By Mitch Ermatinger, Uptown GR District Events Specialist
If you were around the East Hills neighborhood in the late ’90s and early 2000s, you probably remember that Wealthy Street Alive (WSA) was the true heartbeat of our community. It was an event that brought everyone out of their houses and into the streets to celebrate the culture, commerce, and connection of our neighborhood.
Now, decades later, we are incredibly thrilled to announce that Wealthy Street Alive is making its return. June 19th, WSA will return as a special mini-event to honor its incredible legacy and pave the way for an even brighter future.
For me, this event has been a long time coming. In June 2007, I moved to the Baxter neighborhood and fell in love with Wealthy Street immediately. I could feel that it had a special energy, unique history, and so much potential with its fun mix of locally owned businesses nested in the middle of two neighborhoods. Years later, my wife and I decided to move our business, Speciation Artisan Ales, from Comstock Park to Grand Rapids, and Wealthy Street was the natural choice.
During the last three years of owning Speciation, I served as the president of the Wealthy Street Business Alliance (WSBA). My goal in that role was to help launch bigger community-style events. Wealthy Street Alive came up continuously in my conversations with business owners, neighbors, and local nonprofits. The event symbolized a specific time period on Wealthy Street and really brought neighbors together.
Eventually, I sold Speciation and joined the team at Uptown GR, Inc. as a District Events Specialist. In this role, it is my goal to help the business and neighborhood organizations in Uptown with their events. I strongly believe that events are an important part of the success of small businesses, and they are incredibly important to building community.
The missing piece to the WSA puzzle came in the form of Duke Turley, nephew of WSA founder Mr. James Price, when he showed up at a WSBA meeting recently with the desire to reboot the event with the blessing of his uncle!
The Original Vision: Mr. James Price, Founder, Lady Love Barbershop
To understand where we are going with this reboot, you have to look back at where it all began. The original founder of the festival, Mr. James Price, started Wealthy Street Alive as a way to unify the corridor.
“We wanted to get all the business people and the consumers together to let this street be known,” Mr. Price recently shared when reflecting on the festival’s origins. “We wanted a big gathering for Wealthy Street with a lot of people coming through. We were doing the same thing Eastown was doing—in fact, I think we started before they did! It was just a community thing we wanted to do.”
When asked why bringing the event back is so important to him today, Mr. Price emphasized the local impact. “I feel that it will give people in the area good opportunities to get their businesses known while connecting with the community,” he said. “The kids used to come through as well. It’s just a great thing to do.”
A Legacy Continued: Duke Turley
Mr. Price’s sentiments are strongly echoed by his nephew, Duke Turley, whose childhood memories are deeply tied to the original festival.
“As a kid, I remember looking forward to the summer break, because I knew WSA was on the calendar,” Duke recalled. “The live entertainment, I had never seen a live band or DJ. WSA gave us neighborhood kids a chance to showcase our talents. From dance competitions, to answering trivia questions, and shouting out the Wealthy Street business.”
Honoring the Past: Jessica Young and the East Hills Council of Neighbors
With Duke’s vision leading the charge, the momentum rapidly grew. We officially teamed up with the Wealthy Street Business Alliance, East Hills Council of Neighbors (EHCN) and Uptown GR, Inc. to make this dream a reality. The involvement of the EHCN is particularly special because they were involved in the original Wealthy Street Alive as an organizer and part of the broader neighborhood revitalization work happening along the corridor in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Jessica Young, Executive Director of the EHCN, beautifully captured why this revival is so essential for our current era: “Rebooting Wealthy Street Alive feels important because it reconnects the neighborhood to one of the most community-centered traditions in East Hills history.”
Jessica added, “The original event happened during a time when neighbors and small business owners were actively fighting for the future of Wealthy Street as a neighborhood corridor where people safely lived, worked, gathered, and knew each other… At that time, neighborhood advocates and preservationists within the organization were working together to stabilize and reimagine Wealthy Street during a period when the corridor faced significant disinvestment. Wealthy Street Alive was a celebration and demonstration that the neighborhood was vibrant, creative, safe, and worth investing in.”
