I'm not as against the substation plan as many - the proposal actually looks pretty nice, and might bring more traffic to Cooley Gardens. But I'm not sure how you relocate a sunken garden, the built environment is part of the garden. Seems like all you could do is recreate a new garden of similar appearance.
I hope someone at the parks board might read this page.
When you walk on the river trail you can see a substation on the east side of the Eckert building, and another over at the Fisher Body site next to the tracks. They are huge.The garden sits on one of the higher ridges in the whole city, so the substation would be on top of a hill, and will visible from all of S. Washington in REOtown and all of the south side of downtown. The trees there now are about 40 feet tall if you want to think about how high this thing is going to be. The garden is already more than 8 feet above the sidewalk next to the stone wall, so the top of this thing will be up to 60 to 80 feet above the sidewalk. You add about twenty more if you are looking at it from the river trail, it will loom about 8 stories above the river. Again the whole thing is just crazy to me. I want to see a drawing depicting a substation eight stories above the swimming pool at my building, or from S. Washington as you drive up to Malcolm X street, the drawings so far leave all the ugly stuff out. You can see the trees there now from Barnes Ave.to the south, now cut them out and put a twenty foot high wall and thirty more of electrical rigging. Just awful is how it is going to look and no walls, walkways or new gardens are going to make it any better. Then to imply that there is some kind of development in line for Eckert station is doesn't make sense. We have to give up a park in the middle of downtown so that maybe some day we would see the Eckert station redeveloped? Wouldn't they have to a lot of work to make such a development possible as it is in the flood plain and how would another substation stop that development? Also the threat of higher rates if we want to save the garden is also more than a little inappropriate, are rates not going to go up 3% in 5 years if they build in the garden? Come on! Jeez why don't they build it in the City Hall Plaza the city already owns that as well.
from someone on LSJ comments section, some good points in addition to GB and everyone else's....
"This is riverfront park at the northern gateway to REO town. It has a historic garden and a very restorable 98 year old house on the property. The BWL project would make the women's history museum next door look like a fish out of water sandwiched between a factory and a giant industrial substation. You would never see a substation in such a prominent location in any thriving city. Does the city of Lansing always go for the cheapest solution no matter how ugly? Time to stop destroying our history and waterfront."
Lansing Park Board meeting
The Lansing Park Board will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Foster Community Center, 200 N. Foster.
Hope that some of you living in town can make it!
Crossing my fingers that the substation goes somewhere else. And I hope this whole things spurs a very real visioning/planning process around how to get maximum use out of this incredible site. I like a lot of the ideas for public access that came out of the substation design.
....and that house would make a great youth hostel or bed and breakfast.....or museum/tea house if the site needs to remain more publicly oriented. Parks and rec offices?
There is one more step in between. It goes back to the planning board, and then to city council. The irony in all of this is that the current fighting and acrimony between the mayor and council on unrelated issues might actually get the council to vote this down, so we could start writing the council just to make sure. It's hard to imagine them voting for this when they are holding up far less controversial projects.
To give some context about the various city boards and why it's hard for them to vote against the mayor, it's because every board in the city I believe is appointed by the mayor (and voted in by the city council, who usually does it as a rubber stamp). I would be shocked if Bernero wasn't threatening the board behind the scene with not reappointing them for their seats after their terms on these boards expire. For some that's not a big deal because they often don't stick around for even one term on these boards, but for others who want to serve forever this can be an effective threat.
In that context, a 5-3 vote on the parks board is more than I expected. The one guy who has become the frontman for the opposition did say last month that he only had three of the votes, and I guess they stuck together. A tie would have temporarily killed this. Anyway, the planning board currently has a vacancy, so we're working with 7 instead of 8 votes, so no ties, this has to be won outright by the opposition if it's to be stopped at this next step.
It's really looking like the council where we have the best chance of stopping this. There are at least three members on the eight-member council I already count as almost certain no votes. Then council president Clarke would be the next likely. This doesn't mean that the other four are sure yes votes, just that I'm not sure how they'd vote so it might not even be close in the end.
The City Pulse, as usual, has a better write-up of the meeting. The most notable piece of additional information is that the heads of both the REO Town Commercial Association and the neighborhood Moores Park Neighborhood Association were in support of this plan, two or only three people who spoke in favor of it. So weird to see these two prominent neighborhood playesr speaking out in favor. Also, it seems the BWL has agreed to move the house as some kind of compromise, but in my personal opinion, the demolition of the house is the least of the problem with this plan. In addition, they tried buying off the board with this:
The BWL sweetened the pot at the meeting, announcing it would endow a fund to maintain the gardens for $40,000 and put $20,000 every three years into public art at the site.
What else shocked me was that the board also earlier took up selling the 70-acre Whilloughby Park on the southside. No one put them has been made aware of this. I mean, Whilloughby "Park" is at the literal edge of the city and isn't a park how most would understand it. But, the issue continues to be the utter lack of transparency with all of this. I'm losing faith in the city government by the week, quite honestly, if these are the kind of tricks they are trying to pull.
Lansing really needs a thorough, community-wide discussion on the directions of Parks and Recreation, and not this secretive behind-the-scenes gamesmanship. The crazy thing is that I thought we had this with the master plan created a few years back. If there isn't going to be any enforcement of the master plan, if everything is going to be done on an ad-hoc basis, what was the point?
