Kentwood became a city on its third try

For most of its municipal life, the land that is now Kentwood was Paris Township. The city’s historical-facts sheet dates the township’s formal organization to 1839. East Paris Avenue still carries that older name through today’s city.

By the 1960s, the township was losing land. An official Kentwood Public Schools history says Grand Rapids was annexing more and more of Paris Township, and residents put incorporation to a vote three times. Becoming a city would let the remaining community hold together under its own government.

The third vote had one especially practical issue behind it: Woodland Mall. The school district’s history says the proposed mall site was at real risk of annexation because Grand Rapids had already taken land just east of it. Losing the mall would also mean losing a large future source of tax revenue. Voters approved incorporation in 1967, and Woodland Mall opened the next year.

You may run across a neat local story that first mayor Peter Lamberts chose “Kentwood” from the school district’s name. The accessible city and school histories are much clearer about why incorporation happened than about that naming decision, so it is better treated as a local account than a settled fact.

What the records do show is interesting enough: Kentwood did not simply appear as Grand Rapids spread outward. Residents debated cityhood, voted twice without getting there, and then made a different choice when a major piece of the community’s future was on the line. The Paris name stayed on the road. Kentwood became the city around it.