Finally some official information - CATA will be extending Rt 12 to connect LCC's main and west campuses during the semester. Looks like a pretty minor change to the route (why didn't we do this a long time ago?). Students with at least one class at west campus can buy a semester pass for $40.
Huh - I also see Rt 25 will no longer serve Eastwood Towne Center. Somewhat surprising (or not?) as CATA recently had a promotion to encourage people to take Rt 25 to Eastwood. And "Buses will travel Abbot, Chandler and Coleman roads to and from Meijer"... hmm. I wonder if that is an attempt to get another bus up to the student housing areas there. Rt 26 would sometimes be completely full just from those students, and therefore useless to anyone elsewhere on the route.
Wait, so there is now no East Lansing-based route that serves Eastwood? This has to be temporary, because I can not imagine them leaving so much ridership on the table like that It'd be insane not to have an East Lansing route that directly serves Eastwood. Heck, they have a route that serves the Meijer on Lake Lansing (24). I'm sure there is enough ridership to have an Eastwood route from East Lansing.
Well, #25 also serves that Meijer - but it does look like this would mean no route serving Eastwood from EL. Like I said, they had that promotion recently where you were supposed to ride the bus to Eastwood, and then get stickers from merchants - a student of mine won, actually, almost by default from his telling. He would ask for stickers from participating merchants and they didn't know what he was talking about and couldn't even find the stickers, like, NOBODY was participating in the promotion. Well, there you go.
I find it hard to believe MSU students - or enough of them - aren't taking the bus to Eastwood, particularly if Meijer can support a numebr of bus routes to its store just across the freeway. What's even more strange is that Eastwood is actually expanding with hundreds of new hotel rooms and The Heights apartments. To be removing any service, at all, seems bizarre.
I was poking around Gillespie Group's page and found a listing of their properties, the most noteworthy probably being 600 E Michigan
It'd be lovely to see a building that looks like that go such a prominent corner, huh? Even with a spectacular design, a four floor building on that site would be disappointing, but to have another tacky, neon colored Studio Intrigue building there would be aggravating.
I think MichMatters mentioned 518 E Shiawassee a little bit ago. Apparently it's being renovated "to create one of the coolest and innovative high tech urban office spaces in the Lansing area." I guess he doesn't have much faith in the casino going through and has no intentions of pursuing Ballpark North.
There's nothing too much else of interest, besides that he apparently owns the Sears building in Frandor, here's the link to their Lansiing Properties
Oh, boy, that would be disappointing. I see Marketplace almost everyday, and I've seen Midtown maybe a few times a month, and I can't get over how incredibly cheap both of them look. These materials will look horrible in even just five years. It's so disappointing, because the brick-faced Stadium District, while not spectacular, will at least age well. I'm not even sure that the problem is Studio Intrigue, because they do some decent work; it's just that Gillespie is getting real cheap valuing quantity over quality. The vinyl-siding (it's vinyl, right?) is an asbolute crime. That crap should never be part of urban design. It's good to know that rendering prominently states that this is a concept only, but I don't even want to see that crap as concept. lol
I'm actually not at all disappointed with the plan for 518 East Shiawassee. It's not exactly a pretty building, to say the least, but to be honest, I really never thought this area would attract much large-scale attention, anyway, after the recession killed off the big plans (the movie studio, ballpark north). As long as we can get rid of the vacancy and abandonment in this area - why there are dirt lots in downtown Lansing if even at the fringe is ridiculous - I'm content. Plus, this probably means the dyslexia institute on the corner has a better chance of resue.
Oh, I like Midtown - I like color. Wouldn't want to see it everywhere, but it makes for a unique building. Rapped on one of the colored walls and it sounded hollow, incidentally.
There are cheap building materials nowadays - I don't know if you've ever taken a close look at Boardwalk Condominiums in East Lansing. Building looks sort of like stucco, but there is a small chunk out of one of the walls and... inside a very thin covering layer is something very much like styrofoam.
