Do you remember a long time ago when I was projecting that Scene Metrospace was going to move from their current location to the old Aroma Cafe location, next door to Georgios? Well, it is coming even closer to reality. Take a look at this news brief that will be in tomorrows State News:
http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=38343

City Council to hear about gallery relocation

By KRIS TURNER

The State News

The building that houses (SCENE) Metrospace art gallery is slated for demolition to make way for a newer development.

Sharon Radtke, East Lansing's arts coordinator, said she is going before the East Lansing City Council to seek possible locations to house the gallery. Moving into the space once used by Aroma Gourmet Coffee & Tea, 110 Charles St., is one possibility, Radtke added.

"We want the program to continue; we just have to find another space before the first of the year," she said. "We are exploring some other places."

The City Council will meet at 7 p.m. today in City Hall, 410 Abbott Road.

With the merging of Citizens Bank and the other bank (can't remember the name right now), this means that the Citizen's Bank located at the corner of Abbott and Grand River is going to close. It will be moved to the preexisting location in the shopping center at the corner of Hagadorn and Grand River. This will probably affect the project, as Citizens Bank was going to be an extensive tenant of the building. They occupied the current large building at the corner, and moved directly across the street until the Museum Place was finished, with plans to move into the new building. Now those offices may be located in Flint.

Here is the link to the LSJ story. I usually think business mergers between Michigan companies is a good thing, but here it seems to have a negative effect on this project.

I think that is for the MSU art museum, aka Kresge Art Museum, which is currently planning a move to Grand River across from the Student Services building.

http://newsroom.msu.edu/site/indexer/3105/content.htm

Ooops! My bad.

It is so cool to see they are going national and international with the design competition, on this one. I have a very good feeling MSU is going to get a great project with this one.

I try not to even read the comments sections on any newspapers, anymore, considering the level of maturity of the majority that response is incredibly low. If you ever need a laugh or something to get angry about check out the comments left at the websites of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News websites. They are some of the most nasty, racist comments you'll ever read and prove out comfortable people feel saying what they really feel on the internet. The LSJ comments are usually tame in comparison.

What I really like is how this will be the first building on North Campus to open directly unto Grand River Avenue. I always wondered why MSU built itself to turn its back to East Lansing. It's really symbolic of the relationship (or lack of) between East Lansing and MSU which pretty much functions as its own city under the state constitution.

Well, the Museum Place has seemed to be pushed out of the spotlight for a while, probably due to budget contraints with getting commercial tenants, and also with the relocation of current tenants. Now that (scene) Metrospace has moved, all of the tenants of the affected properties have been relocated.

The Request for Proposal for Lot 1 in East Lansing mentioned that they expect construction for the Museum Place to begin within the next 24-36 months, and previous speculation was that the buildings would be torn down this summer, and the land would be used as a gravel parking lot until all funding and support could be lined up to start construction.

I don't have any new renderings since the extremely modern design was unveiled. I think that design (the swiss-cheese building) has significantly changed, and I would expect something not so futuristic looking to be built.

Here is the image of the new design, if you can't use a PDF viewer:

It's too bad that the building on the People's Church parking lot is no longer planned, along with the redesign of the streets. I like the public open space at Abbott and Grand River though.

I hope the renderings on Strathmore's pages go through. It looks like a quality building, they are using limestone and looks modern but not too radical like it looked before. The other buildings that they plan to build look nice too, but is there enough market demand for these upscale condos and apartments? Maybe if a new corporation moves to the area or more graduate school students move to this area rather than various scattered apartments in the area. This, combined with the East Village project will definitely change the face of East Lansing.