Ada's New Pedestrian Bridge Is Catching Up to a Downtown That Already Outgrew It

Last night's Beers at the Bridge crowd did what every Beers at the Bridge crowd has done for years: parked wherever they could find a spot, walked toward the covered bridge, and funneled across the narrow temporary path that runs alongside River Street traffic to get there. If that was your Friday, there is a real chance it was one of the last times you have to do it that way. Deck panels connecting both banks of a new 270-foot pedestrian bridge went in earlier this summer, and while weather pushed Ada Township's original July 15 target later than planned, the crossing that has annoyed pedestrians and worried parents for years is close to done.

The easy version of this story is a ribbon-cutting write-up: new bridge, new park, isn't that nice. That version misses what actually happened here. The bridge is not the reason downtown Ada is busier. It is the township finally admitting downtown had already outgrown the crossing it had.

The path that made the case for itself

Ask Jason Kelly, general manager of Ada Garage Bar, what parking has been like downtown, and he does not reach for a diplomatic answer.

"Get in where you fit in."

That is not a complaint about a slow season. It is a description of a business district that has been running past its old capacity for a while, on a footprint built when Ada was still the kind of place people drove through rather than walked around. The temporary path pedestrians have been using to cross toward the covered bridge sits close enough to moving traffic that the township itself flagged it as a safety concern, not a scenic quirk. People were not avoiding it because downtown Ada was quiet. They were tolerating it because downtown Ada had already filled in around a crossing that was never meant to carry this much foot traffic.

Kevin Austin, director of the Ada Downtown Development Authority, said as much when the bridge broke ground in January. He pointed to new medium-density residential development going in around Oxbow and Fase Street as part of the reason the township needed a better connection into downtown in the first place. The bridge was not built to attract people to Ada. It was built because people were already here.

What's actually being built

The new bridge is part of a larger project funded through Ada Township's 2024 Connecting Community Campaign, which put $500,000 toward the crossing, with Grand River Construction winning the job at just over $2.14 million after coming in as the lowest of three bidders. The elevated design was chosen deliberately: instead of tucking pedestrians along the roadway, it lifts them enough to look out over Legacy Park on one side and Covered Bridge Park on the other, and lets multi-modal traffic, meaning walkers, runners, and cyclists, move into downtown without competing with cars for the same narrow shoulder.

The bridge connects into a bigger piece of infrastructure that has been under construction alongside it. Covered Bridge Park, a 15-acre expansion of public space along the Thornapple funded through an $8.5 million campaign, is adding:

• A splash pad
• A playground
• Two pickleball courts
• A dog park
• A veterans memorial

That is not a park built for tourists passing through on a Sunday drive. It is a park built for people who already live within walking distance and need somewhere to bring a toddler, a dog, and a paddle at three different points in the same week.

None of this touches the actual covered bridge, which has earned its keep for a lot longer than this construction season. Built in 1867, it is one of only four publicly owned covered bridges left in Michigan and has held a spot on the National Register of Historic Places since 1970. It survived a roof collapse in 1979 and a fire not long after, and it was rebuilt both times through community fundraising, with Amway's help the second time around. The bridge that hosts Beers at the Bridge every summer and the Bridge Lighting every December is the same one that has been standing in some form since before Ada had paved streets. The new pedestrian bridge is not replacing it. It is finally giving it the kind of approach that matches how much people actually use it.

Betting on feet, not cars

The clearest evidence that downtown Ada already outgrew its old infrastructure is not the construction timeline. It is what businesses have been willing to open into, parking problems and all.

Rix, the restaurant that opened on the third floor of the Ada Hotel, is not a modest addition. It runs a rooftop terrace, an indoor dining room, and a private space that can host a full buyout for 125 people, the kind of investment a business makes when it is confident there will be enough foot traffic to fill it on a Tuesday, not just for a special occasion. Its executive chef came by way of Union Square Cafe in New York before landing in West Michigan, and Grand Rapids Magazine has covered his ambition to turn Ada Hotel, Rix, and Post Tavern into a set of restaurants people book a weekend around rather than stumble into. Rix did not open into empty storefronts. It opened alongside Myrth, Nonna's Trattoria, and Zeytin's, joining a stretch of downtown Ada that was already building a reputation as somewhere worth driving to for dinner, parking problems included.

The Ada Farmers Market tells the same story in a quieter way. It has run every Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. since 2009, stretching from June through the end of October. Seventeen seasons in, it is not a pop-up testing whether Ada wants a farmers market. It is an institution that has outlasted plenty of newer additions to the downtown business mix, and it draws the same kind of weekly foot traffic the new bridge is designed to move more safely.

Put the restaurant investment, the farmers market's longevity, and the concert series together, and a pattern comes into focus. Every one of these businesses and events has been betting on people walking into downtown Ada, at a moment when the actual walk there was narrow, close to traffic, and occasionally the subject of a Fox 17 news segment about pedestrian safety. The bridge is not the thing that will make Ada worth walking to. Ada was already worth walking to. The bridge is the infrastructure catching up to a downtown that businesses had already decided to bet on.

That is worth sitting with if you already live here. The concerts, the new restaurants, the weekly market rhythm, all of it existed before this construction project got its own Fox 17 update. What is changing this year is not the reason to be downtown. It is how much easier that walk is about to get, and how much longer the parking lot at Ada Garage Bar can stay full before Kelly stops calling it "get in where you fit in."

If you have questions about what's happening in your corner of West Michigan, or you're weighing a move within Ada, Forest Hills, or anywhere else in the area, Blu House Properties knows this market from the ground up. Contact us anytime.