I was pointing out that many students who are also from China would be living at the Sky Vue building. They changed their target tenets from mixed to all student, renting by the bed. I was noting that Lansing tax payer subsidies are being used to help build a building that will bring economic benefit to Lansing, but know one from Lansing will live there unless they are a student. I was thinking that our tax breaks should be going to developments that benefit the people of Lansing in terms of an economic benefit, employment, and new modern residences. I only have the evidence of my own observations, I have noted that the new buildings are advertised in Chinese. There are places where there seem to be a lot of Asian students living. While is seems like many Asian people have moved here, I was pointing out that most foreign [and domestic] students go home, or do not end up living in Lansing. We benefit from their presents while they are here of course but should the tax payers of Lansing be helping to build what basically fancy dorm rooms. By the way I love that there are so many Asian folks living here,and seeing those fancy cars makes me smile. You never get to see cars like that often around here. I often find my car totally surrounded by Impalas!
While we may see more than 10% living there, maybe closer to 20% due to a selection bias in prices, it is our unconscious bias that makes us disproportionately notice people that are different than ourselves. For every "Chinese" student that we notice, there could be nine students that we don't remember or notice because they didn't stand out. It is also worth noting that many students of Asian heritage attend MSU and aren't international students who come from rich families.
I agree that we shouldn't be using subsidies to build housing for temporary residents and I was disappointed to see the marketing shift of the building, though once it is built it will stay for the long run. As more buildings get built closer to campus, we may see demographic shifts in these buildings. Some students may stay in the buildings after they graduate as they take jobs in the Lansing area.
Please just let me say that my observations are mostly anecdotal, I have not lived here for 35 years so upon my return I have noted a large increase in the number of Asian people, which in 1980 was almost zero. I happened to be related to a Chinese American family, my niece is half Chinese decent, my new Great niece is one quarter Chinese decent. I happen to know more than just a bit about Chinese culture, and many Chinese Americans. I have nothing negative to say about the students who come here from all over the world. I know the racial make up of MSU, which if one looked only at the student section of football games you might think it is 98% white. When I went to MSU it was Iranians[not all of them] who drove the fancy cars.
Maybe I was a pessimist, but I always assumed that Skyview was going to be student housing, I never remember hearing any indication that it would be targeted at anyone else. I do not have a problem offering incentives on student housing, my criteria for incentives on apartment buildings is based on where the building is, it's design and it's quality of construction/materials; I don't much care who the intended residents are. While I'd prefer a less student-centric project, I still think Skyview will have enough of a positive effect on the City to justify the cost of its incentives. If there was one thing I would've wished for with this project it would be higher quality materials on the facade; redesigning the building to look like a collection of buildings rather than a single monolithic structure would also have been nice. Lansing is still quite a ways from being able to be truly picky about who we offer incentives to, we're still pretty much in the "Please come build something" phase. If this current wave of development is sustained for a couple more years and everything proposed gets built we should find ourselves in a much better position moving forward.
Thank you hood, you said it better than I did. I did not mean to bring ethnicity into the conservation. it doesn't matter to me who lives there. It just reminds me of living in a tourist town,where something nice would be built, a common statement by town folks would be " that's for the tourist, not us". I'm sure that feeling is often felt in East Lansing, "that's for the students, not for us". We all will get to [have to] look at the building for a long time so I agree that I hope it looks good when finished, from what I have seen so far they have some charcoal colored panels and some off white panels. I think the roof top structure may help the look of the building in this case.
As part of my continuing crusade to get some more crosswalks on Michigan Avenue west of Harrison, I emailed the SkyVue development today to suggest THEY ask the city / MiDOT for some more crosswalks. Received the following reply:
"Thank you for the suggestion! We are doing everything we can to eliminate walking across the street by putting a bus stop at the building to make transportation easier, but I will most certainly mention this to the management. Have a great night"
Not directly related to SkyVue, but I wrote the city last week about the sidewalk situation around the corner along Clippert, specifically asking whether there is enough land within the City of Lansing on the west side of the street to put in a full, continuous sidewalk. I've gotten no answer back, yet.
This entire area needs more consistence in pedestrian accomodations, especially with SkyVue coming online and possibly hundreds more across the street at Red Cedar Renaissance. This isn't even to mention the thousands of students and shoppers currently in the area.
