As a follow-up to the rather wide-eyed optimism I expressed in a post almost a year ago, the city of Grand Rapids has rejected the sole bid application received for development of property on the Grand River.

Duane Faust’s group did submit materials by the deadline, but the application lacked $65,000 in fees. reports that there were two other developers in the running, but “Faust’s bid was the only offer e into the city offices on Friday, but without $65,000 needed as an earnest deposit and to cover the cost of evaluating the proposal. Initially, city officials were assured the money would be in their hands by the end of business last Friday. But it wasn’t and still isn’t.”

“I am at a point where I personally would not like to see this go forward,” said Grand Rapids mayor George Heartwell. “Chalk this up to experience. Sooner or later we will develop that property, but not this time around.”

It looks like for the time being at least the plans to make Grand Rapids a “cool” city won’t include that riverfront property.