I don't so much mind the colors as I do that these aren't even proper EIFS paneling, which, itself, is a rather cheap construction technique. I guess what I'm saying is that we're not even getting curtain wall construction, but rather a veneer of cheap materials tacked directly to the wood and concrete structure. Gillespie is putting up these cracker boxes and trying to distract from the relative cheapness of construction by putting up equally cheap and tacky-looking paneling that looks like it could be blown off in a swift May thunderstorm. Again, I don't see these holding up well, and I'd certainly never pay for what he's asking to live in these properties.
Honestly, if this was put on the outskirts of town, that would be one thing and more appropriate. Cities are filled with cheap-construction apartment complexes gussied up for college students. This stuff just belong in a serious downtown. Stadium District is a better-than-decent construction. Marketplace and Midtown are relative turds.
Look like laminated posterboard gorilla-glued directly to the concrete structure. Give this siding a few years in a Michigan summer and a few winter snowstorms and some spring thunderstorms, and this crap will be peeling and buckling like nobody's business.
Honestly, it's not as if there isn't examples of solid quality new construction in Lansing and East Lansing. These simply aren't it.
BTW, speaking of Marketplace, the surface parking lot started construction, last week. They already have some of the lot lights up and have moved the fence perimeter back from Cedar a few feet.
I was really hoping for those colored panels to end up being tile or something, whatever they ended up being looks cheap. Midtown in particular looks as if it were built of scrap materials, I don't understand why Gillespie's doing such cheap stuff. If 600 E Michigan were to end up a three floor Midtown clone with no ground floor retail like the building in the rendering, I would be very disappointed.
When I was looking through some of Studio Intrigue's stuff the other day I came to realize that they really are capable of decent work, some of their interior designs are especially nice, but working for Gillespie could end up giving them something of a bad reputation.
Comments
It'd be lovely to see a building that looks like that go such a prominent corner, huh? Even with a spectacular design, a four floor building on that site would be disappointing, but to have another tacky, neon colored Studio Intrigue building there would be aggravating.
I think MichMatters mentioned 518 E Shiawassee a little bit ago. Apparently it's being renovated "to create one of the coolest and innovative high tech urban office spaces in the Lansing area." I guess he doesn't have much faith in the casino going through and has no intentions of pursuing Ballpark North.
There's nothing too much else of interest, besides that he apparently owns the Sears building in Frandor, here's the link to their Lansiing Properties
I'm actually not at all disappointed with the plan for 518 East Shiawassee. It's not exactly a pretty building, to say the least, but to be honest, I really never thought this area would attract much large-scale attention, anyway, after the recession killed off the big plans (the movie studio, ballpark north). As long as we can get rid of the vacancy and abandonment in this area - why there are dirt lots in downtown Lansing if even at the fringe is ridiculous - I'm content. Plus, this probably means the dyslexia institute on the corner has a better chance of resue.
There are cheap building materials nowadays - I don't know if you've ever taken a close look at Boardwalk Condominiums in East Lansing. Building looks sort of like stucco, but there is a small chunk out of one of the walls and... inside a very thin covering layer is something very much like styrofoam.
Honestly, if this was put on the outskirts of town, that would be one thing and more appropriate. Cities are filled with cheap-construction apartment complexes gussied up for college students. This stuff just belong in a serious downtown. Stadium District is a better-than-decent construction. Marketplace and Midtown are relative turds.
This...
Gillespie Group facebook
...and this:
Gillespie Group facebook
Look like laminated posterboard gorilla-glued directly to the concrete structure. Give this siding a few years in a Michigan summer and a few winter snowstorms and some spring thunderstorms, and this crap will be peeling and buckling like nobody's business.
Honestly, it's not as if there isn't examples of solid quality new construction in Lansing and East Lansing. These simply aren't it.
BTW, speaking of Marketplace, the surface parking lot started construction, last week. They already have some of the lot lights up and have moved the fence perimeter back from Cedar a few feet.
When I was looking through some of Studio Intrigue's stuff the other day I came to realize that they really are capable of decent work, some of their interior designs are especially nice, but working for Gillespie could end up giving them something of a bad reputation.