Well I'm still waiting to hear about the new plans for the park district from the city or the developers... trying to be patient!
Once the Park District is done, I'll be curious to see how the remaining "West Downtown" develops. Besides the PC parking lot, and the small buildings along GR, the delta itself has considerable potential (and updated zoning, if I recall correctly) for upsizing basically all the way to Beal St. Currently there are only ~2 large apartment buildings that are close to the max size allowed by the new EL zoning scheme.
EAST LANSING - East Lansing Public School officials broke ground Monday on the first of six planned elementary school construction projects funded by last year's successful $93.7 million bond campaign.
The project isn't expected to bother students, as there are none currently attending Red Cedar Elementary School, which closed in 2014.
The district plans to spend close to $10 million renovating the shuttered school to ensure it's ready to welcome students again this fall.
"(Red Cedar) has always been a vibrant school, and a lot of people are excited that we're using the school again," said Terah Chambers, an East Lansing Board of Education member. "The neighborhood is excited to see kids coming through again."
While it will initially be used by other schools as their own construction projects take place, it will eventually be used as a mix of an elementary school and early childhood education center.
I was looking through the upcoming agendas, and it looks like whoever owns land on the west side of Abbot just south of the county line (a bit over 24 acres) is requesting a rezoning from from Meridian Township's lowest density multi-family district (RDD) - which is a max of 5 dwelling units/acre to East Lansing's RM-8, which is also East Lansing's lowest density multi-family district, but it is variable depending on the number of bedrooms with ranges from from 6 units/acre up to about 11 units/acre.
It's the huge tract of land just south of the city aquatic center, you know, not that far from the county line where Abbot turns into Chandler. BTW, I mistakenly said west, it's on the east side of the road. I should also say it's being developed as a "planned development" overlay, which allows for a mixed of housing types, though only in aggregate at that lower density.
Shouldn't come as a surprise, but I'd have zoned this much denser. I suspect at this zoning, it'll be another student apartment complex. BTW, it looks like this it the largest of the last large tracts of East Lansing in the "old" city (south of the county line). All other large tracts appear to be parks/natural area or undeveloped phases of existing planned developments.
Some public notifications for East Lansing as seen in this week's City Pulse:
East Lansing - without any controversy or extended period of debate - repealed the long-standing ordinance that any restaurant serving alcohol had to have at least 50% of its sales from food at their last council meeting. I guess this was originally proposed in this formerly conservative (and dry) city to discourage the opening of bars and the like. Apart from restaurants having to carefully keep track of this and reporting their sales to the city, the city never had the manpower to audit every establishment, anyway, so it was kind of a joke. The ordinance also didn't covered some of the big names that were grandfathered in, and in other establishments actually ended up artificially inflating the price of food to get to the 50% threshold.
A special use permit is being requested for the May 9th meeting by owners of two homes at 525 and 533 Albert in the east end of downtown for the demolition of the two properties and in their stead building a 3-story townhome-type structure containing 3 units (and 7 bedrooms) with a full basement. I think this is supposed to be similar to what they did immediately to the west of these two parcels.
Mentioned just above, but it appears a rezoning is being requested for the May 3 city planning commission meeting for the 24 land acres of land south of the aquatic center of Abbot Road near the city line for an unspecificed Planned Unit development. This would allow for well over 100 residential units with a max of 244 units depending on the number of bedrooms per unit.
@ratchetwrench There's also been a couple of proposals by Lingg Brewer for the building next to the Wild Goose Inn. He had proposed remodeling the existing building and tearing down the white house on Division for a 3-4 floor addition. I'm not sure if he'll ever make it happen.
This development annoys me for a few reasons... first of all, even though this development is going to be very lucrative for the developers, they are opting to build a set of dull, cheap looking, vinyl-clad townhouses in an area full of nice old houses. Secondly, if the city is really committed to their long term vision of upsizing development in that area, they then need to make the zoning more restrictive. As it stands, it looks like the "Bigger Picture" comprehensive plan has no actual bite, relative to existing zoning regs.
Comments
Well I'm still waiting to hear about the new plans for the park district from the city or the developers... trying to be patient!
