Past, Present and Future Converge to Ride the Rapids at Transit Facility

摘要

For centuries, the west Michigan river rapids slowed the salmon for the spears of the Ottawa tribe. They marked the site of Ottawa villages, where beaver, mink, marten and muskrat were trapped for the fur trade and transported by canoes that traversed the state's longest river. They helped speed the progress of a city bearing their name. Then, slowed and finally stopped by that same progress, the grand rapids disappeared, existing only in name. Now the rapids have returned. Reincarnated in steel and fabric and polycarbonate, they serve another civilization with another form of transportation. Past, present and future converge in architect Progressive AE's design of The Rapid Central Station bus terminal for the Interurban Transit Partnership in Grand Rapids. Constructed on a reclaimed brownfield site after extensive remediation, the terminal is the first U.S. transportation facility to receive LEED~® certification. The complex, opened in June 2004, combines its station with a canopied platform symbolic of yesterday's swirling rapids.