I didn't think of that. But in my view, the existing blockface would be whatever it was/has been before the demolitions. I guess the easy way to correct this would be to set the setback in the oridnance at 20 feet, which is what I'm told the existing buildings are basically built to. Why it was set 2 feet further back than the existing development pattern along Grand River, I have no idea. That seems like a mistake. What I wouldn't do, however, is eliminate the oridnance, altogether, and just hope that the DDA "guidelines" would always be followed by the DDA and property owners.
So, the original amendement to the ordinance was silly, but the "solution" seems a bit extreme like we both said.
Anyway, I've been surprised with how quick the planning department has been and how open they've been to responding to random questions. lol Good on East Lansing.
Looking at the Planning Commission agenda for Wednesday, it looks like my questions may have gotten them to amend and clarify the amended Grand River setback ordinance being proposed in the Downtown zoning district.
As I said last time, the previous version of the amendment made it sound like the city was completely getting rid of the setback requirement on Grand River - even though I then discussed how that didn't necessarily mean that property owners could build in their front yards on Grand River because of the DDA's "Urban Design Guidelines".
Now it sounds like they've added a key term to clarify their intent:
For those properties that abut Grand River Avenue west of M.A.C. Avenue, the building shall be set back a minimum of 20 feet.
So the intent is now clear, which is that they wanted to get rid of the ridiculous 22-foot front setback that is 2 feet greater than anything currently building west of M.A.C., but that they didn't mean that they didn't want any setback at all. Rather, they want development west of Abbot in particular to follow the same blockface as the existing and new development east of Abbot.
In other news looking through the council and planing commission agendas the past two months or so, it's just amazing to me how much small-scale development is happening in the Northern Tier. Every agenda seems to include site plan review/and our special land use for some little office building, or medical clinic, or kennel up along West, Coolidge or Abbot roads. In fact, the proposed kennel - which would be the city's first - up 3400 West Road required adding such a usage into the zoning code, as it hadn't existed before.
I guess the area along West and Coolidge Roads north of Lake Lansing is development pretty close to as they've planned it (B-4 Restricted Office Business): Something obviously not quite and urban office/service district, but also something with parcels generally too small for it to be some large-scale suburban/exurban office park. Still don't know how I feel about the zoning up that way. I'd have probably had this land zoned B-1 General Office Business, which provideds for higher density, but the B-4 up that way is to "protect" the rural single family home properties from too much physical encroachment.
So, I put together a little map of all of the site plans and rezonings and such in the Northern Tier since May:
3400 West is a large kennel development, Maynard Office Park is for the use of three units in the park for an office building, 1560 Earl is for another office building in the Maynard Office Park, Coleman & Coolidge will be a medical clinic, and 6290-6350 Abbot is a rezoning for multi-family residential, though there is no immediate plans for development. There is also another small office building going up at Eagle Eye golf course even further north. I guess I can now see why that Coleman Road extension will be so useful for keeping all that traffic off of Lake Lansing; it'll be more a bypass than anything else.
BTW, the planning commission agenda for next month again makes an amendment to the Grand River setback requirement in the downtown zoning districts. It seems the commissioners were as confused as I was about why this would apply west of M.A.C. so they changed it to be uniform in the entire B-3 downtown district which stretches from Park District in the west to Collingwood in the east. I'm glad they caught this and stopped this from being so complicated. Anyway, it's now super simple: The minimum setback from Grand River in the B-3 downtown district is now 20 feet for the entire district, instead of 22 feet.
As we discussed the streetwall is generally 17-to-20 feet back from Grand River, and apparently, the the 22-foot requirement had only been in effect since February of 2016. Only two developments had been built or planned since then, Center City and Park District, and Center City got a variance to match the existing streetwall, and Park District, of course, hasn't even been built yet. So nothing was ever actually compliant with the non-sensical and arbitrary requirement, anway. If the city had actually gone out and measured the average setback from the street of the existing streetwall, we'd have never have had the silly requirement of 22 feet.
