1. Introduction To Division United

Division United is a project that leverages the Silver Line Bus Rapid Transit service on the Division Avenue corridor as an agent for investment, through a partnership with The Rapid and the cities that it serves, which include Grand Rapids, Kentwood, and Wyoming. This project has engaged residents in order to provide people with a choice of housing and employment opportunities that would support them as well as make the Silver Line a convenient choice of transportation.

2. Economic Development Toolkit

The Economic Development Toolkit outlines financial and municipal resources that would be applicable for medium and large scale developments and experienced developers. Although this toolkit provides many tools to reduce development costs, significant and sustainable change in a community isn’t possible unless community-oriented development begins with education, and grows from education to implementation.

3. Mobility & Connectivity Toolkit

To be used in conjunction with the other toolkits, the Mobility & Connectivity Toolkit provides broad guidance on the tools and options currently available to support safe transportation on Division Avenue. Options currently available include converting outside travel lanes to all-day bus and bike lanes, reducing lane widths, reducing pedestrian street crossing lengths, and implementing pedestrian refuge islands.

4. Development & Zoning Toolkit

The intended audience for this toolkit is primarily a resource for zoning and planning professionals on how to maximize zoning to facilitate small scale development and infill. This toolkit identifies challenges and barriers within zoning and identifies equitable solutions to overcome these challenges in order to support small-scale, incremental development within the Division Avenue corridor.

5. Placemaking Toolkit

This toolkit outlines how implementing placemaking within the corridor will provide opportunities to share culture, add amenities, create enjoyable spaces in currently vacant areas, and make room for new community-oriented activities. Placemaking is done through empowering community members to take ownership of their corridor, which makes placemaking a perfect catalyst for growing social justice, economic development, cultural representation, and improving streetspaces.

6. Equity Toolkit

This toolkit is designed to provide recommendations for equitable conditions throughout the corridor such as a mobile health clinic, access to healthy food, anti-displacement plan, and a technology and youth center to name a few. Each recommendation consists of an action card with an estimated implementation timeline and lists potential partners that could assist in achieving these recommendations.

7. Strategy & Station Plans

This toolkit has three primary goals: to identify grants and programs already in place in Michigan that municipalities can leverage to support redevelopment, to identify what new programs could be considered by the legislature/local governments, and to present case studies of the ways in which existing funding tools have been leveraged by developers.