When surveying residents to create Cascade’s Strategic Plan, adopted September 2022, resident’s top priority was ‘Creating a Downtown Village’ and their second greatest concern was the ‘Lack of a Village Area’.  Cascade’s Township Board quickly took action to begin purchasing land, collaborating with local business owners, and establishing a vision to ‘reimagine’ the heart of Cascade. 

With an overall goal of preserving Cascade’s unique character and enhancing the quality of residents' lives, the plan to reimagine the area around Cascade Road and 28th Street, extending to the Thornapple River, quickly blossomed into many simultaneous projects.  Now in the design phase, this venture to reinvigorate the area, creating a more walkable village with an idyllic, small-town ambiance, has begun. 

The Township’s Downtown Development Authority is playing a large part in the redevelopment, establishing financial incentives for businesses to improve existing building facades, and funding a majority of the Township’s portion of this undertaking.  The Township Board continues to prioritize public safety and preserve natural spaces and parks while employing pedestrian-friendly and place-making initiatives. 

This page will be updated as different parts of the village project evolve and we encourage you to occasionally check in on our progress.

Click here to see the Reimagining Tassell Park concept sketches. Click here to see the vision concepts for Cascade Village. To listen to the full presention, please click here to watch the OHM Presentation from our April 17, 2025 Joint DDA/Board of Trustees meeting describing the final concept or view the 2025 Cascade Village Area Plan.  

The Former Tuffy Muffler & Auto Services Site and the Former Doctor's Office projects that previously lived on this page have now been combined into the Reimagining Tassell Park project page.  The Cascade Road Pedestrian Bridge project that previously lived on this page is also now complete and has its own page in the completed projects section of the Projects page.

 

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Cascade Village Concept
Location: Cascade’s B-1 Village District and strategic B-2 sites
Estimated Completion: 2025
Funding Source: Cascade Downtown Development Authority (DDA)

The Cascade Township Downtown Development Authority (DDA) partnered with OHM to create a plan and implementation strategy for the Downtown Development Authority/Cascade Road Corridor with emphasis on the “village” area.  This provided Cascade with the tools to make future decisions that will be critical in developing/redeveloping Cascade’s Downtown Village. OHM will be prepared a series of planning diagrams, explanations, and an analysis of the corridor for Township staff and the DDA. Their concept included recommendations for riverfront development, public space, public-private partnerships, mixed-use redevelopment, parking, amenities, land use, access, roadway/streetscape configuration, and other elements. These highly illustrative concepts clearly outlined potential options in order to frame discussions around a preferred development/redevelopment and land use/development strategy for the study area.  This largely lead to the Reimagining Tassell Park plan.

The Village area and nearby commercial districts will follow a Form Based Code, which sets standards for building design, landscaping, signage, and walkability rather than focusing solely on land use. Adopting a Form Based Code for commercial areas in and around 28th St, Old 28th St and Cascade Road down to the Thornapple River ensures that private redevelopment, when it happens, is high quality and retains Cascade’s timeless character.
 

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Cascade Village Zoning
Location: Cascade’s B-1 Village District and strategic B-2 sites
Estimated Completion: 2025
Funding Source: Cascade Downtown Development Authority (DDA)

As part of the Master Plan process that the Township is currently undertaking there is a need to update the zoning throughout the township and the DDA/Village will be one of the most complex. This area will see a major zoning amendment that will support the long-term goal for Cascade’s Village. This initiative is not only part of the 2024 Master Plan update but is one of the top 5 items that came out of the 2022 Strategic Plan that received great feedback from the community.

Township leadership and staff have been comprehensively reviewing and updating the Zoning Ordinance over the past year. A completed draft is scheduled for Board approval fall of 2025. Priorities include preserving residential property values, conserving natural areas throughout the entire Township, addressing development concerns (such as subpar private roads), and creating a more walkable village area between 28th Street and Cascade Road and the Thornapple River.

Specific changes necessary to accomplish those goals include:

• Containing industrial and commercial development south and east of the airport to existing areas thereby maintaining the current undeveloped natural buffer between current industrial sites and residents’ homes, farms, and the Thornapple River.
• Adopting form-based code in the village area requiring future redevelopment in that area to be limited in size and scale, quality, and pedestrian friendly. (Big box stores, car dealerships and large-scale developments are not allowed in the Cascade Road/28th St/Thornapple River Drive area.)
• Clearly-stated and elevated standards and requirements for new commercial and residential developments, specifically preserving current residents’ property values and minimizing traffic congestion and straining public resources are included. Future private roads must be built to public road standards, at developer’s expense.

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Stone House
Location: 2781 Orange Ave
Estimated Completion: TBD
Funding Source: TBD

Cascade Township purchased the Stone House in 2024 and invited the public to visit in September 2024, during Cascade Heritage Festival.  Heritage Festival 2025 will also take place at the Stone House.  This property is part of the overall Village Concept taken on by OHM.  
 

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Virgil Nishimura Westdale Memorial Park
Location: 2839 Thornapple River Dr SE
Estimated Completion: Late 2025
Funding Source: TBD

The Kent County Garden Club has partnered with the Township on Virgil Nishimura Westdale Memorial Park as one of their 2024/2025 community projects.  Some of the park's interactive sculptures were relocated to Friendship Park where they will be better.  This additional space will allow them to remove much of the hardscape and replace it with period appropriate plantings, so that the park matches the time period of the historical museum. 

The Kent County Garden Club continues to weed and maintain plants currently on the property every other Monday from 9:00-11:00 am.  They have removed large amounts of overgrowth, cleared the back walkway of myrtle, exposed the fieldstone retaining wall, and laid aggregate between the brickwork and stones.  They also hosted a Girl Scout outing to plant daisies and other bright plants, from their own gardens, around the power box near the intersection.

The Garden Club is creating plans for flower beds along the northern property line, under the pine trees.  This second phase, including removal of current plants, bed preparation, and plant purchase and installation, is to be completed by the fall 2025 freeze.