The bids were made public for the new office space for the Michigan Senate (had no idea the Bojis were major GOP donors, BTW). The most interesting bid was the Eyde's proposal, which would have built the senate a 140,000 square foot building at Allegan and Walnut at their parking lot in front of Constitution Hall.
The problem? Their bid was WAY expensive coming in at nearly $103 million at 30 years, while the Boji's Capitol View proposal came in at just $64 million for 30 years. Of course, you'd expect a new construction to cost them more, but that's quite a difference. Kind of glad that building didn't get built, though. It looks like a underuse for the site, even though they were smart to fill the corner.
Something else worthy of note in the downtown shuffle:
The Senate's pending move triggered an office shuffle that will affect about 2,000 state workers over the next 20 months. Michigan Department of Community Health employees have to move out of Capitol View to make room for the Senate. Employees from five departments will trade buildings to make room and, according to state officials, to make government more efficient by putting employees with similar responsibilities nearer to each other.
Notably, the Boji Group bid included plans to build a new building on the corner Kalamazoo Street and South Grand Avenue and move the DCH employees there for what it said would be $4.3 million in lease savings for the state. Instead, the DCH employees will move to what is currently the state-owned headquarters for the Michigan State Police, across the street from Boji's proposed construction.
They own land at one of northwest or southeast corner of Grand and K'zoo?
In the pdf attached to that LSJ article there are several renderings of the other proposals.
Boji's proposal for the DCH office building, labeled as "mixed use." I thought the City owned this land, but apparently Boji got ahold of it somehow, or thinks he can. This would have been kinda nice there though.
Here's the site plan for Eyde's proposal:
The proposal for City Hall, the only exterior change being a new glass facade on the 10 floor portion built at an angle to view the Capitol.
Yeah, the rest of the Boji proposal is quite interesting. I believe the city still owns the land, but they must have worked out something with Virg behind the scenes to give them confidence enough to include it in a formal bid. It's at least good to have some kind of idea of what could go there in the future. What I'm surprised about is that no one has bought out the cleaners on the corner, yet. lol That business will not die. The whole rest of the center is empty, but Baryames has been there since as long as I can remember. What's kind of funny is that I'd always imagined this block as more high-density residential than anything else.
That siteplan for the Eyde proposal just solidifies for me how disorienting that project would have been at that location. I realize they oriented it that way to give the state senate offices sweeping views of Capitol, but visually, it fits in really awkwardly. I really want to see that block mixed-use with multiple buildings of differing heights/massings.
As for the city hall proposal, their recladding of the building looks really nice. The little low-slung office building designed to fit in with the Capitol looks really silly, IMO, and I bet it would have been executed horribly. It's why I'm glad they are putting the capitol welcome center under the lawn. Unless you are going to splurge on an awesome historical design, there does't need to be some half-assed piece of shlock anywhere on the Capitol square.
Question in case I've used up all my article views, are there any scans of anything they are doing to Capitol View, or are they basically keeping everything on the exterior the same? The good thing about Capitol View, as we know, is that if they ever find themselves needing more space, they can simply building ontop of the Townsend Street Garage of the building, itself.
The only exterior changes to Capitol View I see are the addition of an awning, signage at the top of the building and some of the first floor facade may change. They will also carve out a two floor lobby.
I fully expect a similar building will go up where Boji's proposal is, except more likely to be apartments. His proposal looked more like an apartment building than an office building itself, perhaps we'll even see the same design resurface. I also forgot to point out that Gentilozzi was behind the City Hall proposal and Harry Heplers H Inc was behind the proposal to renovate the Farnum Building, so I wouldn't be too surprised to see either of those projects resurface also.
On a side note, to view unlimited LSJ articles, just browse their site in incognito/private mode or delete your cookies when you run out of articles.
I went back and looked at all of the proposals a few hours back. Thanks for the tip for viewing more articles. I've always known there was a way, but was too lazy to go look it up since I usually read just about the number of articles as is allowed, anyway. BTW, I've been in Capitol View a few times. I the lobby already has high ceilings since it's a slightly taller floor. The windows you see in that rendering anove the other are just the tops of the groundfloor windows.
But, yeah, I like how the Senate proposal sent our prominent developers in tizzy to put out designs, like you said, that they were probably already sitting on just waiting for a tenant to come forward.
It says in their proposal that they're creating a two floor lobby and to me the lobby rendering definitely looks to be two floors.
Now that you mention sitting on designs, I wonder if Eyde's proposal could of been originally designed as a taller building and just scaled down to meet the Senates needs. The design makes a lot more sense as a 12+ floor building with a parking ramp in back. It kinda has me hoping. Imagine that same design at 12 floors, then imagine it at about 18 floors and think that at 18 floors it would still (I think) be smaller than Constitution Hall. It doesn't seem like too unrealistic of a size for a future State building.
