East Village design to include city, residents' input
By KRISTEN DAUM

The State News

And then there was one.

When Pierce Company officials left East Lansing five weeks ago, they said they'd return after narrowing down five preliminary design concepts for the East Village project.

The San Diego-based master developer plans to unveil one design concept based from the original five when they visit in 10 days, said Theresa Nakata, vice president of marketing and communications for The Pierce Company Inc.

"We're moving forward, and we're excited," Nakata said.

City officials want the East Village redevelopment to bring a mix of retail, residential and entertainment properties to the area bounded by Hagadorn Road, East Grand River Avenue, Bogue Street and the Red Cedar River.

Nakata said at the end of February that the representatives planned to bring back at least two or three concepts, which would take into consideration feedback from East Lansing residents.

........................... (more in the article at the State News: http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=40602)

I went to the design workshop today at the Kellogg Center and got to take a first hand look at how it is currently planned. They had a formboard display of the entire site, and it didn't look too bad. My only gripe was the lack of some form of pedestrian movement within the development (thinking along the lines of a simple trolley car), but I may be thinking the site is larger in my head than in real life.

I should have some pictures of it up here soon.

I am very impressed with this. It looks like the residential buildings will be 6-7 floors, with retail masking the parking on ground level. It looks like a 8-9 floor hotel, and a very large winter garden which be pretty neat, I also really like the canal. And in todays LSJ article they seem to imply that the entire project would go up at once, or in consecutive phases, not the fragmented developments over time that I though was likely :East Village redevelopment plan refined.

Yeah the hotel will be eight floors and most of the residential will be around 5 floors. These pictures were also given to us at the workshop to talk about different ideas. The retail that is masking the parking ramp would be masking it on all sides, so you would never see the parking ramp, only at it's entrances.

One of the other ideas would be that the retail that is facing Bogue would instead be two floor tall brownstones with the residential above. This would ease the transition in to the University better.

I am waiting to hear back from one of the photographers at the workshop to get copies of her photos of the foamboard.

If I remember it is 4,780 spaces. The project is schedule to start construction in 2009

Oh, I thought they'd be starting relatively soon. It's still two years off. Is this because of the current owners?

I have found copies of the five original design concepts if you would like to look through them. The current design is a hybrid of a couple of these.

• Concept A
• Concept B
• Concept C
• Concept D
• Concept E

I like C and E. I like E's rivertrail and winter garden plaza. I like C's building orientation.

I think there is something very interesting to call to attention or to predict. Recently The Pierce Company, the developers of this project, purchased the Chandler Crossings portfolio for about $100 million, making them the largest landowner in the East Lansing area. The number of student rentals in the development will be a decrease from the current number. Do you think it is a conflict of interest that the Pierce Company can effectively eliminate 2,000 rental units and stall the project, allowing them to inflate the prices for Chandler Crossings due to their now monopoly? The Chandler Crossings is about 2,000 UNITS in itself, and there are 2,000 RESIDENTS in the East Village area, all renters. This means there will be 2,000 displaced persons, forcing the demand much higher for places in Chandler Crossings. Maybe the City of East Lansing should question this conflict of interest here. Some may say it is just smart business, but I think there could be reasoning now for the Pierce Company to either purposefully delay the finishing of the construction or to even further limit the amount of student rentals in the development.

No, it's not illegal, but it definitely would unethical to do so. And East Lansing doesn't have rent control laws, but the general idea of rent control laws wouldn't work in this type of situation. Rent control laws work to keep the rent from increasing at a rate that his higher than inflation while the tenant lives in the property. Since many of these rentals are short term (1 year), a general rent control law would have no effect.

Dude, Jared, is that you in those pictures?? I've been in class with you at MSU, CSE 331 last semester. I'm the bald guy, (but I where a hat a lot). Weird...