The nonprofit steering the Grand River's redesign is called Grand Rapids Whitewater. That name is now the least accurate part of the project. What broke ground on the riverbank in June is a habitat restoration job, not a kayak park, and the distinction matters if you're trying to figure out what you'll actually get to do down there this year versus what's still just a rendering.
If you've walked past the construction fencing near Ah-Nab-Awen Park this summer and wondered whether that's the whitewater course finally showing up, it isn't. Here's what is.
The Name Is Older Than The Plan
Grand Rapids Whitewater started in 2009 as an outgrowth of the Green Grand Rapids initiative, founded by Chip Richards and Chris Muller with a specific pitch: bring back the rapids the city was named for, and build a whitewater recreation feature paddlers would travel for. That idea is nearly two decades old now, and for most of those years it stayed exactly that, an idea working through permitting.
The rapids themselves disappeared over a century ago, buried under a series of low-head dams built in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The nonprofit's original ask was to remove those dams and shape the exposed riverbed into wave-forming features, the kind of built whitewater you'd see at a dedicated paddling park.
What The EPA Concern Actually Changed
That original design ran into federal pushback. The Environmental Protection Agency raised concerns that constructing artificial whitewater features could increase stream velocity, alter sediment transport, and destabilize sections of the channel. In 2023, the city withdrew its permit application for that version of the plan.
What came back was narrower. The redesign leans on habitat restoration and ecological function first, and one of the biggest changes was removing the wave-forming structures that would have created the distinct whitewater the project's name promises. The current plan reshapes the riverbed with a gradual slope of rock and boulders meant to mimic a natural channel, not a built recreation feature. Paddling, tubing, and fishing are described as possibilities the finished river may support at certain flows, not a guaranteed amenity.
"It's exciting that it is finally happening, because we still get people asking, is it ever going to happen?" Matt Chapman, the project's executive director, told OutdoorHub this spring.
That quote captures the gap well. The people asking aren't wrong to be skeptical. What's finally happening is real, but it's a different project than the one they were told about in 2009.
What You Can Already Walk To This Week
While the river itself is mid-construction, the pieces around it have moved faster than the dam removal has.
The city is building more than 4.5 miles of paved Riverwalk between Fulton Street and Riverside Park, and much of it is already usable. The stretch near the Acrisure Amphitheater and Canal Park was originally supposed to wrap up this spring, but the city pushed that segment to fall, so if you're finding a gap in the path right around the amphitheater right now, that's the known holdup, not a wrong turn.
The Grand Rapids Public Museum finished the first phase of a $70 million expansion this June, giving the building an actual working relationship with the river for the first time since it moved into its current home in 1994. The Cook Carousel Pavilion, which houses the museum's 1928 Spillman Carousel, was detached from the main building specifically to open up accessible trail connections along the water. A second phase, a four-story tower on the museum's south lawn, comes next.
The Acrisure Amphitheater opened in May with a 12,000-seat venue and a four-acre plaza its operators call the Green Ribbon, and the fall calendar is already dense enough to plan a weekend around. Salt-N-Pepa and TLC play September 3 with En Vogue opening, and Pitbull brings Lil Jon along for a dance party on September 10. If you live within walking distance, the riverside food trucks and outdoor seating around the venue turn a show night into something you can do without touching a parking garage.
Ah-Nab-Awen Park is doing double duty this year. It's serving as the staging and equipment access point for the dam removal happening a few hundred feet away, and it's also the anchor site for World of Winter installations once the season turns, the same patch of grass hosting both a construction yard and a light art festival within months of each other.
What's Tearing Up The Riverbank Right Now
The actual construction is the part that will take the longest and look the roughest. In June, the city broke ground on the Lower Reach, the stretch of river between Fulton Street and Bridge Street, after the Grand Rapids City Commission approved a $14.56 million contract with Taplin Group LLC this spring, with total project expenditures not expected to exceed roughly $26 million once engineering, permitting, and monitoring costs are included.
The scope for this phase is four low-head dams coming out, replaced by natural rock structures designed to restore flow and improve fish passage. City officials expect the work to take about two years, putting substantial completion sometime in 2028. That timeline is worth holding onto if you're wondering why the river still looks like a construction site well into next year. It's supposed to.
Here's how the three tracks actually line up right now:
| Track | Status | Realistic timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Riverwalk trail, Amphitheater plaza, Museum riverfront | Mostly open, one gap near the amphitheater | Remaining segment finishes fall 2026 |
| Lower Reach dam removal (Fulton to Bridge Street) | Under active construction | Roughly two years, into 2028 |
| Upper Reach, Sixth Street Dam, lamprey barrier | Still in environmental review | Draft review not expected until July 2027, no construction date set |
The Part That's Still Just A Filing
The Upper Reach, the segment between Ann Street and Bridge Street, is where the Sixth Street Dam sits. That dam currently functions as the river's first barrier against invasive sea lamprey, so removing it isn't as simple as knocking out concrete. The Great Lakes Fishery Commission has to sign off on a replacement barrier design first, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers resumed the environmental impact study on that question this spring.
A public scoping meeting happened in April, the comment period closed in May, and a draft environmental impact statement isn't expected until July 2027. There's no construction timeline for this phase because there can't be one yet. If someone tells you the whole river project wraps up on a specific date, they're describing the Lower Reach, not the whole thing.
So When Do You Actually Get To Paddle
Given all of that, the honest answer for anyone hoping to kayak through downtown is not this year, and probably not for a while after the Lower Reach finishes either, since the wave-forming features that would have made that a reliable experience were the part removed from the design.
What you can do this year is walk a mostly finished trail from Fulton Street toward Riverside Park, catch a show at a riverfront amphitheater that didn't exist eighteen months ago, and watch a nearly two-decade-old idea about a river finally get physically underway, even if what's being built looks less like the original pitch and more like a slower, sturdier compromise with the EPA's objections. Mayor David LaGrand called the contract approval "a historic moment for Grand Rapids" this spring, noting the city was "finally bringing the rapids back to the Grand River" after nearly two decades of planning. That's a fair way to hold the whole picture: still under construction in the middle, opening up around the edges, and worth watching over the next two years rather than expecting all at once.
If you're weighing what this stretch of downtown means for timing a move, or just want a local read on how a project like this tends to affect the blocks around it, Claire Ritter at Legacy Home Leaders knows this riverfront the way only someone who works it every week can. Let's Connect.
