Say no to the approval of Rivertown Commons 437 unit apartment complex in Grandville Michigan!

Rivertown Commons is a 437-unit apartment complex proposed for 4612 and 4764 Ivanrest Avenue, located just south of the Target on 44th Street. The project site, currently a defunct greenhouse operation, is 30 acres in all. Developers plan to bring 13 three-story apartment buildings, a dog park, nearly 1,000 parking spaces and a clubhouse and pool to the site. Floor plans include one-, two- and three-bedroom variations, with the smallest apartments at 630 square feet of floor space and the largest at 1,400 square feet.

With this kind of establishment coming into our overly developed city, more families will be brought in looking for to put their kids in our over populated schools. The city notes that they are looking to expanding the schools "in the future", but no specified date or plan has been established and presented to accommodate a larger increase in its population as would occur with this addition of housing accomodations in our community. Also, this will increase the traffic flow on Ivanrest which has been noted to have multiple of it's intersections on the "Top Ten Crash Locations" for the city each year, most notably the Ivanrest and 44th Street intersection. With Ivanrest southbound of 44th Street recently put on a road diet, these traffic concerns haven't been addressed by the city as they have looked at considering approving this establishment.

We have already allowed the accommodation of an apartment complex to be installed in our city that is currently only housing 1/4 of it's units. During it's construction, it suffered multiple setbacks due to OSHA violations and upon completion, has left our city with a landmark that isn't appealing to the large majority and not increasing the value of our community with increased business support or property value. We need to hold true to our community values and support our city with housing opportunities that will increase all of the local homeowner's own personal property, not just the tax books of the local government. Time to say no and keep our small city feel until the government can present a plan that profits all of our community and has the ability to not impair any area of our community from reasonably accommodating such an increase in our population.