The old Rally House location will be having a new pizza place opening up there tomorrow.
I was surprised by the closing of Conrads. The store there was doing really good business. I was thinking that maybe the owner was planning on getting a bigger tenant in there to take over multiple store fronts or potentially redeveloping the whole building but the opening of the new pizza place kinda goes against that.
There's still development opportunities on Lot 1, and a grocery store/retail store with underground parking would be perfect for the size of downtown and increasing the quality of living for residents downtown.
They really are a good resource, I never check their site on my own but every time I'm reminded it exists I wander over there and find out something new. I wish there were an equivalent publication for Lansing.
Saw in the City Pulse a public hearing for the consideration of building a 4-story SpringHills Suites by Marriott on the site of the abandoned Howard Johnson just west of Trowbridge Plaza. The development also will include a 1-story commercial structure with a drive-thru.
Hood asked about this last May, and David asked about this last August, it seems. We now have an answer. While not as cookie-cutter as some others, this seems to be the most frequent model I've seen:
Seems like a very good spot for a decent hotel, and it will be an improvement over the old Ho Jo's[when did they do the re-hab on the old place, it is so terrible], it would be nice it the did something more interesting there. Trowbridge should be a nice gateway to Greater E.L. and Lansing.
EastLansingInfo met their fundraising goal so the news group will continue to operate. This is great news for East Lansing, and I think it's great news for Lansing too as it shows demand exists for a heavily investigative and independent news source is there.
It's good to see the Howard Johnson being replaced, I'd agree that it's a pretty good spot for a new hotel. The new EL council and planning board meeting packets haven't been posted yet, but I'll be curious to see how the buildings are situated in the site plan. The commercial building will almost surely get frontage on Trowbridge so I hope that the hotel has room to sit next to it rather than being pushed back on the site, I'd like to see this corridor denser/more urbanized.
I doubt it's going to have any effective Trowbridge frontage giving that it's going to have a drive-thru. Not the most obvious concept. I imagine it'll be a lot like the current plan. The hotel will probably face east and open up onto a parking lot, quite frankly. There is not much to do with a street that's literally a fast exit/entrance off the freeway with the area not having any real crossings from the south except along Harrison because of the railroad tracks.That's always going to prevent this area from being walkable.
Had everything not be organized in such a suburban way, the whole area would open up into the neighborhood to the north. But with seperation of uses being the law of the land I'm sure the homeowners would go crazy had the residential neighborhood been developed around the center.
I'd just hate to see the hotel end up tucked away behind the commercial building. I don't ever expect this area to become truly downtown-like or walkable in any meaningful sense, but it is an important entrance to MSU for out of towners and in my mind having multi floor buildings line the street helps make the corridor more attractive and impressive, even when the building in question is just a four-floor cookie cutter hotel.
I'd wouldn't like to see EL allow much if any single floor new construction on Trowbridge in general, I'd also like to see them call for setbacks similar to that of Trowbridge Lofts. With the university expecting to build more towards Harrison I'd think demand for all sorts of space in the Harrison/Trowbridge area will only rise for the foreseeable future.
Seriously? Looks like it's pushed way to the back of the site off of Trowbridge. The Boji's can do better than this, but they won't because the city won't require them to.
I didn't imagine it could be a worse layout than what was there before, but they surprised me.
Comments
The old Rally House location will be having a new pizza place opening up there tomorrow.
I was surprised by the closing of Conrads. The store there was doing really good business. I was thinking that maybe the owner was planning on getting a bigger tenant in there to take over multiple store fronts or potentially redeveloping the whole building but the opening of the new pizza place kinda goes against that.
There's still development opportunities on Lot 1, and a grocery store/retail store with underground parking would be perfect for the size of downtown and increasing the quality of living for residents downtown.
EastLansingInfo, who I've linked to in the past, is fundraising to continue their independent journalism (of which I must note is top notch quality).
I just donated to them and I am asking that readers of this site donate there too: http://eastlansinginfo.org/donate
Tomorrow is their deadline to raise enough funds to stay operating.
They really are a good resource, I never check their site on my own but every time I'm reminded it exists I wander over there and find out something new. I wish there were an equivalent publication for Lansing.
Saw in the City Pulse a public hearing for the consideration of building a 4-story SpringHills Suites by Marriott on the site of the abandoned Howard Johnson just west of Trowbridge Plaza. The development also will include a 1-story commercial structure with a drive-thru.
Hood asked about this last May, and David asked about this last August, it seems. We now have an answer. While not as cookie-cutter as some others, this seems to be the most frequent model I've seen:
Seems like a very good spot for a decent hotel, and it will be an improvement over the old Ho Jo's[when did they do the re-hab on the old place, it is so terrible], it would be nice it the did something more interesting there. Trowbridge should be a nice gateway to Greater E.L. and Lansing.
EastLansingInfo met their fundraising goal so the news group will continue to operate. This is great news for East Lansing, and I think it's great news for Lansing too as it shows demand exists for a heavily investigative and independent news source is there.
It's good to see the Howard Johnson being replaced, I'd agree that it's a pretty good spot for a new hotel. The new EL council and planning board meeting packets haven't been posted yet, but I'll be curious to see how the buildings are situated in the site plan. The commercial building will almost surely get frontage on Trowbridge so I hope that the hotel has room to sit next to it rather than being pushed back on the site, I'd like to see this corridor denser/more urbanized.
I doubt it's going to have any effective Trowbridge frontage giving that it's going to have a drive-thru. Not the most obvious concept. I imagine it'll be a lot like the current plan. The hotel will probably face east and open up onto a parking lot, quite frankly. There is not much to do with a street that's literally a fast exit/entrance off the freeway with the area not having any real crossings from the south except along Harrison because of the railroad tracks.That's always going to prevent this area from being walkable.
Had everything not be organized in such a suburban way, the whole area would open up into the neighborhood to the north. But with seperation of uses being the law of the land I'm sure the homeowners would go crazy had the residential neighborhood been developed around the center.
I'd just hate to see the hotel end up tucked away behind the commercial building. I don't ever expect this area to become truly downtown-like or walkable in any meaningful sense, but it is an important entrance to MSU for out of towners and in my mind having multi floor buildings line the street helps make the corridor more attractive and impressive, even when the building in question is just a four-floor cookie cutter hotel.
I'd wouldn't like to see EL allow much if any single floor new construction on Trowbridge in general, I'd also like to see them call for setbacks similar to that of Trowbridge Lofts. With the university expecting to build more towards Harrison I'd think demand for all sorts of space in the Harrison/Trowbridge area will only rise for the foreseeable future.
The plan for the SpingHill Suites by Marriott is, well...disappointing:
Seriously? Looks like it's pushed way to the back of the site off of Trowbridge. The Boji's can do better than this, but they won't because the city won't require them to.
I didn't imagine it could be a worse layout than what was there before, but they surprised me.