Driving / Walking

Part of The Castle’s core pitch to potential residents is how quickly people can drive to Grand Rapids from there.

It’s tucked in just off of I-196, and two right turns brings you from the property onto the fastest route to GR. There are only a couple exits before you reach downtown and the US-131 interchange: an ancient off-ramp onto Chicago Drive in Wyoming, Market Street along the south side of the river, then the John Ball Zoo exit right before you see the city. The highway is built onto a cliff in the river valley, and the GR skyline cuts through the morning fog. Driving east on I-196 might be the best view of the city. Then you’re in Grand Rapids itself, soaring over the big old houses on the West Side, heading to the heart of the city.

It is indeed an easy drive, especially now that construction on the highway is finished for now (and the craterous potholes on the Lane off-ramp have been repaved). Holland is a little bit further in the other direction, but The Castle is at an ideal spot for people who want the fastest possible commute there from a Grand Rapids suburb. The Castle’s proximity to a key transportation artery is convenient when it comes to traveling through the Grand Rapids circulatory system. It really is one of the biggest perks to living there.

The Castle is built for cars. It stands on an enormous parking garage. The first floor of the complex is hollowed out into parking spaces — including a courtyard at the center surrounded by cars. Ramps lead up to a second story, and then to a third. The top floor of the parking structure is open air and has spots available next to the front doors of apartments; residents there walk out to their cars and survey their kingdom, its square-cut walls and fake torches. The concrete on the surface is splayed with hairline cracks. On the East and West sides of the building, the builders planted ivy, tethered by little metal loops crawling up from the ground. Greenery definitely improves the appearance of the otherwise dull gray parking garage, though I often wonder if those plants are slowly burrowing into the concrete, eroding the structure.

I have a covered parking spot on the ground floor of the parking garage, protecting my car from what’s so far been the least snowy / icy winter I can recall. It’s a long, narrow spot for two cars, and I have to turn tightly to avoid a steel beam painted white. Some residents have to park their cars and trucks outside on the road that borders The Castle — our modern moat.

While The Castle rightfully proclaims that it’s a convenient location for car commuters, it also tries to pitch itself as within easy walking distance of downtown Grandville. Even in a world built for cars, The Castle is savvy to the fact that consumer preference has, in some ways, swung in the other direction against car culture — that there are people who would prefer to be able to get to bars, restaurants, grocery stores, and so on without having to get behind the wheel of a car. Indeed, some of those people may even prefer not to own a car at all.

Shortly before I moved into The Castle, my car’s engine died — a noble, inevitable death. It took me a while to buy another. I worked from home and got by with rides from my girlfriend, a few rentals, and occasionally borrowing my dad’s car. At times, I definitely felt trapped.

Few places in the Grand Rapids area open the possibility of getting by without a car, and Grandville is definitely not one of them. Car ownership is deeply embedded in American life, especially in the suburbs. The Castle is built right on 28th Street, a long thoroughfare with auto dealerships, strip malls, restaurants, and a mall over in Kentwood; the road becomes rusty at the western terminus, where it meets Wilson in Grandville. 28th Street — at least west of I-131 — has already risen and fallen. In Wyoming, a glamorous department store has stood empty for well over a decade and a movie theater that was once the largest in the country closed and was eventually torn down. Two generations ago, 28th Street was the hub of commerce and entertainment in the area, but that business has steadily sprawled south as the suburbs have continued to grow. The Mall in Grandville, and its own movie theater, were what killed Studio 28.

Even getting across 28th Street from The Castle at the wrong time is a nightmare, especially for pedestrians. There’s no crosswalk. When I was a kid, a little bit further down 28th Street, there was a huge metal bridge that afforded people the opportunity to cross, but it’s long been torn down. I wonder if they could build another, or if the power lines slung low over the roadway prevent that. Right now, in order to cross 28th Street and make your way towards downtown Grandville, you have to jog across heavy traffic — or make your way down to the intersection where 28th Street meets Wilson and the ramps to and from I-196, a nightmare of massive vehicles flying along the curve of the road. I drive through that intersection all the time; I never see anyone try to cross on foot.

But if you hang a left there heading from The Castle, you drive right into Grandville’s old downtown. The city’s been investing in that area for a while now. The Mall was built a few miles south, and that surrounding infrastructure was built to accommodate heavy traffic, seas of parking lots, and roughly a dozen big box stores. The old heart of the city still has some life though, and the tightly packed storefronts along Chicago Drive are far more reminiscent of the downtowns of little Michigan cities out in the countryside than the sprawl of 28th Street and RiverTown. Within the last few years, a brewery, a coffee shop, and a distillery have opened, and the city announced extensive renovations for the public library — adjacent to the parking lot where the farmer’s market appears on summertime weekends. Tragically, the Chicago Drive Pub did not survive the coronavirus.

When I didn’t have a car, and before in-person dining at restaurants shut down in Michigan again, I braved the trek across 28th Street and made my way down to the Rainbow Grill for lunch a couple of times — a classic diner opened long ago by my grandfather’s friend / friend’s grandfather, a place I’ve been going to my whole life.

The Castle tried to capitalize on the city’s revitalization push by positing that its proximity to downtown Grandville would provide residents with access to a wide variety of businesses within walking distance and would offer more likely customers to those businesses. Unfortunately, there’s been no follow-through on that, either from the developers of The Castle or from the city itself.

Rather than opening up the possibility of access to downtown Grandville, The Castle confines residents to the splendor of the property — its views of I-196 and the concrete plant, its rebar and cement strewn on wild grass.

The reality is that The Castle is effectively cut off from downtown by 28th Street, even though it’s so close. You can’t really walk anywhere from The Castle, not safely. The entry road up to the front gate is built at a weird angle, designed to accommodate future apartment buildings on the property. There isn’t even a sidewalk leading from The Castle to 28th Street. Retrofitting the area with pedestrian needs at the forefront would have been quite a logistical undertaking, but nobody even tried. Walking in a world built for driving remains a hassle.

Eventually I bought a used car from a nearby dealership and afforded myself the freedom to escape The Castle.

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