Hey Mich - a minor point about your Aug 23rd post that I forgot to follow up on...
That property (329 M.A.C), and the one next to it are owned by Mark Terry, who is a local landlord, and long-time resident of EL. He tried to get those properties removed from the historical district previously, but was blocked:
It's pretty obvious from this and other articles that the owner wants to upsize the property, but has been pretty ham-handed about doing it. It seems like he is an old fashioned, local landlord who is out of his element as a larger-scale developer...
"Just looking at the public hearing notices in the City Pulse, and see the Historic District Commission is consering a resubmission for 329 M.A.C. Avenue in which someone is requesting to move the entire home to another location to "open the lot for redevelopment." I wonder if there is a plan or if this is just speculative?
This is a lot immediately next door to the St. John the Evangelist Catholic Student Center. This basically marks the northern edge of downtown, currently, and since it's backed up to a city parking garage, this little square southwest of M.A.C. and Linden is one of thew few areas northward that downtown could expand. Since this is a resubmission, however, it sounds like they must have rejected this the first time it was proposed."
This weeks City Pulse's Notices of Public Hearings has one that caught my eye. An ordinance was introduced and referred to the Planning Commission at the city council's October 16th meeting for November 14 that deals with the building height restriction in downtown East Lansing.
It's a minor amendment, but currently by-right the city council can approve a special land use to allow for a building to reach 140 feet only in the core of downtown Lansing, which is only part of the B-3 City Center commercial District. In other parts of the district, the max by-right is 112 feet. This amendment would apply the 140-foot special land use limit to every part of the district.
A good example of what this would help development is that I believe that The Hub over at Bogue Street actually had to request a variance to hit the 140 feet height limit. Variances can add time and costs to the development. This would allow the 140-foot limit in the traditional process where a site plan approval is usually coupled with a special land use request.
Quite frankly, the 140-foot number seems totally arbitrary, and I'd love to see them get rid of it. What the limit should be, I'm not sure, but 140-feet seems too short. Anyway, this coupled with fixing the setback from Grand River in this district to match the existing streetwall are two minor things, but moving in the right direction.
Oh, and speaking of the Planning Commission on that map I made above it looks like the agent for the potential developer for the kennel at 3400 West Road has pulled the project due to the complications of the process. She still supports the ordinance that would allow kennels in this zoning district, but she'd found another location for her business. She says she'll continue to seek to develop the site, but with something less controversial and complicated for that zoning district.
East Lansing Info is reporting that the city's lease for the parking lot (Lot 11) behind Beggars Banquet is set to expire in 2020 (a 5 year lease with 3 renewals built in). The owner of the property is the Metzger family, and they could decide to develop on the lot or negotiate a new lease with the city. This and People's Church are the last remaining large surface parking lots in downtown East Lansing.
They will almost certainly opt for development. There is just too much under construction and proposed in the immediate vicinity for a parking lot to be the most profitable use of that lane. The Metzger's will be chomping at the bit to develop that lot; they should probably start planning for development now (site plan review and such).
Yeah, maybe the city needs to recuse itself from any site plan reviews (sarcasm). But the city could realistically deny any site plans and basically limit the Metzgers from doing any development. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Metzgers offload the development to someone else under a 99-year land lease.
After major infrastructure projects are completed downtown (at least after park district project), I would like to see the city council continue to work on developing a vibrant downtown through effective policies and placemaking initiatives that promote a stable and attractive urban environment year round. For EL, probably jobs and full time residents should be a priority.
Gomsu - I too hope EL promotes the downtown that is arriving fast! ...through policies, job attraction, expanded full time resident requirements (maybe), etc.
That said, I think we're at a nice point where development is happening at such a rate that the City will no longer be able to get in the way of urbanization and all that comes with it -- vibrancy (#1), more viable businesses, more variety of people, more money, probably more crime too. But I'm all for it.