Once the Park District is done, I'll be curious to see how the remaining "West Downtown" develops. Besides the PC parking lot, and the small buildings along GR, the delta itself has considerable potential (and updated zoning, if I recall correctly) for upsizing basically all the way to Beal St. Currently there are only ~2 large apartment buildings that are close to the max size allowed by the new EL zoning scheme.
Don't call it a comeback! The district breaks ground on the reopening project for Red Cedar Elementary in the west end of the city.
While it will initially be used by other schools as their own construction projects take place, it will eventually be used as a mix of an elementary school and early childhood education center.
I was looking through the upcoming agendas, and it looks like whoever owns land on the west side of Abbot just south of the county line (a bit over 24 acres) is requesting a rezoning from from Meridian Township's lowest density multi-family district (RDD) - which is a max of 5 dwelling units/acre to East Lansing's RM-8, which is also East Lansing's lowest density multi-family district, but it is variable depending on the number of bedrooms with ranges from from 6 units/acre up to about 11 units/acre.
It's the huge tract of land just south of the city aquatic center, you know, not that far from the county line where Abbot turns into Chandler. BTW, I mistakenly said west, it's on the east side of the road. I should also say it's being developed as a "planned development" overlay, which allows for a mixed of housing types, though only in aggregate at that lower density.
Shouldn't come as a surprise, but I'd have zoned this much denser. I suspect at this zoning, it'll be another student apartment complex. BTW, it looks like this it the largest of the last large tracts of East Lansing in the "old" city (south of the county line). All other large tracts appear to be parks/natural area or undeveloped phases of existing planned developments.
Some public notifications for East Lansing as seen in this week's City Pulse:
East Lansing - without any controversy or extended period of debate - repealed the long-standing ordinance that any restaurant serving alcohol had to have at least 50% of its sales from food at their last council meeting. I guess this was originally proposed in this formerly conservative (and dry) city to discourage the opening of bars and the like. Apart from restaurants having to carefully keep track of this and reporting their sales to the city, the city never had the manpower to audit every establishment, anyway, so it was kind of a joke. The ordinance also didn't covered some of the big names that were grandfathered in, and in other establishments actually ended up artificially inflating the price of food to get to the 50% threshold.
A special use permit is being requested for the May 9th meeting by owners of two homes at 525 and 533 Albert in the east end of downtown for the demolition of the two properties and in their stead building a 3-story townhome-type structure containing 3 units (and 7 bedrooms) with a full basement. I think this is supposed to be similar to what they did immediately to the west of these two parcels.
Mentioned just above, but it appears a rezoning is being requested for the May 3 city planning commission meeting for the 24 land acres of land south of the aquatic center of Abbot Road near the city line for an unspecificed Planned Unit development. This would allow for well over 100 residential units with a max of 244 units depending on the number of bedrooms per unit.
Whatever happened to that proposed development next to the B&B on Albert, near 525 and 533? I haven't heard anything about that for a while...
If "Albert Town Homes 2" is the development proposal you're talking about I think it's pretty much dead/dormant now. EastLansingInfo has a good story on it, https://eastlansinginfo.org/content/downtown-development-proposal-limbo-following-council-inaction
@ratchetwrench There's also been a couple of proposals by Lingg Brewer for the building next to the Wild Goose Inn. He had proposed remodeling the existing building and tearing down the white house on Division for a 3-4 floor addition. I'm not sure if he'll ever make it happen.
That's the one I was thinking about hood, thanks for the info.
Jared- ELi has an update on the Albert townhomes/Hagan development. Apparently the proposal through ELCC:
https://eastlansinginfo.org/content/downtown-albert-avenue-project-comes-out-limbo
This development annoys me for a few reasons... first of all, even though this development is going to be very lucrative for the developers, they are opting to build a set of dull, cheap looking, vinyl-clad townhouses in an area full of nice old houses. Secondly, if the city is really committed to their long term vision of upsizing development in that area, they then need to make the zoning more restrictive. As it stands, it looks like the "Bigger Picture" comprehensive plan has no actual bite, relative to existing zoning regs.