Yes the sidewalk and crosswalk situation is horrible. It's impossible to walk along Clippert (sidewalk appears and disappears on the east side and is mostly non-existent on the west side), and the lack of cross walks along Michigan Ave make crossing there a real-life game of Frogger.
But also, there is really poor pedestrian access within Frandor. Walking from shops on the west side of Frandor to the east side, there is no pedestrian-protected path. Walkers are forced to walk down one of the parking lanes and hope that people reversing or pulling in to spaces see them before hitting them. Walking with small children through there must be a nightmare.
The only pedestrian-friendly routes are along the perimeter, far from convenient and as a result far under-used.
I have also be wondering about the whole Red Cedar Frandor area. The "Morgan Lane" entrance next to the Sky Vue is almost totally one huge pot hole. I am wondering if this part of Morgan Lane is a city street. I think if they curbed and installed pedestrian and bike ways along that lane going all the way through to Sellers Ave that would offer a safe way in. More like Eastwood, with streets and sidewalks, the parking areas have inner lanes with fewer cuts into the street. It seems like that is kind of what they are planning with the drain project, what my question is are they going to reorganize the whole Frandor district? I could also see them landscaping the hillsides of 127, and maybe a bike way on the street level on both side of the highway. So is this drain project still on schedule to begin this year? I have not heard anything about it for a while.
I'm pretty sure Morgan Lane is a city street, at least I have seen police giving out tickets for speeding on Morgan Lane and I didn't think that is something really enforced on private roads.
Comments
I agree that we shouldn't be using subsidies to build housing for temporary residents and I was disappointed to see the marketing shift of the building, though once it is built it will stay for the long run. As more buildings get built closer to campus, we may see demographic shifts in these buildings. Some students may stay in the buildings after they graduate as they take jobs in the Lansing area.
As part of my continuing crusade to get some more crosswalks on Michigan Avenue west of Harrison, I emailed the SkyVue development today to suggest THEY ask the city / MiDOT for some more crosswalks. Received the following reply:
"Thank you for the suggestion! We are doing everything we can to eliminate walking across the street by putting a bus stop at the building to make transportation easier, but I will most certainly mention this to the management. Have a great night"
Not directly related to SkyVue, but I wrote the city last week about the sidewalk situation around the corner along Clippert, specifically asking whether there is enough land within the City of Lansing on the west side of the street to put in a full, continuous sidewalk. I've gotten no answer back, yet.
This entire area needs more consistence in pedestrian accomodations, especially with SkyVue coming online and possibly hundreds more across the street at Red Cedar Renaissance. This isn't even to mention the thousands of students and shoppers currently in the area.
Yes the sidewalk and crosswalk situation is horrible. It's impossible to walk along Clippert (sidewalk appears and disappears on the east side and is mostly non-existent on the west side), and the lack of cross walks along Michigan Ave make crossing there a real-life game of Frogger.
But also, there is really poor pedestrian access within Frandor. Walking from shops on the west side of Frandor to the east side, there is no pedestrian-protected path. Walkers are forced to walk down one of the parking lanes and hope that people reversing or pulling in to spaces see them before hitting them. Walking with small children through there must be a nightmare.
The only pedestrian-friendly routes are along the perimeter, far from convenient and as a result far under-used.
I have also be wondering about the whole Red Cedar Frandor area. The "Morgan Lane" entrance next to the Sky Vue is almost totally one huge pot hole. I am wondering if this part of Morgan Lane is a city street. I think if they curbed and installed pedestrian and bike ways along that lane going all the way through to Sellers Ave that would offer a safe way in. More like Eastwood, with streets and sidewalks, the parking areas have inner lanes with fewer cuts into the street. It seems like that is kind of what they are planning with the drain project, what my question is are they going to reorganize the whole Frandor district? I could also see them landscaping the hillsides of 127, and maybe a bike way on the street level on both side of the highway. So is this drain project still on schedule to begin this year? I have not heard anything about it for a while.
I'm pretty sure Morgan Lane is a city street, at least I have seen police giving out tickets for speeding on Morgan Lane and I didn't think that is something really enforced on private roads.