Comments
I didn't think of that. But in my view, the existing blockface would be whatever it was/has been before the demolitions. I guess the easy way to correct this would be to set the setback in the oridnance at 20 feet, which is what I'm told the existing buildings are basically built to. Why it was set 2 feet further back than the existing development pattern along Grand River, I have no idea. That seems like a mistake. What I wouldn't do, however, is eliminate the oridnance, altogether, and just hope that the DDA "guidelines" would always be followed by the DDA and property owners.
So, the original amendement to the ordinance was silly, but the "solution" seems a bit extreme like we both said.
Anyway, I've been surprised with how quick the planning department has been and how open they've been to responding to random questions. lol Good on East Lansing.
Looking at the Planning Commission agenda for Wednesday, it looks like my questions may have gotten them to amend and clarify the amended Grand River setback ordinance being proposed in the Downtown zoning district.
As I said last time, the previous version of the amendment made it sound like the city was completely getting rid of the setback requirement on Grand River - even though I then discussed how that didn't necessarily mean that property owners could build in their front yards on Grand River because of the DDA's "Urban Design Guidelines".
Now it sounds like they've added a key term to clarify their intent:
So the intent is now clear, which is that they wanted to get rid of the ridiculous 22-foot front setback that is 2 feet greater than anything currently building west of M.A.C., but that they didn't mean that they didn't want any setback at all. Rather, they want development west of Abbot in particular to follow the same blockface as the existing and new development east of Abbot.
In other news looking through the council and planing commission agendas the past two months or so, it's just amazing to me how much small-scale development is happening in the Northern Tier. Every agenda seems to include site plan review/and our special land use for some little office building, or medical clinic, or kennel up along West, Coolidge or Abbot roads. In fact, the proposed kennel - which would be the city's first - up 3400 West Road required adding such a usage into the zoning code, as it hadn't existed before.
I guess the area along West and Coolidge Roads north of Lake Lansing is development pretty close to as they've planned it (B-4 Restricted Office Business): Something obviously not quite and urban office/service district, but also something with parcels generally too small for it to be some large-scale suburban/exurban office park. Still don't know how I feel about the zoning up that way. I'd have probably had this land zoned B-1 General Office Business, which provideds for higher density, but the B-4 up that way is to "protect" the rural single family home properties from too much physical encroachment.
So, I put together a little map of all of the site plans and rezonings and such in the Northern Tier since May:
3400 West is a large kennel development, Maynard Office Park is for the use of three units in the park for an office building, 1560 Earl is for another office building in the Maynard Office Park, Coleman & Coolidge will be a medical clinic, and 6290-6350 Abbot is a rezoning for multi-family residential, though there is no immediate plans for development. There is also another small office building going up at Eagle Eye golf course even further north. I guess I can now see why that Coleman Road extension will be so useful for keeping all that traffic off of Lake Lansing; it'll be more a bypass than anything else.
BTW, the planning commission agenda for next month again makes an amendment to the Grand River setback requirement in the downtown zoning districts. It seems the commissioners were as confused as I was about why this would apply west of M.A.C. so they changed it to be uniform in the entire B-3 downtown district which stretches from Park District in the west to Collingwood in the east. I'm glad they caught this and stopped this from being so complicated. Anyway, it's now super simple: The minimum setback from Grand River in the B-3 downtown district is now 20 feet for the entire district, instead of 22 feet.
As we discussed the streetwall is generally 17-to-20 feet back from Grand River, and apparently, the the 22-foot requirement had only been in effect since February of 2016. Only two developments had been built or planned since then, Center City and Park District, and Center City got a variance to match the existing streetwall, and Park District, of course, hasn't even been built yet. So nothing was ever actually compliant with the non-sensical and arbitrary requirement, anway. If the city had actually gone out and measured the average setback from the street of the existing streetwall, we'd have never have had the silly requirement of 22 feet.
Hey Mich - a minor point about your Aug 23rd post that I forgot to follow up on...
