It's a bright summer afternoon and dozens of kids stand beside Lake Barlow, the main draw at YMCA's Camp Manitou-Lin outside Middleville.

"Jump in, chicken," a tow-headed boy shouts to timid campers at the shore. A few well-placed splashes, screams and the "chickens" race into the water towards their tormentor.

Everyone laughs amid splashing and trash talk at the 160-acre camp south of Grand Rapids.

Welcome to summer camp, the time-honored rite of passage for nearly 11 million kids in the United States each summer who are temporary residents at some 12,000 day and overnight camps. And metro Grand Rapids has some of the best camps in the state of Michigan, local directors say, just the kind of places that can provide a short, but positive impact on any youth -- particularly one living in a harsh city environment or dealing with a disability.

Harlan Byker is offering a window to the world that's a lot more efficient than yours or mine.

After 12 years of painstaking steps and blind alleys, Byker is ready to scale up manufacture in metro Grand Rapids of a film for windows that automatically dims when heated by sunlight -- potentially saving property managers of office buildings vast sums of money spent on air conditioning.

You could say that it's the product of mud, sweat and tears -- a 7-acre park near the southern border of Grand Rapids devoted exclusively to mountain biking that opened last weekend.

Randy Cleves set a goal last year to ride every foot of all the paved bicycle paths in West Michigan with his wife Colleen and then 5-year-old son Regan -- the equivalent of taking a bike ride from Grand Rapids to Philadelphia.

 

The rollers and berms on the pump track are in place, ready for the inaugural ride of Mayor George Heartwell during the Grand Rapids Bike Park grand opening Saturday, May 15. The mayor will lead his annual family-fun Mayor's Bike Ride after a morning of park cleanup by Friends of Grand Rapids Parks volunteers.

Grand Valley State University has launched a new website, www.gvsu.edu/businessresource, to help entrepreneurs, business owners and economic developers find helpful community resources to grow their companies.

Grand Rapids' Aquinas College has begun a massive overhaul of its outdated athletic facility that promises to transform the 1957 structure into a showplace for college sports and fitness training.

The existing facility on the north side of the campus was mostly gymnasium. The basketball and volleyball courts ran north-south, but will be reoriented to east-west in the center of the main level. That makes room for the addition of interior second levels to the north and south, says Scott Vyn, design director for Integrated Architecture, the firm that designed the new structure.

A proposed network of walking and bike trails in Lowell called the Lowell Area Trailway got a jumpstart this week with the announcement that nearly $1.1 million has been raised through philanthropy and grants for construction of Phase 1, a 2.5-mile paved trail connecting area schools.

 

If Jason and Kris Spaulding have their way, local growers will drink the fruits of their labor at a new European microbrewery in the middle of the East Hills business district in Grand Rapids.

Brewery Vivant, a microbrewery specializing in French and Belgian beers, is the lead tenant in Locus Development's renovation of the former Spectrum Health Childcare property at 925 Cherry Street.

It may look peaceful when the frontloaders aren't running, but there's always a churning caldron of activity under the South Kent Landfill in Byron Center, where microbes feast on the more than 4 million tons of trash covered by a layer of soil. As they munch on organic matter, the anaerobic bacteria release methane, a colorless and odorless gas that can be cleaned and burned. Kent County and Granger Electric have joined forces to turn the waste methane into electricity -- enough to power more than 1,800 homes. Rapid Growth takes you behind the scenes of how this creative public-private partnership turns a greenhouse gas into a valuable commodity.