GRAND RAPIDS, MI — A bus driver by day, Heron Hudnell dreams of turning his mobile takeout shop, Hud’s Smokehouse, into a thriving business serving sizzling wings, rib tips and turkey knuckles.
Turning that dream into reality, however, has been a challenge.
A decade after Forbes ranked Grand Rapids the second worst large U.S. metro area for Black people to prosper, Hudnell says access to capital remains a challenge. With a mortgage, car bill and other expenses, the 59-year-old says he can’t afford a loan to buy a new trailer and grill, and grant funding is tough to come by.
“I don’t think a whole lot has changed,” said Hudnell, who lives with his wife, Jeanetta, in the Madison Square neighborhood.
The 2015 Forbes report was a blow to the city’s reputation. It highlighted the obstacles faced by Black residents in a region that drew accolades for its fast-growing economy, affordable housing and its designation as a great place to raise a family. For many, it reinforced the sense that Black people weren’t sharing in the region’s prosperity.
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Ten years later, Black residents say they feel flickers of hope but also frustration with big gaps in income, homeownership and business ownership that haven’t closed.
“I don’t think Grand Rapids is moving forward in this area,” said James Byl, the owner and founder of Multi-Automatic Tool & Supply Co. and past board chair of the Grand Rapids Chamber. “There are bright spots, but we’re not really moving forward. And as a business owner, most of my attention is looking for fellow Black and brown-owned businesses, and there always just seems to be dreadfully few.”
On one hand, the Forbes report put racial equity in the spotlight.
In the years since, community organizations and nonprofits have placed an emphasis on equitable development and supporting entrepreneurs of color. The city of Grand Rapids created a program aimed at generating more business for diverse contractors, and a loan fund serving businesses owned by people of color launched in 2018.
But challenges remain.
The five-county Grand Rapids-Wyoming metro area has the worst ranking for Black homeownership, educational attainment and business ownership among the nation’s 50 biggest metros, an MLive analysis of census data shows.
Black households are earning nearly $22,000 more than they were a decade ago. But the income ratio between Black people and the Grand Rapids region’s overall population still ranks among the six worst big metros, data show.
How Forbes came up with its ranking
The 2015 Forbes report generated lots of conversation in Grand Rapids, and it’s still mentioned today by members of the Black community.
Following its publication, a forum was held at Grand Valley State University to discuss the challenges facing the Black community and what could be done to improve. The Grand Rapids Community Foundation gave $50,000 to the Grand Rapids Chamber to find ways to grow businesses owned by people of color.
Not everyone was surprised by the region’s dismal showing.
“For those of us in the African American community, it was just like, yeah, we already know this,” said Jamiel Robinson, founder and CEO of Grand Rapids Area Black Businesses, a business support group. “It kind of just reiterated exactly what we have been saying here all the time, and what we know to be a fact”
How did Forbes produce its ranking?
The report used 2013 data to examine how Black people in the 52 largest metro areas in the U.S. performed on four criteria: homeownership, self-employment, median household income and population growth. The factors were combined into one overall ranking.
The Grand Rapids-Wyoming Metropolitan Statistical Area ranked second to last, one spot ahead of Milwaukee. The Grand Rapids metro area includes Kent, Ottawa, Barry, Ionia and Montcalm counties.
Joel Kotkin, the author of the Forbes report, said he hasn’t updated his analysis since it was published. So, to gauge how the Grand Rapids metro area is performing, MLive reviewed census data for the largest 52 metro areas between 2013 and 2023, the most recent 10-year period available.
Detailed Black population statistics for two of those metro areas, San Jose and Salt Lake City, were unavailable in the 1-year U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey estimates MLive used.
What did the data show?
In one key area, the Grand Rapids metro region improved.
In 2013, the median income for Black households was $25,495, about half the overall population’s median household income. That was the second worst income ratio among the 50 biggest metros.
A decade later, Black median household income had increased to $47,292.
That’s roughly 61% of the overall population’s median household income.
The increase was one of the biggest among the 50 metros. But it was only enough to improve the region’s ranking to No. 45 of 50.
“This is a substantial improvement over 10 years, but there is obviously still a need for improvement in this measure,” said Paul Isely, associate dean and professor of economics at the Seidman College of Business at Grand Valley State University.
Population growth was another bright spot.
The Black population reached 74,058 in 2023, up 12.4% from a decade earlier. Among the 50 biggest metro areas, that was the 16th biggest increase.
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Few Black businesses
As lifelong Grand Rapids residents, Heron and Jeanetta Hudnell have watched the city change over the decades. Downtown has boomed, but Black-owned businesses that once dotted the neighborhoods where they grew up have closed, they say.
“We used to own gas stations, we used to own supermarkets,” said Jeanetta Hudnell, a grandmother and mother of four. “There were other things that we had ownership over, and all of those things have dissipated. For what reason, I don’t know.”
A decade after the Forbes story, the Grand Rapids metro area still has few Black-owned businesses compared to the nation’s biggest metros.
In 2021, the most recent year data was available, 0.8% of businesses in the region with more than one employee were owned by Black people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Business Survey.
That was the lowest rate among the 50 biggest metros.
Jermale Eddie, director of business development at Spring GR, a nonprofit that provides training to small business owners, said the COVID-19 pandemic hurt the number of Black-owned businesses in the region.