One of my fellow faculty members said he was almost hit by a car that ran a red light on Michigan Avenue this morning. At a further red light, the cars pulled up side-by-side and he turned to see who the driver was - Virg Bernero! OK, not exactly on point but "losing faith in city government" reminded me.
The BWL seems to have money to spend on lots of "goodies". It is still the worst possible site, even a different part of the park would be better. How about were the large unused parking lot that slops down towards the river, it would be behind the two buildings and may be easier to hide behind a wall. I will be writing more letters but I am getting the feeling that I should start imprinting how the park looks now because ugly is on the way.
I guess "improvements" to the park are what got to the neighborhood associations. I noticed they now say "recreate" most of the features of the sunken garden no longer move the sunken garden. I guess if we don't build in the garden there will be no improvement of the park, and higher electric rates. It was kind of indigenous to say it's people [who can not afford a rate increase] v.s. land. Because there are poor people we can't save a garden? I am surprised someone did not shout "what about the children?" who will suffer if we don't build a substation where the BLW wants it.
Comments
When you walk on the river trail you can see a substation on the east side of the Eckert building, and another over at the Fisher Body site next to the tracks. They are huge.The garden sits on one of the higher ridges in the whole city, so the substation would be on top of a hill, and will visible from all of S. Washington in REOtown and all of the south side of downtown. The trees there now are about 40 feet tall if you want to think about how high this thing is going to be. The garden is already more than 8 feet above the sidewalk next to the stone wall, so the top of this thing will be up to 60 to 80 feet above the sidewalk. You add about twenty more if you are looking at it from the river trail, it will loom about 8 stories above the river. Again the whole thing is just crazy to me. I want to see a drawing depicting a substation eight stories above the swimming pool at my building, or from S. Washington as you drive up to Malcolm X street, the drawings so far leave all the ugly stuff out. You can see the trees there now from Barnes Ave.to the south, now cut them out and put a twenty foot high wall and thirty more of electrical rigging. Just awful is how it is going to look and no walls, walkways or new gardens are going to make it any better. Then to imply that there is some kind of development in line for Eckert station is doesn't make sense. We have to give up a park in the middle of downtown so that maybe some day we would see the Eckert station redeveloped? Wouldn't they have to a lot of work to make such a development possible as it is in the flood plain and how would another substation stop that development? Also the threat of higher rates if we want to save the garden is also more than a little inappropriate, are rates not going to go up 3% in 5 years if they build in the garden? Come on! Jeez why don't they build it in the City Hall Plaza the city already owns that as well.
"This is riverfront park at the northern gateway to REO town. It has a historic garden and a very restorable 98 year old house on the property. The BWL project would make the women's history museum next door look like a fish out of water sandwiched between a factory and a giant industrial substation. You would never see a substation in such a prominent location in any thriving city. Does the city of Lansing always go for the cheapest solution no matter how ugly? Time to stop destroying our history and waterfront."
Lansing Park Board meeting
The Lansing Park Board will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Foster Community Center, 200 N. Foster.
Hope that some of you living in town can make it!
Crossing my fingers that the substation goes somewhere else. And I hope this whole things spurs a very real visioning/planning process around how to get maximum use out of this incredible site. I like a lot of the ideas for public access that came out of the substation design.
To give some context about the various city boards and why it's hard for them to vote against the mayor, it's because every board in the city I believe is appointed by the mayor (and voted in by the city council, who usually does it as a rubber stamp). I would be shocked if Bernero wasn't threatening the board behind the scene with not reappointing them for their seats after their terms on these boards expire. For some that's not a big deal because they often don't stick around for even one term on these boards, but for others who want to serve forever this can be an effective threat.
In that context, a 5-3 vote on the parks board is more than I expected. The one guy who has become the frontman for the opposition did say last month that he only had three of the votes, and I guess they stuck together. A tie would have temporarily killed this. Anyway, the planning board currently has a vacancy, so we're working with 7 instead of 8 votes, so no ties, this has to be won outright by the opposition if it's to be stopped at this next step.
It's really looking like the council where we have the best chance of stopping this. There are at least three members on the eight-member council I already count as almost certain no votes. Then council president Clarke would be the next likely. This doesn't mean that the other four are sure yes votes, just that I'm not sure how they'd vote so it might not even be close in the end.
What else shocked me was that the board also earlier took up selling the 70-acre Whilloughby Park on the southside. No one put them has been made aware of this. I mean, Whilloughby "Park" is at the literal edge of the city and isn't a park how most would understand it. But, the issue continues to be the utter lack of transparency with all of this. I'm losing faith in the city government by the week, quite honestly, if these are the kind of tricks they are trying to pull.
Lansing really needs a thorough, community-wide discussion on the directions of Parks and Recreation, and not this secretive behind-the-scenes gamesmanship. The crazy thing is that I thought we had this with the master plan created a few years back. If there isn't going to be any enforcement of the master plan, if everything is going to be done on an ad-hoc basis, what was the point?
I guess "improvements" to the park are what got to the neighborhood associations. I noticed they now say "recreate" most of the features of the sunken garden no longer move the sunken garden. I guess if we don't build in the garden there will be no improvement of the park, and higher electric rates. It was kind of indigenous to say it's people [who can not afford a rate increase] v.s. land. Because there are poor people we can't save a garden? I am surprised someone did not shout "what about the children?" who will suffer if we don't build a substation where the BLW wants it.