Capital View (Oliver Towers redevelopment)
It's official, Davenport intends on moving to the Oliver Towers site: Davenport eyes Lansing land swap
Davenport plans on building a 3 floor, 60k sq ft building on the parking lot to the north of Oliver Towers. They said that if approved, work could begin as early as this winter.
Davenport plans on building a 3 floor, 60k sq ft building on the parking lot to the north of Oliver Towers. They said that if approved, work could begin as early as this winter.
Comments
City Pulse article on the project: Oliver Twist
City Pulse article on the history of Oliver Towers: The saga of Oliver Towers
Lmich, I agree that there needs to be some new housing targeted at LCC students downtown and this site would be a great for that purpose. That being said, I doubt we'll see any housing on this site as Davenport will probably want their own parking and room for expansion. Hopefully some student housing will get built somewhere in the area though.
I hope this doesn't become a big issue. It's simple in my eyes: Davenport has immediate plans to build on the site and the means to do so, LCC doesn't have any immediate plans. Davenport is a private university looking to relocate, they could easily move to the suburbs, LCC can't. This is besides the fact that LCC has a fair amount of room to expand on their current land, and in my opinion would be better off expanding north and west. I hope the city either sides with Davenport or that LCC and Davenport and work this out among themselves.
Hey LCC, why don't you build on one of your ridiculously large surface lots you're building all over downtown? I mean, that what you said the lot behind the University Center would eventually be used for, right? There is something going on behind the scenes that we didn't hear about. I expect much more of them than this. Now, as this is set up, you're going to get Wood and Jeffries and Hewitt arguing that we should take the money as opposed to the land. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that one of them is behind this.
I still have a lot of hope for this location. This is located two blocks north of the capitol building. There is SO much you could do with this property. You've got state workers you could market to, LCC students, and just downtown workers, in general.
What would you guys think would work best at the site? Also, do you think they should reconstruct the building, or demolish and just work with the site?
In another sense, perhaps it would be more appropriate for LCC to purchase the property and eventually redevelop. As LCC opposed Davenport acquiring the property a couple years ago.
I really think the existing structure has to come down. Any reuse would probably require such an extensive retrofit that the cost associated would make tearing it down and rebuilding more attractive.
The city really made a mistake when they sold the city parking lot next door. That was LCC's way of trying to control what happens at both sites. I bet their reasoning behind it was that the city would eventually sell them the towers, too, now that they've broken the block. What I did find interesting - and I'm not sure if this was always the case - but the city lot next door has two different zoning classifications. The west half of the lot is zoned "DM-4" (the highest density residential), and the eastern half of the lot is zoned "Apartment Shop", which is a classification that allows for mixed-use development, but with a slightly lower residential density than the "DM-4" classification next door. Again, can't remember if this is left-over zoning from when Gillespie tried to develop on the site years ago, or if this is something that came with the selling of the parking lot.