It looks like this plan may be moving forward, on a smaller scale than origionally proposed.

State police proposal revived

I have no clue how tall it will be, being 148,000 sq ft would point to something shorter, but the $45 million price tag points to something taller. I think were going being that they say there will be 150 surface parking spots I think we're going to see somthing with about the footprint of Grand Tower, and between 10 and 14 floors.

I hope they didn't mean 150 surface parking spaces. I don't want to see any surface lots on this site. I kind of fell I'm going to be let down, here, because, I never wanted to land used for a state office building in the first place. I have a bad feeling this may be a squat suburban office building brought to an urban downtown. We'll have to wait and see though.

Just for a comparison, the original 405,000 square foot proposal (which was 10-stories filling the whole site, BTW) was $100 million, and this new proposal is $45 million at 148,000 square feet. All that said, either way, this is going to be a significant structure.

This is going to be a state office building. Those don't count in commercial measures of the commercial office market.

The whole structure is being built for them, just like before. The only difference, here, is that the Veteran's Affairs offices are no longer included.

You're right. This is being built by the State Building Authority, so it will technically count, though, it will be filled, so it basically won't count.

As for how much of the site is taken up, it really does depend on whether they are going to go up or out. As you know, the last 10-story proposal filled the whole site, just about. The remaining space was used for a parking garage.

Triangle

My dad heard at work last week that this was approved by the capitol outlay comittee last Thursday, they also passed a timeline with completion set for 2009 or 20 months.

Yeah, they were supposed to approve it last Tuesday, but something came up. I was almost sure the local media would jump on this, but nothing more than a news story last Tuesday. Hood, see if you can dig up some information/renderings.

EDIT:

I was able to find this:

http://www.gongwer.com/programming/new_NewsSearchResults.cfm?submit=false&locid=1

But, you need to be a subscriber to view the article.

LMich, what did you find at that link?

Iguess I filed a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), because, I got some information back concerning the Triangle Project from the State Building Authority. I have what I guess was submitted to the committee, and let me just say I'm VERY disappointed. I'll post some of the crudely-copied renderings/elevations, later.

Let's just say the design looks like a prison, and I'm not kidding. I'm talking cheap architecture, parking on the river, walls and fences along Kalamazoo, etc...just about everything any urban enthusiast would hate to see.

That is entirely disappointing with everything that the city has been talking about trying to do. Can we get any development to focus on the river?

I read an article in the New York Times a while back about how new office buildings (public and private) are building in anti-terrorism mechanisms like this 7-foot security wall, but the article talked about how architects were designing the walls to appear as part of the design of the structure and not just a wall. Some of these examples used many steel benches and/or stairs surrounding the buildings with large planters near the road.

The use of a 7-foot wall may just be asking for vandalism and a worse perception of downtown Lansing. Lansing doesn't need any walls, there's nobody we need to keep out. If the architects are worried about a terrorist threat, couldn't they have spent a LITTLE more time and came up with a creative solution?