A township without a single main street

Georgetown Township does not have a square, and it does not have one main street that acts like a town. Jenison is the largest community inside it, and Jenison is a place spread along roads.

Chicago Drive is the commercial corridor, a divided road with businesses along it, running between Hudsonville and the Grandville line. People use it. They do not gather in the middle of it. The township offices are on Baldwin Street, which is a civic address, not a downtown. Daily public life shows up at schools, at parks, and in parking lots that belong to specific buildings.

That is not a failure of a main street to appear. The township grew as housing and a highway commercial strip in the orbit of Grand Rapids and the lakeshore, not as a city plotted around a courthouse. Asking where the square is will send you looking for a room that was never built.

On a Sunday in October the pattern is local errands and sports fields more than a stroll. This piece does not assign a crowd to any lot, or a shop to any corner. The news is where people already are when there is no square to be in: the school, the park, and the road that was never going to become a main street.

Georgetown Township