{"id":132,"date":"2007-10-18T06:00:54","date_gmt":"2007-10-18T11:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/18\/good-news-from-michigan-no-seriously\/"},"modified":"2007-10-18T06:00:54","modified_gmt":"2007-10-18T11:00:54","slug":"good-news-from-michigan-no-seriously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=132","title":{"rendered":"Good News from Michigan! &#8230;No, Seriously&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"GRBJ0621.gif\" alt=\"GRBJ0621.gif\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/images\/grbj\/GRBJ0621.gif\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Originally published in the <em>Grand Rapids Business Journal<\/em>, October 8, 2007<\/p>\n<p>It shouldn&#8217;t be news to any of you &#8212; whether you live here or just read this blog &#8212; that Michigan is down. And not just losing to Appalachian State down (although that certainly didn&#8217;t help). No, economically, politically, spiritually down. Our state&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bls.gov\/news.release\/laus.nr0.htm\">unemployment rate<\/a> is highest in the country &#8212; a full percentage point over our next &#8220;competitor.&#8221; Our state government recently took us to the brink of shut down and then &#8212; finally facing reality after years of denial and shell games &#8212; raised taxes to keep crippled services hobbling along. Our state&#8217;s automotive industry celebrates new labor agreements by shrinking even more.<\/p>\n<p>And so (ever the contrarian), I looked for some good news, and as it turns out, it was easy to find here in West Michigan. In the span of a few days, we had three openings, each startlingly positive in their own way:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gramonline.org\/\">Grand Rapids Art Museum<\/a> opened in a marquee spot of downtown. It&#8217;s an impressive community investment in not just the arts but in city life. Local leaders in government, business, arts all got together to build a beautiful new home for celebrating creativity and with very little friction.<\/li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marriott.com\/hotels\/travel\/grrjw-jw-marriott-hotel-grand-rapids\/\">JW Marriott<\/a> luxury hotel opened near the existing Amway Grand Hotel and the DeVos Convention Center. Yeah, we might be a mid-size post-industrial Midwestern city, but there&#8217;s something more happening when a building like this goes up. Again, our local rich guys invested their money and their expertise back into the local economy. They don&#8217;t have to do that, ya know.<\/li>\n<li>The new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metrohealth.net\/\">Metro Health<\/a> hospital and ancillary building opened in Wyoming on the growing south side of the area. Metro previously was in a landlocked portion of the city with limited prospects for growth or even survival. As the smallest of Grand Rapid&#8217;s three major hospital systems, its future was somewhat bleak. But with its new facilities, it has created a whole new center of economic development (not to mention a huge expansion of medical services). Bonus: Its previous facilities are being renovated for elder care.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sure, none of this changes the fact that it will soon again be February in Michigan (and it&#8217;s gonna suck), but it&#8217;s nice to enjoy the sun&#8217;s warmth when it shines&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, October 8, 2007 It shouldn&#8217;t be news to any of you &#8212; whether you live here or just read this blog &#8212; that Michigan is down. And not just losing to Appalachian State down (although that certainly didn&#8217;t help). No, economically, politically, spiritually down. Our state&#8217;s unemployment [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-rapids-business-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}