The city of Kentwood didn't exist until a shopping mall convinced enough people to vote for it. In 1967, Paris Township was still unincorporated land southeast of Grand Rapids, and Grand Rapids had already annexed territory near a parcel where developers wanted to build something big. Township residents worried the mall site itself might end up inside city limits before they got a say, and the property tax revenue that mall promised became the single biggest reason enough voters said yes to incorporation. Paris Township became the City of Kentwood in 1967. Woodland Mall opened at 28th Street and East Beltline the following March, and its taxes stayed exactly where the vote had put them.
Fifty-eight years later, on Saturday, September 26, Kentwood cut the ribbon on something built on a different premise entirely. The Kentwood Community Center, a facility the city's own materials now list at just over 67,000 square feet across two floors, opened on Walma Avenue SE with guided tours, a 1 p.m. ribbon cutting, live sets from Signal Trip and Klay N' The Mud, and food trucks from Dune Buggy, Tarriko Taqueria, and Pera Pizzeria. It sits on about 14 wooded acres bordered by Walma Street and 44th, flanked by Crestwood Middle School, Whitney Young Village, and Pineview Apartments. Nobody picked that corner for highway visibility. They picked it because it's where Kentwood families already are.
The Deal That Built the City
The Woodland Mall story is worth remembering because it explains a habit that never really went away. The mall was sited deliberately at 28th and East Beltline, a corridor developers picked specifically because it could pull shoppers from a region of roughly 1.5 million people. That intersection now carries a combined daily traffic count near 85,000 vehicles, and the mall itself draws from Grand Rapids, Wyoming, Kentwood, and communities well beyond. Kentwood still runs its own police department, and it maintains a position dedicated specifically to Woodland Mall, a detail that says something about how much of the city's daily operations still orbit that one property nearly sixty years later.
That's not a criticism of the mall. It's the reason Kentwood has spent decades collecting a very specific kind of headline: the newest national retailer to land in West Michigan, and where.
Fifty Years of Being West Michigan's Newest First
Kentwood's most recent run of that headline came fast. Raising Cane's opened its first West Michigan location on 28th Street in November 2025, near the Trader Joe's and Dave & Buster's, with walls decorated in East Kentwood High memorabilia and nods to hometown names like Taylor Lautner and Floyd Mayweather. Pop Mart, the toymaker behind the Labubu plush figures that turned into an online sensation, opened a store in the mall's JCPenney wing in June 2026. Shake Shack signed a 15-year lease for a drive-thru at 3029 28th St SE, on what's currently a vacant lot near REI, with an opening targeted for 2027 and confirmation from the company that it will be West Michigan's first location. Planning documents filed for a second drive-thru at that same address describe a restaurant serving Italian beef, hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken, and pizza, the kind of menu that got locals speculating about Portillo's well before anyone confirmed it. Michigan's first Trendy Man store and a Swarovski are both slated to join the mall in 2026 as well.
Every one of those openings is genuinely good news for anyone who eats or shops in Kentwood. None of them required a single Kentwood resident to vote for anything. They happened because a private developer, six decades ago, picked a corner built to catch regional traffic, and national chains keep discovering that corner still works.
What Opened on Walma Avenue This Weekend
The community center didn't happen that way. Mayor Stephen Kepley has traced the idea back to 2003, describing the project's start as something he and others "envisioned on a small board" more than twenty years before it opened. The nearly $30 million facility became possible only after Kentwood voters approved a parks millage in 2022, and it stands as the first large-scale project built with that money. The city broke ground in December 2024, with Grand Rapids Griffins president Tim Gortsema, Griffins mascot Griff, and Grand Rapids Rise head coach Cathy George all attending. Planning documents along the way described the building at anywhere from 72,000 square feet in earlier estimates down to the 67,000 to 67,500 square feet the city and local news outlets are citing now that it's actually open.
Membership sales opened June 6, 2026, the same day the city held its annual Kickoff to Summer Celebration on the City Hall lawn next door, and the first 500 people to sign up received a limited-edition Founding Member gift along with a complimentary hour of personal training. A separate preview event let those founding members walk the building before the public grand opening. After Saturday's celebration, the center opens to the general public at 5:30 a.m. on Monday, October 5, an early hour that says something about who the city expects to actually use the place on a Tuesday before work.
What's Actually Inside
The building's amenity list reads like something you'd expect from a private athletic club, not a municipal parks department:
- Three full-size basketball courts and an elevated indoor walking track
- An AI-powered multisport simulator offering more than 30 activities, including golf, hockey, and soccer, described by local reporters as the first of its kind in the area
- A fitness center designed specifically to be accessible for people with disabilities
- The Bistro, a café that sells alcohol to adults 21 and older, making the center the first municipal-owned parks and recreation facility in West Michigan to hold a liquor license
- Event space the city currently lists at up to 175 guests, sized for anything from a first birthday party to a wedding reception
- A Little Free Pantry, Child Watch room, and multipurpose studio spaces
City officials have been clear that the rental and gym spaces are expected to draw more than just Kentwood residents. Parks and Recreation Director Val Romeo has said the center is meant to serve business conferences, sports tournaments, and weddings pulled from well beyond city limits, and Kepley himself has said he wants it to attract visitors from across the country. So this isn't a building that turns its back on the region the way Woodland Mall was never meant to turn its back on Kentwood.
A Different Kind of First
The difference is in how each building got there. Woodland Mall exists because a developer chose a corner built for cross-regional traffic, and Kentwood's own incorporation was shaped around collecting that corner's tax revenue. The community center exists because Kentwood voters approved a millage in 2022, the city sited the building next to a middle school and two apartment complexes instead of an interstate exit, and the first names announced for opening weekend were local food trucks and local bands rather than a national chain's press release.
Deputy Parks and Recreation Director Spencer McKellar put it plainly when he described the mission behind the center: giving neighbors a place to gather through a Michigan winter, all year, without having to drive to Grand Rapids or a private club to do it. One resident who lives about a mile from the site said the location itself was the draw, especially now that her kids are young enough to grow up walking distance from it. That's a different kind of pull than 85,000 cars a day passing an intersection built to catch them.
Kentwood is still going to keep landing West Michigan's next national chain. That's been true since 1968 and there's no reason to expect it stops with Shake Shack in 2027. But this fall, for the first time in a long time, the biggest thing the city built wasn't designed to catch anyone passing through.
The Cheryl Grant Real Estate Team keeps track of what's actually new in the neighborhoods we work in, right down to which food trucks show up for a ribbon cutting. If the new community center becomes part of your regular week once the doors open October 5, we'd like to hear what you think of it.
