Grand Rapids neighborhoods

Four Neighborhoods Survive a Field of 16 in the Race for Best Neighborhood in Grand Rapids

Sixteen neighborhoods entered, twelve are out, and the semifinals open Tuesday: Creston against Alger Heights, Eastown against John Ball Park. The biggest upset so far came on the East Side, where Eastown knocked out Heritage Hill.

By Jon Hazeltine · September 29, 2026

GRAND RAPIDS, September 29. Grand Rapids has spoken, and bragging rights for best neighborhood in the city are down to four. After more than 1,900 selections, the final four neighborhoods are Creston, Alger Heights, Eastown and John Ball Park. The semifinals open at 9am today, Tuesday.

The four finalists sit in different corners of the city. Creston runs north of downtown along the Grand River. Alger Heights is a wartime grid on the southeast side. Eastown is a streetcar suburb on the east side, and John Ball Park climbs the ridge west of the river.

Each one has a walkable business district at its center. Each has a large park or green space with a story behind it. Each has an active neighborhood association that drives community engagement and looks out for local interests. Eastown's association throws the Eastown Streetfair on Wealthy Street. Alger Heights' association organizes a Halloween 5K and 10K and shovels the walks of older and disabled neighbors who ask. John Ball Area Neighbors tends a community garden on Butterworth Street, and Creston's association was born in 1979 when neighbors fought off development of Briggs Park. Three of the four finalists sold homes over the past year at a median price between $276,950 and $280,500.

The upset on the East Side

The biggest upset so far came on the East Side, where Eastown knocked out Heritage Hill, one of the largest urban historic districts in the country.

On paper the two areas look alike. Both are old east-side neighborhoods, and both are expensive by Grand Rapids standards. Their overall median sale prices over the past year even sit close together, $445,000 in Heritage Hill and $424,000 in Eastown, but these numbers hide the true story. Nearly half of what sold in Heritage Hill last year was condos carved out of its big houses, at a median of about $209,000, and those pull the neighborhood's number down. Its houses themselves sold at a median near $700,000, and the eight on the market now ask a median of $747,500. Every one of Eastown's sales last year was a house, at a median of $420,000, and its houses for sale now ask a median of $376,450. A house in Heritage Hill costs roughly twice what a house in Eastown does. Price is one difference. There are others.

Heritage Hill is a preserved district of about a square mile. Its houses, most built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, run to Victorian brick and turreted Queen Annes. The district exists because about 125 neighbors organized in 1968 against a city renewal plan that would have leveled most of it, and its association still opens private homes to the public every October on the Weekend Tour of Homes.

Heritage Hill's restaurants and bars sit mostly at its edges, toward downtown. Within a quarter mile of the center of each neighborhood, Atlas counts 24 restaurants, cafes and bars around Heritage Hill's and at least 90 around Eastown's.

Eastown is a working main street. It began as a streetcar suburb on the line from downtown to the resort at Reeds Lake. That is why its blocks are dense and its storefronts sit right up against its houses. The homes are older frame and brick houses on compact lots close to the sidewalk, and they sell for about half of what a Heritage Hill house does. On Atlas's walkability scale Eastown scores 8.6 out of 10 overall against 6.3 for Heritage Hill, and for everyday errands the gap is wider.

My guess is that Eastown won on daily life. Heritage Hill is a neighborhood people admire on a Sunday walk. Eastown is a neighborhood people use every day, for dinner, a drink or a record, and it costs about half as much to buy into.

Eastown is backed by B.C. Pizza, Billy's Lounge, Chez Olga, Smitty's specialty beverage, Matchbox Diner & Drinks, Ash & Elm Quiltery, Harmony Brewing Company, Tamales Mary, Mi Pueblito Mexican Restaurant, Quarantino's, Terra GR and Vinyl Alchemy.

Heritage Hill is a neighborhood people admire on a Sunday walk. Eastown is a neighborhood people use every day.

Creston and Alger Heights: same price, different scale

Both won their regional finals comfortably, Creston over Belknap Lookout and Alger Heights over Garfield Park. On price they are almost even, with a median sale price of $276,950 in Creston and $280,000 in Alger Heights. What separates them is scale. Creston is the largest neighborhood in the field, with roughly three times the residential parcels of Alger Heights.

Creston's center is Plainfield Avenue, a business district that cuts a diagonal through the neighborhood. Every December the Lights on Creston celebration fills that corridor. Riverside Park, with nearly a mile of frontage, sits along the river. The housing runs from Victorian cottages and foursquares to postwar ranches. Creston has 32 active listings today and 13 more pending, with a median asking price of $269,900. Its sponsors are The Rezervoir Lounge, Kobold's Kitchen, Sparrows Coffee and Fika Grand Rapids.

My guess is that Creston's votes come from reach. It has more homes for sale than any other finalist at the lowest median asking price, so more people can picture actually living there, and Plainfield gives them somewhere to walk once they do.

Alger Heights is a tight grid between Burton Street, 28th Street, Kalamazoo Avenue and Eastern Avenue. It was one of the few parts of the city that kept growing through the Great Depression and World War II. Anyone who lives, owns property or runs a business inside the boundary belongs to the neighborhood association automatically, and a network of block liaisons, one for most streets, delivers its newsletter door to door and greets new arrivals.

Homes there move fast. Alger Heights has 10 homes for sale and 11 already pending, so more houses are under contract than available. Asking prices run between $235,000 and $389,900. Its sponsors are Alger Hardware & Rental, Giggles & Gourmets Play Cafe & Bakery, Heights Cream and Making Thyme Kitchen.

The likeliest reason Alger Heights keeps winning is that its neighbors already know each other. When the person who brings the newsletter to your door lives on your street, a vote for the neighborhood is a vote for people you have met.

Eastown and John Ball Park: the east side against the west

The other semifinal puts Eastown against John Ball Park, which beat West Grand for the West Side. Eastown covers roughly 70 blocks between Fulton Street, Fuller Avenue, Martin Luther King Jr. Street and the East Grand Rapids line.

John Ball Park takes its name from the land John Ball left the city when he died in 1884. A small menagerie on that land grew into John Ball Zoo. The zoo is still there. A bronze of Ball seated with two children stands near the entrance. The neighborhood climbs the ridge along Fulton Street, and the Mines Golf Course sits over an old gypsum mine.

Its median sale price over the past year was $280,500, within a few thousand dollars of both Creston and Alger Heights. Its listings show the widest spread of any finalist, from a single-family house at $199,900 to a condominium on Bridge Street at $2,999,000.

My guess is the zoo. A vote for John Ball Park is partly a vote for a place people from every part of the city have their own memories of.

How to vote

Semifinal voting runs from 9am on Tuesday, September 29, through 11:59pm on Sunday, October 4. Vote for your neighborhood here. It is free, and no account is needed. The two winners meet in the final round, which opens October 6, and the champion will be crowned by October 11.

Jon Hazeltine is the founder of Grand Rapids Real Estate Co., which runs Neighborhood Madness.