But why bring it back now? Jessica explains: “Today, the neighborhood is thriving in many ways, but it can also feel more fragmented and transactional than it used to. Bringing back Wealthy Street Alive is an opportunity to create something local and welcoming that honors our history and centers residents, artists, families, small businesses, and community organizations together in public space.”
“It would be great if the event became a space where people who might not otherwise interact get to meet each other,” Jessica noted. “Strong neighborhoods are built through relationships, and events like this help create those connections.”
For the EHCN, this event is not about commercialization… It’s about connection. “I’d love to see WSA become a tradition again and something that feels deeply rooted in the neighborhood rather than overly commercialized or exclusive,” Jessica emphasized. “My hope would be for it to grow into a multigenerational and community-driven event that highlights the creativity and diversity of the neighborhood with local musicians, artists, kids activities, community groups, small businesses, longtime residents, newer neighbors, and the people who make this area special every day.”
The 2026 Mini-Event Details
This year’s event on Friday, June 19th, is a community-driven launchpad. We are building serious steam for a proper return in 2027, and we want to celebrate our history while looking to the future.
We will be gathering at 1117 Wealthy St SE, right outside Lady Love by James Price, from 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM. We will have the incredible Chilango Tacos food truck on site, yard games set up for some friendly neighborhood competition, and spray tattoos. We are also encouraging everyone to bring a blank tee, tote bag, or hoodie to our BYO Garment Screen Printing station. And if you want to take a true trip down memory lane, we will have a special viewing area set up to show archival footage of the original events.
The Wealthy Street Business Passport
Wealthy Street Alive has always been about supporting our local commerce as much as our culture. Duke Turley shared that his hope for the reboot is that it serves its original purpose: “Which is to serve the community and help highlight the businesses located on Wealthy Street.”
To that end, Duke has put together an event-day-of passport program, the Wealthy Street Business Passport. We want to encourage everyone to take a stroll down the corridor and pop into the amazing shops that make our street unique. All you have to do is grab a passport card, visit 5 retail businesses, and ask a staff member for initials on your card, during the duration of the event.
Once you collect your 5 check-ins, bring your completed passport card back to the event at 1117 Wealthy St SE and drop it into the 2027 WSA Suggestion Box. Doing so will enter you into a prize drawing! No purchase is necessary to participate.
Looking Ahead: Rebuilding Together
I never attended the original event, but I know how important it was to Grand Rapids. It’s my desire to help facilitate what the community wants this to be. We will have a suggestion box at the event, and our team is eager to see how the community reimagines this event. We will do our best to mold the community suggestions into an unforgettable community event that people will someday look back on with a similar fondness as folks who attended the original events.
I want to personally thank Mr. James Price, Duke Turley, the East Hills Council of Neighbors, Wealthy Theater, Uptown GR, Inc., and Carol Moore for their support and encouragement! We have an opportunity to create something really special for this neighborhood, and we will do our best to reboot this event in a way that honors the history, but looks to the future.
Duke Turley added his own gratitude: “I’d like to say thank you to WSBA, EHCN, and Uptown GR for helping Mr. Price and I reboot Wealthy Street Alive, and we are excited to hear ideas from community members about what they want the WSA event to be in the years ahead.”
Perhaps Jessica Young summarized our mission best: “One of the meaningful things about bringing back Wealthy Street Alive is that it honors the people who carried this neighborhood through much more difficult decades. The Wealthy Street we know today exists because residents, business owners, artists, and organizers spent years believing in the corridor before it was fashionable or economically secure. Rebooting the event is about carrying forward that same spirit of community ownership, creativity, and neighborhood pride into the next chapter of East Hills.”
See you on June 19th!
-Mitch
***********************************
A note, as you peruse: Gathering this information is an ongoing crowd-sourcing effort and we do our best to be accurate. Did we miss something? Do you have some historical business or district insight to share with us? Let us know!