I imagine any building with curves going up near the river kind of like how they have the Grand Tower oriented against the river in an interesting way. Imagine that next door to the Grand Tower in the parking lot behind the MSP building. Or, even slimmed down and placed immediately north of the Grand Tower.
But, yeah, add a few more floors to it, and you get yourself looking better than the little squat curves.
The Lansing Public Service Department has the most interesting city facebook page. Back on the 19th they showed the old drawings of an old pedestrian tunnel on the east side of the Michigan-Allen/Rumsey intersection just a block east of Resurrection:
Apparently, someone in the comments says there was a similar tunnel down at Cedar and Holmes. These were built, I guess, before overhead pedestrian crosswalks got popular. I guess they were cheaper to build and maintain with the funny thing being it seems the city has a policy of the moment of taking out these crosswalks when they reach the end of their lifespan. We used to have all kinds of little quality-of-life infrastructure before cities got cheap with maintenance and such.
Oh, and here's the old post office/city hall annex in the place of city hall plaza before they tore it down:
Comments
http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/capitol/2015/02/17/senate-office-bids-made-public/23550591/
The problem? Their bid was WAY expensive coming in at nearly $103 million at 30 years, while the Boji's Capitol View proposal came in at just $64 million for 30 years. Of course, you'd expect a new construction to cost them more, but that's quite a difference. Kind of glad that building didn't get built, though. It looks like a underuse for the site, even though they were smart to fill the corner.
Something else worthy of note in the downtown shuffle:
They own land at one of northwest or southeast corner of Grand and K'zoo?
Boji's proposal for the DCH office building, labeled as "mixed use." I thought the City owned this land, but apparently Boji got ahold of it somehow, or thinks he can. This would have been kinda nice there though.
Here's the site plan for Eyde's proposal:
The proposal for City Hall, the only exterior change being a new glass facade on the 10 floor portion built at an angle to view the Capitol.
Another side proposal within the City Hall plan:
That siteplan for the Eyde proposal just solidifies for me how disorienting that project would have been at that location. I realize they oriented it that way to give the state senate offices sweeping views of Capitol, but visually, it fits in really awkwardly. I really want to see that block mixed-use with multiple buildings of differing heights/massings.
As for the city hall proposal, their recladding of the building looks really nice. The little low-slung office building designed to fit in with the Capitol looks really silly, IMO, and I bet it would have been executed horribly. It's why I'm glad they are putting the capitol welcome center under the lawn. Unless you are going to splurge on an awesome historical design, there does't need to be some half-assed piece of shlock anywhere on the Capitol square.
Question in case I've used up all my article views, are there any scans of anything they are doing to Capitol View, or are they basically keeping everything on the exterior the same? The good thing about Capitol View, as we know, is that if they ever find themselves needing more space, they can simply building ontop of the Townsend Street Garage of the building, itself.
I fully expect a similar building will go up where Boji's proposal is, except more likely to be apartments. His proposal looked more like an apartment building than an office building itself, perhaps we'll even see the same design resurface. I also forgot to point out that Gentilozzi was behind the City Hall proposal and Harry Heplers H Inc was behind the proposal to renovate the Farnum Building, so I wouldn't be too surprised to see either of those projects resurface also.
On a side note, to view unlimited LSJ articles, just browse their site in incognito/private mode or delete your cookies when you run out of articles.
But, yeah, I like how the Senate proposal sent our prominent developers in tizzy to put out designs, like you said, that they were probably already sitting on just waiting for a tenant to come forward.
Now that you mention sitting on designs, I wonder if Eyde's proposal could of been originally designed as a taller building and just scaled down to meet the Senates needs. The design makes a lot more sense as a 12+ floor building with a parking ramp in back. It kinda has me hoping. Imagine that same design at 12 floors, then imagine it at about 18 floors and think that at 18 floors it would still (I think) be smaller than Constitution Hall. It doesn't seem like too unrealistic of a size for a future State building.
But, yeah, add a few more floors to it, and you get yourself looking better than the little squat curves.
Apparently, someone in the comments says there was a similar tunnel down at Cedar and Holmes. These were built, I guess, before overhead pedestrian crosswalks got popular. I guess they were cheaper to build and maintain with the funny thing being it seems the city has a policy of the moment of taking out these crosswalks when they reach the end of their lifespan. We used to have all kinds of little quality-of-life infrastructure before cities got cheap with maintenance and such.
Oh, and here's the old post office/city hall annex in the place of city hall plaza before they tore it down: