GR DDA approves incentive plan for $800M project at Charley’s Crab site

Editor’s note: The above video is a report on the development that aired on Sept. 20.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — The Grand Rapids Downtown Development Authority Board approved an incentives plan for a massive development planned for the riverfront.

The development planned for the more than 6 acres near the intersection of Fulton Street and Market Avenue include three high-rises: an office tower, a housing tower and a hotel tower.

The office building along US-131 would include 420,000 square feet of office space on top of a parking podium. A hotel tower and an apartment building will sit on top of a second parking podium, with almost 600 apartments, 76 condos and 130 hotel rooms.

There will also be retail space along the parking podiums, with a total of 37,800 square feet of retail space and just over 2,500 parking spaces.

The project will cost almost $800 million.

The DDA on Wednesday agreed on a plan that 75% of the DDA’s tax capture would pass through the City of Grand Rapids Brownfield Redevelopment Authority in order to streamline the process. The remaining 25% would be retained by the DDA.

Project leaders are seeking multiple incentives, including $296 million through the Transformational Brownfield Program and $247 million in real estate incentives from the city’s BRA.

Project leaders hope to get local approval of the project from the Grand Rapids City Commission by December. Once it has received all local approvals, it is expected to go before the Michigan Strategic Fund Board in February 2025.

The goal is to start construction in the fall of 2025. Each building will take about three years to complete, and project leaders are hoping to finish the projects in phases starting the fall of 2028 through the spring of 2029.

They expect the projects, built alongside the amphitheater now under construction and the planned soccer stadium, will be “transformational.”

“It really is the collection of these projects that I think is really going to truly meet the definition of transformational,” Progressive Companies President and CEO Brad Thomas told the DDA Wednesday.

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