Lansing City Hall Relocation
So, it looks like the idea to relocate city government that pops up every decade seems to have popped back up. The LSJ is reporting that the city isn't really interested in upgrading the existing location, and see the location as valuable property for commercial development. City government would remain downtown and they are looking at options. From the sound of it it sounds like they are looking at using an existing building or a new construction. The city says that the relocation becomes much more feasible if a combined city-council "justice center" currently being studied is agreed to, which would include Lansing city government and district court, the Lansing Police Department, and the Ingham County Sheriffs Department.
They aren't revealing much, so what is your guy's guess? To my ear, the latter proposal for a combined city-county building sounds like it would probably require a new building. If only the city government is relocated, I'm guessing they could put it in the Temple Building down the street. I can't really think of any other existing space downtown large enough to handle even just the city government alone, let alone a combined city-county justice center. That much office space unless they put it on one of the large state parking lots would require a significantly tall building, taller than what the current city hall is, probably.
They aren't revealing much, so what is your guy's guess? To my ear, the latter proposal for a combined city-county building sounds like it would probably require a new building. If only the city government is relocated, I'm guessing they could put it in the Temple Building down the street. I can't really think of any other existing space downtown large enough to handle even just the city government alone, let alone a combined city-county justice center. That much office space unless they put it on one of the large state parking lots would require a significantly tall building, taller than what the current city hall is, probably.
Comments
@MichMatters I think you are right on track when it comes to their desire for a relatively large site with adequate on site parking. There's really only one location that stands out to me as near perfect for a new city hall/police HQ/county courts building and that's the Eyde lot kitty corner to the southwest of the Capitol. On that site they could essentially build a local government campus, with separate buildings for each entity and a parking ramp. I figure whatever location they pick will be at least a square block in size. Other possible sites might be the Lake Trust HQ block, the Boarshead Theater block (accross Grand from the CATA station), the seven block area or just about any of the State's lots they'd be willing to part with. Another, perhaps even likely possibility, would be that they reuse the current county courts buildings while adding on to them and acquiring the YMCA property for the city hall and police buildings.
I'm just glad this is a serious discussion, I still can't wait to see what comes of this effort.
I think the Temple Building on Capitol Ave. would be such a cool choice for a City Hall, it already looks one. There was once one of the first parking ramps in Lansing next door where the surface lot is now. There is space for that propose although I would hate to see another parking ramp on Capitol Ave.
I like the idea of building a City Hall/Police headquarters building in the airspace over I-496 on S. Washington Ave.. A government center there could reconnect REOtown to downtown, they could build huge buildings east to Grand Ave. west to Capitol Ave.
While the old Masonic temple building would be great as a new city hall aesthetically, the building is quite a bit smaller than the current city hall building and has very little room to expand. I expect a new city hall/police/courts project would include at least 400k sq ft of office space and could be notably larger than that. Putting the building over 496 at Washington wouldn't be a bad idea at all, however unlikely it may be.
Thinking out all of the possible scenarios with a new construction option, they could go a few ways with a local government project. So, they could go for a single building on a city-block-sized parking lot like what they did with Constitution Hall, in which case you could have something even over 500,000 square feet that would still only be 6 stories. I'd really hate to see them do something like this, but this seems the least like of the scenarios I see. The other option would be a complex where you'd seperate out certain programs. It'd be hard to imagine them not having seperate buildings for city and county jails and courts, for instance. In this case, if you're doing the whole thing on a city block the actual city hall buidling would likely have to be a legitimate high-rise. What worries me is that they are talking about a "complex" which sounds to me like a campus, and local governments just aren't building high-rises like they used to for their city halls. They could very easily stretch this whole thing across multiple blocks if they go on the west end of downtown, in which case the thing would almost certainly be a low-slung complex. City governments these days seem to like to have large floorplans to keep whole departments on whole floors.