1. Here's an article regarding What' Up Dawg? and their location next to St. John’s Student Parish. Apparently they arrived to some arrangements. Link: http://lansingonlinenews.com/news/proposed-restaurant-finds-unique-bond-with-local-church/
2. There was an article last week on the State News about the Edythe Broad Art Museum. An excerpt of the article: "In conjunction with fundraising, construction work on the building remains on schedule, thanks to the weather’s cooperation during the past month, said Linda Stanford, associate provost for academic services. On Monday, workers poured concrete for five nonstop hours to the first floor’s concrete decking on top of 18 hours of concrete pouring of the building’s foundation in July." Now it is very visible from Grand River Ave.
3. The Five Guys franchise opened around the first week of October. There's always a lot of people and it looks like a very stable business and it provides employment for a lot of people since it opens every day of the week until late night.
4. Another article on the State News from around two weeks ago regarding the connection of entrepreneurship and creativity (arts) that city officials are promoting for EL. Excerpt: "Artists, musicians and other creative entrepreneurs gathered Wednesday at Spartan Dance Center, 217 Ann St.,to reenergize a discussion about the Downtown East Lansing Cultural Entrepreneurship Program launched in 2007, said Heather Pope, East Lansing’s community development specialist." Link: http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2010/10/incentives_to_aid_creative_businesses
5. The final article for today, also from the State News, is about a new teahouse and coffee shop that opened this September at 547 E. Grand River Ave. It is a local business and it looks very comfortable. It shows that there are a lot of opportunities for business here and a lot of demand for coffee shops and places to meet and just hang out. Link: http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2010/09/new_teahouse_provides_relaxing_atmosphere
Overall, I see a lot of positive things going on in East Lansing and a lot of opportunities available for business creation. Personally, the one thing that I consider is missing and is keeping East Lansing from exploding economically is the lack of financial institutions in the area that can finance start-ups and provide the seed money needed for a lot of local businesses.
I don't think this has been posted:
H Inc. Is proposing a major development in downtown East Lansing. They have posted a presentation with maps and building information online:
http://www.hinclive.com/AbbotGrove.pdf
Thanks for posting and welcome to the forum. H Inc. is the same company that did the MotorWheel Lofts in Lansing which as far as I know have been a huge success. I didn't know about this project before. It looks like the first phase would be located where The Refinery/Menna's Joint and 7-11 are located.
These are some statistics that I gathered from the PDF:
Total project square footage: 1,220,724 Sq. Ft.
Condominiums/apartments: 504 units
Underground parking garages: 3 garages each three levels below grade with a total of 2,784 spaces.
They would also be tearing down Harpers/Club Rush to put in a new street named Park Lane or Market Street.
Phase 1:
Building 'F': Retail/Residential, total of 95,340 square feet, height of 4 stories
Building 'G': Retail/Residential, total of 134,352 square feet, height of 4 stories
Creation of half of a new road. One of the slides calls this "Park Lane" and another slide calls this "Market Street".
There don't look to be any timelines on the slides. Do you have any more information Matt?
Actually, the more looking around I do, the more that I see this looks like a proposal from July 2008. I doubt it if H Inc. is still pursuing the idea, since it doesn't show up in any of the City of East Lansing's planning commission or DDA meeting minutes since then.
I do not know when the relevant pdf was posted on the H Inc. website. The East Lansing anti-development constituency, however, has recently become aware of the proposal:
http://publicresponse.com/index.php?page=article&cid=149&aid=680
I think Jared is dead on. The city of East Lansing sought out proposals for the Albert Avenue surface parking lot a couple years back. This proposal is likely a result of that process. Given how the national economy has changed in those two years, as well as the banking environment, I can't image any project like this would happen any time soon.
Construction on the Louis St. development is continuing. They have the structure of the 2-floor parking garage completed and look like they are now working on the third floor which will be residential. They plan to construct a 4 story / 44 foot tall residential building with 12 units and four bedrooms per unit. It will have two floors of underground parking and will mirror much of the design of the other apartment buildings that have just been built on Louis St.
I grabbed a video of the progress and should have it uploaded soon.
