 12-14 years ago but I didn’t interact with it like I did would in Ann Arbor though that’s a bit unfair. The Kalamazoo promise seems to be one of the unhearled success stories of our time. Perhaps because it involves free education. The caveat if I remember being a district graduate and it’s only up through the junior college level (though with a nice easy transfer potential) it’s disappointing that more cities haven’t taken up the idea.
Kalamazoo has had a remarkable turnaround and it’s kept right on going. West Michigan’s strong economy certainly hasn’t hurt but Battle Creek was in a similar position to Kzoo a back in the day. It’s not apples to apples each city has its strong and weak points but Kalamazoo has been able to use its strength in education as a springboard and tapped into the strong regional economy.
BC is a bit further east though there are some nice lakes in the forest north of 94 between the two cities it’s not within as easy reach of Lake Michigan though it’s less snowy. Kzoo doesn’t have a major corporate HQ like BC does in Kellogg’s although the opportunities for the white collar jobs aren’t plentiful like the cereal production jobs were. BC seems to be making some strides towards improving its rather stagnant position the Marshall battery plant and the HSR line continuing on from Detroit to Toronto both offer some opportunities.
I think there’s a good tale of two cities tale to be examined what Kzoo has done and succeeded at what BC has done to improve its downtown and didn’t succeed the pedestrian street in the downtown shopping district comes to mind. A pedestrian street isn’t necessarily a bad idea perhaps bad timing and execution can be partially blamed. Battle Creek has an opportunity to capitalize on its riverwalk and plenty of parking to redevelop or expand green space across from downtown. Getting some more mixed use redevelopments in its quite nice downtown for a city it’s size is another opportunity.
Love the fisheye aerial.
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Thanks for sharing all of these thoughts! You brought up some interesting points.
I don't have as far back of a reference point as it sounds like you do for Kalamazoo. I think my first time visiting here was 2012. We moved here in 2015. So I can really only (personally) recall back about ten years, and it wasn't until we moved here that I began to really understand the urban context (and form my own opinions about it).
In that 8-year time span, I'd say that the city has definitely improved in most (but not all) categories of measurement. I think the biggest challenges still seem to be homelessness, higher-than-average violent crime rates, higher-than-average poverty rates, and a shortage of affordable housing options. No doubt those issues are all somewhat intertwined.
I wish Kalamazoo hadn't lost as much downtown building stock as it did in the back half of the 20th century - if more of the historic commercial (and even lighter industrial) buildings could have withstood the test of time for a few more decades, we would have that many more opportunities for repurposing structures into badly-needed housing. Housing development - especially any with a public funding component - moves at a glacial pace around here. Take the modular tiny home proposal that came to light in the dark, early days of the pandemic, - the city has yet to even determine an acceptable chunk of property to park them on (they've been debating that topic off-and-o for the greater part of 3 years now).
As for the downtown not having a major corporate HQ like Battle Creek does, I've thought about this often, and fantasized about what the city would look like if Upjohn (now Pfizer) hadn't fled downtown to the open pastures of Portage, starting in the 1940's. And for that matter, why doesn't Stryker, a fortune 500 company, will all of its billions, have a downtown presence? Because they also opted for building sprawly-type campuses in the cheap, open fields of Portage with their friendly corporate tax structure. Don't get me wrong - Kalamazoo still benefits vastly from having Stryker and Pfizer in its backyard. There's hardly a project in the city that doesn't have an Upjohn or a Stryker-related family name tied-to it. But, if one or both of those entities had a major presence downtown today, can you imagine...? This fantasy usually then leads me to wish that Portage had never incorporated as a city. Once it did, the fate of Kalamazoo proper's manufacturing future was pretty much sealed. Instead, as it is, Kalamazoo City's two largest employers? Bronson Healthcare (~9,000) and Western Michigan University (~ 6,000). And guess what? They are both non-profit / tax-exempt entities with massive footprints within the city proper. Now obviously, these contribute to the economy in their own way, with many high-paying jobs, education, etc. But it's not the same as a corporation pumping guaranteed tax dollars into city coffers each year.
Kalamazoo is a bit of the inverse of many cities, wherein more people live in the city proper, but they commute out to the suburbs for daily work. Sometimes I think it would be great if Kalamazoo, Portage, and the remaining, eviscerated chunks of Kalamazoo Township (where I reside, btw) all just coalesced into one unified municipality. It would have a population of roughly 150,000 - which would put it in the top-five largest in Michigan. They could share public infrastructure, everyone could vote on things that affect them every day, there could be one unified public safety department, one unified school district, etc. etc. Where I live, I'm surrounded on 3 sides by the city limits. I live three minutes from downtown where I work. And yet, I can't vote for the Mayor. The main argument against this is that taxes would go up. That argument made sense like 60 years ago. But not so much nowadays. For the average homeowner, I suspect that taxes would only increase slightly, and the benefits would be vast.
Battle Creek and Kalamazoo also
both have huge opportunities to capitalize on their riverfronts. I'd give both about an F+ grade in this regard. I think most casual visitors to Kalamazoo probably don't even realize that there is a prominent river located a few minutes' walk from the downtown. I know industrialization and pollution have played a huge role in both cities turning their backs on the river. But a lot of that pollution has been mitigated now, so why is development (even of parks and walking trails) still so stymied?
The Upjohn Company, Building 41, under-construction in Portage, 1941 (below). To me, this symbolizes the beginning of the end of large-scale manufacturing within the Kalamazoo city proper. BTW, if you aren't familiar with the story of Portage's incorporation as a city,
check it out - it is an interesting one. Basically, a race against the clock between Portage Township (to incorporate), and the City of Kalamazoo (to annex it), in a bid for the Upjohn money. Spoiler alert: Portage won that race.
Source:
upjohn.net