Speak of the devil. The developers of The Avenue - now called The Square - are requesting a $4.8 million brownfield plan over 16 years. Apparently, the Ingham County Brownfield Authority has already signed off on this. I wasn't aware that brownfield plans had to go through both county and local government, but I guess they do. The developer says the site was once home to a gas station, concrete plant, and a landfill in the southwest corner nearest the CN tracks. Though this would cost the township $4.8 millions over 16 years in property taxes, I guess local millages for schools would still get money with Okemos schools still getting $3.9 million. Meridian Township would directly net just over $30,000 over the life of the abatement, but would get back untold millions in taxes from spin-off development, though that's nearly impossible to accurately calculate. I wish I remember how this worked. lol
The development is on 12.5 acres and will contain 184-units of residential and 10,000 square feet of commercial space.
I don't think Meridian Township has an income tax, I think Lansing is the only jurisdiction in the area that does. I could see a tax abatement being reasonable for The Avenue, especially if the they need to do a lot of clean up. If Meridian is going to give an abatement they should be picky about the quality of the project though.
The site plan in the brownfield article is a bit different than the one in the Scott Chapelle article. Also, the brownfield article mentions Campus Village but nothing about Chapelle. I'm interested in learning more about the connection there.
Scott Chappelle's proposed development is called Red Cedar Flats, it will be at Northwind and Grand River. The owner(s) of Campus Village are the ones proposing The Square, which will be further east, fronting Grand River between Denny's & Instant Oil Change and stretching south. These projects are very similar hence easy to confuse, they will both have a multi floor mixed use building fronting Grand River with a complex of more traditional student housing behind them and are only about a half mile apart.
It's funny you had to do that again, Hood. lol I really think what happened is that Chappelles development kind of snuck in under the radar and The Avenue has changed names and concepts multiple times.
Lol looking back through the comments on the page I see hood already said the same thing. Between these two developments and Whole Foods eventually opening at some point this stretch of Grand River may feel a bit different.
Yeah, when I first saw the news story about Chappelle I thought it was about The Avenue/Square myself. I figured it was just as easy to re-explain as it was to refer to my previous post lol
Meridian Township is looking at a plan to build a river trail from Hagadorn Rd to Park Lake Rd, along the northern edge of the Red Cedar River. Eventually the trail would connect all the way to Lake Lansing Park.
This expansion is great for the east side. The Lansing River trail connects to Michigan State's campus at Harrison and Kalamazoo, and from there the trail follows the southern edge of the river all the way to Hagadorn. With this connection, and eventual expansion to Lake Lansing Park, users of the trail will be able to go from Old Town to Lake Lansing Park, a trip of roughly 15 miles.
I was looking through the Meridian Township board meeting packets and found more info on the proposed Okemos Point development on Jolly Oak Rd near Jolly and Okemos. It will have 378 units (642 beds) spread across 21 buildings on 37 acres, it will also include a three floor mixed use building with ~6k sq ft of retail space, all in all there will 468,000 sq ft of buildings in this development. Probably the most interesting aspect of the development is a 22k sq ft (16k sq ft leasable) public market, making it notably larger than the Lansing City Market.
Site plan
Aerial looking north east
Public market elevations
There's also a proposal for a 99 room Courtyard by Mariott to be built east of Staybridge Suites on Jolly Oak Road and a proposal for a 135 room hotel (previously supposed to be an all suites Hilton) to the north of Staybridge across Jolly Oak Road.
This could be a busy area with the possible construction of a 378 unit apartment complex and two hotels combined for 234 rooms all adjacent to each other.
Fairly impressive development for this area. Glad they are at least attempting to make the sprawl a bit more dense. But, yeah, it's already really busy over here with Jackson National down the road. Didn't they expand the Okemos Road down in this area a few years ago? CATA does happen to serve this area linking this area with downtown East Lansing and campus, so that's good. But, perhaps they should consider increasing the frequency of the two routes, and I'd personally like to see them add a route that stretches down Jolly into Lansing to serve all of the students and other residents off Dunckel.
As for the market, I suspect it's probably going to be the new home of the township's existing farmer's market? I've never been, but I hear it's already one of the more successful ones in the region (maybe the most successful?). It's a seasonal one, and I think the current home is somewhere in the vicinity of the Meridian Mall on the township hall properties, or something.
Comments
The development is on 12.5 acres and will contain 184-units of residential and 10,000 square feet of commercial space.
EDIT: Corrected.
http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2016/02/11/meridian-resurrects-plans-campus--lake-trail/80171856/
This expansion is great for the east side. The Lansing River trail connects to Michigan State's campus at Harrison and Kalamazoo, and from there the trail follows the southern edge of the river all the way to Hagadorn. With this connection, and eventual expansion to Lake Lansing Park, users of the trail will be able to go from Old Town to Lake Lansing Park, a trip of roughly 15 miles.
Site plan
Aerial looking north east
Public market elevations
There's also a proposal for a 99 room Courtyard by Mariott to be built east of Staybridge Suites on Jolly Oak Road and a proposal for a 135 room hotel (previously supposed to be an all suites Hilton) to the north of Staybridge across Jolly Oak Road.
This could be a busy area with the possible construction of a 378 unit apartment complex and two hotels combined for 234 rooms all adjacent to each other.
As for the market, I suspect it's probably going to be the new home of the township's existing farmer's market? I've never been, but I hear it's already one of the more successful ones in the region (maybe the most successful?). It's a seasonal one, and I think the current home is somewhere in the vicinity of the Meridian Mall on the township hall properties, or something.