“COVID hit, and it really rocked all our communities, but especially communities of color,” said Eddie, whose business, Malamiah Juice bar, closed in 2023 after struggling during the pandemic.
Others have seen the challenges, too.
As the owner of Multi-Automatic Tool & Supply Co. and Belding Tool & Machine, James Byl is one of the few Black CEOs in the Grand Rapids region. Over the years, he’s watched Grand Rapids grow and change. But that growth hasn’t translated to much progress in Black business ownership in his field: manufacturing.
Last year, for example, he went to a minority-owned business supplier convention hosted by Toyota. He was wowed by the number of firms owned by people of color in Detroit and Ohio with hundreds of employees.
“I wish that Grand Rapids had just a small portion of that,” said Byl, whose two companies have 20 employees. “We’re so behind in that whole area.”
Big differences in homeownership
For homeownership, the Grand Rapids metro is a study in extremes.
The region had the highest overall homeownership rate, 74.8%, among the biggest U.S. metros in 2023, census data show. But, at the same time, its Black homeownership rate, 30.1%, was the worst.
“Does it disappoint me? Yes, because I believe we can do better,” said Eureka People, president of Housing Kent, a nonprofit focused on housing stability. “We still haven’t figured out how to align and coordinate resources — and a set of interventions like policy, investment and collaboration — to really address this problem.”
In the decade since the Forbes report, the Black homeownership rate in the Grand Rapids metro area has essentially been flat at 30%.
By comparison, the overall homeownership rate increased slightly, from 72.1% to 74.8%.
Ryan VerWys, the CEO of ICCF Community Homes, a nonprofit low-income housing developer, said the data examined by MLive encompasses a time when the region’s population was growing and housing was in short supply.
Such a market tends to be tougher for people of color to navigate, he said.
“Logic tells us that people who don’t have access to generational wealth — that they can borrow on a secondary mortgage or have gifted to them by their grandparents or parents — are at a disadvantage,” VerWys said.
ICCF has been working to help Black families become homeowners.
Since 2021, it has assisted 111 households — 63% of whom identified as Black —with home purchases through counseling, down payment assistance and other services.
While that’s not enough to significantly change the numbers, every Black family that becomes homeowners is a step in the right direction, VerWys says.
“We want to be a place where everyone has equal access to homeownership, where families experience stability that comes with homeownership,” he said. “Until we achieve that, we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”
What’s being done to help?
As Heron Hudnell looks toward the future, he would like to see the Grand Rapids metro region become a more prosperous place — not only for him but for his neighbors, children and grandchildren, too.
“My goal for them is to have generational wealth, that they’ll have something that I can pass down to them,” he said.
Over the past decade, a host of community organizations have placed an emphasis on helping people of color succeed in business and other endeavors.
The New Community Transformation Fund, for example, invests in companies owned by people of color. Founded in 2020, the fund has helped entrepreneurs such as Andrea Wallace. She received a $150,000 cash infusion for Opnr, the digital company she leads that connects concert promoters with independent musicians.
Another initiative is Rende Progress Capital. The community loan fund, which was launched in 2018 and serves entrepreneurs of color, has provided loans to more than 50 businesses.
“I think the Forbes article was a resounding wake up call for our community that we need to do better,” said Grand Rapids City Manager Mark Washington. “I think this community has answered the call and been intentional in efforts.”
Under Washington’s leadership, the city launched an economic inclusion program in 2021, which aims to grow minority, women-owned and micro-local businesses in the construction industry.
Through the program, individuals seeking city incentives for real estate development projects provide non-binding goals to include diverse contractors in their projects. To date, developers have pledged $142 million to hire such firms.
While there are plenty of success stories within those programs, they haven’t put a big dent in the census numbers — yet.
“It’s hard to change an entire city,” said Karla Velis-Brito, director of Spring GR, a program that provides coaching to aspiring entrepreneurs. “It takes time, but also it takes that intentionality. So, our commitment to that is present, and it’s what we’re planning over the future.”
Eric Foster sees signs of progress in the community.
Since he launched Rende Progress Capital, the firm has provided loans to more than 50 businesses in the region owned by diverse entrepreneurs. For many, Rende’s financing was a lifeline because they were unable to get help elsewhere, he said.
“We are having a great impact,” said Foster, whose firm takes a holistic view of business, beyond just credit scores, when reviewing loan requests. “Things are changing for the better.”
Heron and Jeanetta Hudnell are both graduates of Spring GR.
The program, which was founded by the DeVos family, provides coaching, connections and other support for entrepreneurs who want to grow or start a business. Since 2014, it has served about 1,300 people, and 87% of its graduates are people of color.
For the Hudnells, Spring GR has been a big boost.
It’s given them the skills to open their businesses, Hud’s Smokehouse and Papa’s Peppers, and a place to operate: Kzoo Station, a food incubator managed by Spring GR in the Boston Square Business District.
But even with Spring GR’s help, growing their businesses is no easy task, they say.
“It has been challenging even to talk to somebody about pushing my product even further as far as getting it out there in stores,” said Jeanetta Hudnell, who mostly sells her line of pickled peppers and vegetables, known as Papa’s Peppers, at farmers markets and events. “I have advanced, but not as much as I would like to have.”
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