Drive the ten minutes between Ada Village and the Cascade Road corridor and you'll pass through the same school district, the same census-designated place, even the same stretch of the Thornapple River. Say "Forest Hills" to most people and they picture one thing: the boutiques and restaurants clustered around the Ada Hotel. That picture is only half the map.
The other half is quieter, and this summer it started making noise of its own. Free concerts on a lawn most people outside Cascade Township couldn't name. A pedestrian bridge that's already finished while its counterpart in Ada is still under construction. A years-long plan to build a downtown where there wasn't one, finally showing up in poured concrete and revised park sketches. Forest Hills residents have spent years hearing about Ada's transformation. What's easy to miss, if you're not paying attention to the Cascade side, is that its neighbor to the south is running its own version of the same experiment, on its own timeline, with its own answer to what a village center should feel like.
Two Halves, Two Rhythms
Ada Village had a head start. Its downtown redevelopment goes back to 2006, and by now it has a hotel, a rooftop restaurant, and a weekly farmers market that draws a crowd. Cascade Township's version of that ambition is newer. When the township surveyed residents for its 2022 Strategic Plan, "Creating a Downtown Village" came back as the top priority, with the lack of one as the second-biggest concern. That's a community naming, out loud, the thing Ada already had.
Four years later, the difference between naming a plan and living inside one is starting to close. The Cascade Road Pedestrian Bridge project, once its own standalone line item on the township's project list, is now filed under "completed projects." Tassell Park is being redrawn to absorb the footprint of a former Tuffy Muffler and Auto Services site and a former doctor's office, with concept sketches already circulating. None of that shows up on a real estate listing. It shows up on a Tuesday night in a lawn chair.
The Friendship Park Calendar
If Ada's social clock runs on its Tuesday farmers market, Cascade's runs on Friendship Park. The township has been hosting a free summer concert series there, and the lineup tells you who this is for: Rin Tarsy and Mandarin, a folk duo built around singer-songwriter Rin Tarsy and Mandy Gaddy, played July 23. Next up is the Blue Water Kings Band, a twelve-person outfit built for high-energy sets, on August 20.
The concerts aren't the only thing running on that lawn. Cascade Township partnered with Orangetheory Fitness to offer free outdoor workouts at Friendship Park every Monday and Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. through July and August, led by a named coach, Jordan. Add in Mahjong Tuesdays at 1 p.m., a standing weekly meetup that's been running all summer, and Friendship Park starts to look less like a single-event venue and more like the township's actual living room.
Here's what a resident's week at Friendship Park looks like right now:
- Monday and Wednesday, 9 a.m. — free Orangetheory-led outdoor workout, running through August
- Tuesday, 1 p.m. — Mahjong Tuesdays, open and free
- August 20 — Blue Water Kings Band, the next stop on the summer concert series
That's a rhythm built entirely around a park most people driving through Cascade Road have never stopped at.
The Bridge That's Already Done
Ada's Thornapple River Pedestrian Bridge, a $2.5 million, 270-foot span connecting Legacy Park to downtown, has been the visible construction story on that side of Forest Hills all year. Township officials originally targeted mid-July 2026 for completion, though a late-June update on the project noted weather-related delays had already pushed that timeline back. Cascade's own pedestrian bridge project quietly wrapped earlier and is now listed among the township's completed work, no ribbon-cutting headline required.
That gap says something about how each half of Forest Hills is building. Ada's infrastructure investment is loud and photographed at every construction milestone. Cascade's tends to finish first and get mentioned second, buried in a "Village Reimagined" project page alongside zoning updates and park concepts still in the design phase. Same underlying goal, a walkable center that gives residents somewhere to land, but two very different paces of announcement.
The Fourth of July, the Long Way
Cascade's Independence Day tradition is its own piece of evidence that this is a community organizing itself, not just building infrastructure. The parade lineup started at 7:30 a.m. at Thornapple Covenant Church, with a separate bike parade lining up at 8 a.m. at Cascade Fellowship Christian Reformed Church. The street fair, food, games, rides, live music, wrapped by 1 p.m., timed so families could get home, grill, and head to the joint fireworks show at Amway's headquarters on Fulton Street with their Ada neighbors that evening.
That last detail matters more than it looks. Cascade throws its own daytime celebration, distinct from Ada's, but the two halves of Forest Hills still end the night together under the same fireworks. It's a small piece of proof that this isn't a rivalry story. It's two communities building separate identities while keeping one shared calendar entry.
Two Rivers, Two Kinds of Outdoor Investment
The outdoor recreation story splits the same way. Elsewhere in Forest Hills, along the Grand River, sits Roselle Park, a 240-plus acre nature preserve with a paved trail, a river overlook, a canoe landing, and the Woodrick Memorial wetland observation deck. It's finished. It's mapped. It's been there long enough to feel established.
Cascade's equivalent investment is still in motion. In March 2026, Cascade Township voted to join a multi-community effort, spearheaded by Caledonia Township, to designate the Thornapple River as an official state water trail for non-motorized use, kayaking and canoeing, stretching from Nashville in Barry County up through Ada. As Caledonia Township Manager Alison Nugent put it, the goal is treating the river as a shared recreational feature that connects the communities along it rather than something each town manages alone. As of that March vote, the participating townships were aiming to submit their formal application sometime this summer.
"This is a way of bringing municipalities together and saying, hey, this river is a really important recreational feature of our communities, and it connects all of us together."
That's the same pattern as the bridge and the village plan. Ada's outdoor amenity is already built and waiting. Cascade's is still being applied for. Neither is better. They're just at different points in the same arc.
Here's the split laid out plainly:
| Ada Village side | Cascade Township side | |
|---|---|---|
| Anchor gathering space | Legacy Park | Friendship Park |
| Pedestrian bridge status | Under construction, originally targeted for mid-July 2026, delayed by weather | Already complete |
| River trail status | Roselle Park's paved trail and canoe landing, long established | Thornapple water trail designation, application pending as of summer 2026 |
| Signature weekly ritual | Tuesday farmers market | Friendship Park concerts, Monday and Wednesday workouts, Mahjong Tuesdays |
What's Coming This Fall
The calendar doesn't stop when the concert series does. Cascade Township has a Fall Cleanup Day scheduled for Saturday, October 17, from 8 a.m. to noon at Cascade Recreation Park on Thornapple River Drive, open to residents with proof of township residency for disposing of appliances, electronics, and scrap metal. Before that, the township is planning a Bounce Back to School event, a free end-of-summer gathering for families, timed to close out the season the way Friendship Park opened it.
None of this is dramatic on its own. A cleanup day is a cleanup day. But stacked against the concert series, the free workouts, the finished bridge, and the pending water trail application, it reads as a community that's built an entire annual rhythm around a park and a corridor that, five years ago, didn't have one.
The Point For People Who Live Here
If you live on the Cascade side of Forest Hills, you already know the difference between your summer and the one happening in Ada Village. What's worth naming is that the gap isn't a sign Cascade is behind. It's a sign the two halves of this district are building distinct village identities on different clocks, and if you've been waiting for Cascade to feel like a finished place the way Ada does, the finished pedestrian bridge and the pending water trail application are the two clearest signs yet that it's arriving, just from a different direction than you might expect.
Whether you're watching Tassell Park's redesign take shape from a house nearby, or you're weighing what either half of Forest Hills might mean for your own next move, Brenda Pratt has spent years inside both stories. Let's Connect if you want a read on how this corridor's growth might shape your own plans.