MEDC announced this tax credit today:
City of East Lansing – State and local tax capture valued at $3 million will support a brownfield project to demolish two functionally obsolete, single-use two-story structures and construct an eight-story mixed-use building on the property located at 211 Albert Avenue. The project is expected to generate up to $9.7 million in new private investment and create up to 45 new jobs.
http://www.mlive.com/michigan-job-search/index.ssf/2010/11/granholm_announces_nearly_6300_new_and_r.html
Is this the project to add stories to the building with The Post or is it the project next door that is supposed to have a restaurant "incubator" in the ground floor? Does anyone know the timeline for this project?
There's a State News article out today that touches on a couple East Lansing development projects. The first relates to property at 2000 Merrill Road being sold by the city via purchase agreement. The article seems kinda confusing, and I'm actually not sure where Merrill Road is located. I know of Merrill Street, which would be just west of that Subaru Dealer off of 127, but that's in Lansing.
The rest of the article touches on some BRT stuff, so I'll post in the Light Rail thread as well.
Comments
2. There was an article last week on the State News about the Edythe Broad Art Museum. An excerpt of the article: "In conjunction with fundraising, construction work on the building remains on schedule, thanks to the weather’s cooperation during the past month, said Linda Stanford, associate provost for academic services. On Monday, workers poured concrete for five nonstop hours to the first floor’s concrete decking on top of 18 hours of concrete pouring of the building’s foundation in July." Now it is very visible from Grand River Ave.
3. The Five Guys franchise opened around the first week of October. There's always a lot of people and it looks like a very stable business and it provides employment for a lot of people since it opens every day of the week until late night.
4. Another article on the State News from around two weeks ago regarding the connection of entrepreneurship and creativity (arts) that city officials are promoting for EL. Excerpt: "Artists, musicians and other creative entrepreneurs gathered Wednesday at Spartan Dance Center, 217 Ann St.,to reenergize a discussion about the Downtown East Lansing Cultural Entrepreneurship Program launched in 2007, said Heather Pope, East Lansing’s community development specialist." Link: http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2010/10/incentives_to_aid_creative_businesses
5. The final article for today, also from the State News, is about a new teahouse and coffee shop that opened this September at 547 E. Grand River Ave. It is a local business and it looks very comfortable. It shows that there are a lot of opportunities for business here and a lot of demand for coffee shops and places to meet and just hang out. Link: http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2010/09/new_teahouse_provides_relaxing_atmosphere
Overall, I see a lot of positive things going on in East Lansing and a lot of opportunities available for business creation. Personally, the one thing that I consider is missing and is keeping East Lansing from exploding economically is the lack of financial institutions in the area that can finance start-ups and provide the seed money needed for a lot of local businesses.
H Inc. Is proposing a major development in downtown East Lansing. They have posted a presentation with maps and building information online:
http://www.hinclive.com/AbbotGrove.pdf
These are some statistics that I gathered from the PDF:
Total project square footage: 1,220,724 Sq. Ft.
Condominiums/apartments: 504 units
Underground parking garages: 3 garages each three levels below grade with a total of 2,784 spaces.
They would also be tearing down Harpers/Club Rush to put in a new street named Park Lane or Market Street.
Phase 1:
Building 'F': Retail/Residential, total of 95,340 square feet, height of 4 stories
Building 'G': Retail/Residential, total of 134,352 square feet, height of 4 stories
Creation of half of a new road. One of the slides calls this "Park Lane" and another slide calls this "Market Street".
There don't look to be any timelines on the slides. Do you have any more information Matt?
http://publicresponse.com/index.php?page=article&cid=149&aid=680
I grabbed a video of the progress and should have it uploaded soon.
City of East Lansing – State and local tax capture valued at $3 million will support a brownfield project to demolish two functionally obsolete, single-use two-story structures and construct an eight-story mixed-use building on the property located at 211 Albert Avenue. The project is expected to generate up to $9.7 million in new private investment and create up to 45 new jobs.
http://www.mlive.com/michigan-job-search/index.ssf/2010/11/granholm_announces_nearly_6300_new_and_r.html
Is this the project to add stories to the building with The Post or is it the project next door that is supposed to have a restaurant "incubator" in the ground floor? Does anyone know the timeline for this project?
The rest of the article touches on some BRT stuff, so I'll post in the Light Rail thread as well.