That property (329 M.A.C), and the one next to it are owned by Mark Terry, who is a local landlord, and long-time resident of EL. He tried to get those properties removed from the historical district previously, but was blocked:
https://eastlansinginfo.org/content/council-denies-request-mac-historic-district-house
It's pretty obvious from this and other articles that the owner wants to upsize the property, but has been pretty ham-handed about doing it. It seems like he is an old fashioned, local landlord who is out of his element as a larger-scale developer...
https://eastlansinginfo.org/content/council-not-following-ethics-rules
https://eastlansinginfo.org/content/bwl-tree-cutting-causes-distress-some-east-lansing
Re:
"Just looking at the public hearing notices in the City Pulse, and see the Historic District Commission is consering a resubmission for 329 M.A.C. Avenue in which someone is requesting to move the entire home to another location to "open the lot for redevelopment." I wonder if there is a plan or if this is just speculative?
This is a lot immediately next door to the St. John the Evangelist Catholic Student Center. This basically marks the northern edge of downtown, currently, and since it's backed up to a city parking garage, this little square southwest of M.A.C. and Linden is one of thew few areas northward that downtown could expand. Since this is a resubmission, however, it sounds like they must have rejected this the first time it was proposed."
This weeks City Pulse's Notices of Public Hearings has one that caught my eye. An ordinance was introduced and referred to the Planning Commission at the city council's October 16th meeting for November 14 that deals with the building height restriction in downtown East Lansing.
It's a minor amendment, but currently by-right the city council can approve a special land use to allow for a building to reach 140 feet only in the core of downtown Lansing, which is only part of the B-3 City Center commercial District. In other parts of the district, the max by-right is 112 feet. This amendment would apply the 140-foot special land use limit to every part of the district.
A good example of what this would help development is that I believe that The Hub over at Bogue Street actually had to request a variance to hit the 140 feet height limit. Variances can add time and costs to the development. This would allow the 140-foot limit in the traditional process where a site plan approval is usually coupled with a special land use request.
Quite frankly, the 140-foot number seems totally arbitrary, and I'd love to see them get rid of it. What the limit should be, I'm not sure, but 140-feet seems too short. Anyway, this coupled with fixing the setback from Grand River in this district to match the existing streetwall are two minor things, but moving in the right direction.
Oh, and speaking of the Planning Commission on that map I made above it looks like the agent for the potential developer for the kennel at 3400 West Road has pulled the project due to the complications of the process. She still supports the ordinance that would allow kennels in this zoning district, but she'd found another location for her business. She says she'll continue to seek to develop the site, but with something less controversial and complicated for that zoning district.
East Lansing Info is reporting that the city's lease for the parking lot (Lot 11) behind Beggars Banquet is set to expire in 2020 (a 5 year lease with 3 renewals built in). The owner of the property is the Metzger family, and they could decide to develop on the lot or negotiate a new lease with the city. This and People's Church are the last remaining large surface parking lots in downtown East Lansing.
https://eastlansinginfo.org/content/future-bailey-parking-lot-uncertain
They will almost certainly opt for development. There is just too much under construction and proposed in the immediate vicinity for a parking lot to be the most profitable use of that lane. The Metzger's will be chomping at the bit to develop that lot; they should probably start planning for development now (site plan review and such).
Yeah, maybe the city needs to recuse itself from any site plan reviews (sarcasm). But the city could realistically deny any site plans and basically limit the Metzgers from doing any development. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Metzgers offload the development to someone else under a 99-year land lease.
After major infrastructure projects are completed downtown (at least after park district project), I would like to see the city council continue to work on developing a vibrant downtown through effective policies and placemaking initiatives that promote a stable and attractive urban environment year round. For EL, probably jobs and full time residents should be a priority.
Gomsu - I too hope EL promotes the downtown that is arriving fast! ...through policies, job attraction, expanded full time resident requirements (maybe), etc.
That said, I think we're at a nice point where development is happening at such a rate that the City will no longer be able to get in the way of urbanization and all that comes with it -- vibrancy (#1), more viable businesses, more variety of people, more money, probably more crime too. But I'm all for it.