In an effort to reduce crime, Grand Rapids City officials are considering a new ordinance that would require convenience stores to follow strict design standards. The proposal is called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, an ordinance that hopes to help prevent crime at convenience stores, using mandated building design requirements that officials say would discourage potential criminals from committing armed robbery or theft.
West Grand Neighborhood Organization Executive Director Annette Vandenberg says, places like Circle K or Wesco type stores with clean exteriors, large windows in front and strategically placed doors are less likely to be victims of crime. As are homes in the area.
“People will tend to shy away from you because they don’t want to be caught,” Vandenberg said. “So the more you can do to provide surveillance or eyes on your building, or your business, or your home, the less the likely it is for somebody to break in, because thieves want to be concealed, and they don’t want to be caught, and they don’t want to be seen.”
The building design standards would also include limiting the amount of doors into a building, while installing thorny bushes beneath ground-level windows.
And there is data to suggest the design might work. Vandenberg says, after a string of robberies last year, Westside based Family Pantry voluntarily installed the Crime Prevention design, and the robberies stopped.