The Inner City Christian Federation (ICCF), a

The Inner City Christian Federation (ICCF), a nonprofit development company that has built affordable housing in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for nearly 30 years, recently joined with new urbanist professionals in a charrette that generated a master plan for the revitalization of a suffering downtown neighborhood. The Wealthy/Jefferson Neighborhood Plan covers an area of approximately 300 acres — a primarily African American neighborhood that has shrunk from 4,700 residents in 1912, to 946 today. The design team gathered by Philip Bess of Andrews University came up with a plan that calls for 547 new single-family and multifamily housing units, 7,600 square feet of retail, 246,000 square feet of office, up to 80,000 square feet of light industrial, as well as parks, public spaces, and streetscape improvements. Half of the housing would be market-rate and the other half subject to various forms of direct and indirect subsidy. According to Jonathan Bradford of ICCF, land acquisition is underway as the company and neighborhood groups launch a publicity campaign to secure support from city and state agencies. A redevelopment plan will be dependent on the completion of a major sewer reconstruction project, which ICCF is hoping to accelerate. The plan has a long way to go, but Bradford says that the stakeholders “made huge strides in communication, and we supported the belief that we can do better.”