Van Andel Arena, the twelve-thousand-seat sports and entertainment venue in front of you, opened in 1996 and is widely credited with anchoring the revival of downtown Grand Rapids. The arena was named for Jay Van Andel, the co-founder of Amway, whose family donated substantially toward its construction. Before it opened, downtown Grand Rapids after dark was largely empty — the suburban mall had pulled retail and entertainment away from the urban core in the familiar postwar pattern.
The arena brought crowds back downtown for hockey, concerts, and family shows, spurring the restaurants and bars that now fill the surrounding blocks. It is home to the Grand Rapids Griffins, the American Hockey League affiliate of the Detroit Red Wings, a franchise with devoted local following. The arena's design is consciously urban — its main entrance faces the street, its parking is largely shared and structured, and its footprint was fitted into the existing city grid rather than surrounded by surface lots in the suburban sports-complex style.
That decision, small as it sounds, shaped everything that came after.