Hope this is a realistic proposal. The scale and style seems perfect for this area and I'd love to see the little commercial building come back to life.
It's been a real proposal since it was first proposed years back. I guess the problem has been that we're not dealing with a development firm, here, but one-person outfit, which usually means that this is a person's side job along side to their primary job. It means that things like this only gets done when things are going well with their main source of income.
A really small thing, but something I hadn't seen in years, the city has put traffic lights back up at MLK (northbound) and Olds right at the bottom of the bridge. This intersection was immediately north of where the plant used to come over the street and had a traffic light until they shut down LCA. It's just a sign of how busy the area has become again, traffic-wise, because of the shipping and movement between their outlots and the plant.
Anyone remember exactly the use of the building that use to lie to the west of MLK? I believe this complex was the chassis plant and that things were assembled from east-to-west. This building would have been the last building before they thing put them on rails and shipped them up to the body shop at the other half of LCA at Verlinden. Or, do I have that backwards? All I know is that their was a bridge over MLK and then a bridge south over the spur that served the plant.
The bodies/chassis (which are the same piece in modern unibody cars), were built at Verlinden and then shipped to Plant 1 for final assembly. I'm not sure specifically what the building west of MLK was used for, but I think it was either where the bodies from Verlinden were loaded in or where the finished cars rolled out.
It was were the finished cars rolled out. You could often see the "bodies from Fisher Body" come over to the assembly plant. That was about 3/4 of the whole body which was painted and finished, of other words the passenger compartment,doors, rear quarter panels, trunk, trunk hood, I am not sure if they painted all of the body panels at Fisher Body, but they were all put together over on Logan[MLK] and Olds Ave. I think the building may have been called the final assembly building. The building was the first built west of Logan street bridge, and was built in the 60's, then the building became located in the middle of the new boulevard, so they built an over pass and the building west of the new bridge. They took down a lot of the old neighborhood there for employee parking, as the area they once parked became new car parking areas, the same place as now, only thousands more employees filled the new lots, not hundreds like today. It was very crazy at shift change on old four lane Logan Street.
I saw a fellow from GM saying don't worry we are gong to fill Lansing. That sounds encouraging. I hope they fill up the west side.
I think all painting was done at Fisher Body. Sexton use to have a really hard time with the paint smell being right across the street, especially when students had football and soccer practice. I know when they built LGR (Lansing Grand River) that the paint shop use to be a nuissance down in the Moores Park area, bad enough where some environmental agency made them fix the problem. Given that that seemed to have only arisen with the construction of LGR, it makes me guess painting was done at Verlinden.
EDIT: Should have just looked at the wiki page. Apparently, car bodies were trucked down from Verlinden (not brought down by the rail line) and either went through the north or south assembly line to be finished, wherever those were. Cars were then driven off the line to a staging yard under the MLK northbound bridge and then either loaded right onto rail cars at new Hollow Yard or trucked out. Still not sure of the directions all of this process went in or what Lansing GM Building 150 was used for, and if trucked out exactly how they'd have gotten west of the Southbound MLK bridge to the storage lots.
It was a long time ago but think they went over the north bound and under the south bound bridges. There was an enclosed over pass on the north bound side. The used tracks that went to Fisher Body for the transport of the black chassis frames ,paint and steel into the plant. They trucked all the finished product down Claire street to Olds Ave. where the lines all started there down by Elm street. I went to Sexton then and when the wind blow from the north the air seemed thick and smelled really bad.
I was down to Moores Park today and some sort of project is under way. They have built a ramp and are dumping huge boulders into the river right below the damn. Anybody know what they are doing there?
My understanding is that they are doing what they did at the North Lansing Dam, at least partially, and that's repairing the dam. They have to do this every once in awhile to stop the inevitable erosion below the lip of the spillway.
Lansing Catholic High is breaking ground on a new athletic field. This confused me as I thought they'd played on the field right off Marshall; I even thought I use to see them at least practicing out there. But apparently the school has been holding its home games at Holt Junior High for a decade. I know Eastern and Catholic Central were going to go years ago on a joint stadium. For some reason, I'd just thought the home games were on one of the fields back that way.
LANSING - Lansing Catholic High School's varsity football team will play next season under its own Friday night lights, school officials announced today.
The school will break ground on a new synthetic-turf athletic field this spring, part of a planned $5 million overhaul of the school's athletic facilities, Tom Maloney the school's president, said at a press conference Friday.
The school's soccer and lacrosse teams are also expected to use the field, which will be located on the southeast corner of the school property off Marshall Street. The $2.5 million first phase of the project also includes an eight-lane track, 1,000 home-side bleacher seats, field lights and a press box.
I can't quite orient myself from the rendering. It doesn't look like it's being built to line up with the field currently there.
Marshall St is on the left, the field runs parallel to it, the taller part of the school in the foreground looks like a future addition. BTW I was using the two floor section with sloping roof lines to orient myself with the satellite view.
Comments
Anyone remember exactly the use of the building that use to lie to the west of MLK? I believe this complex was the chassis plant and that things were assembled from east-to-west. This building would have been the last building before they thing put them on rails and shipped them up to the body shop at the other half of LCA at Verlinden. Or, do I have that backwards? All I know is that their was a bridge over MLK and then a bridge south over the spur that served the plant.
I saw a fellow from GM saying don't worry we are gong to fill Lansing. That sounds encouraging. I hope they fill up the west side.
EDIT: Should have just looked at the wiki page. Apparently, car bodies were trucked down from Verlinden (not brought down by the rail line) and either went through the north or south assembly line to be finished, wherever those were. Cars were then driven off the line to a staging yard under the MLK northbound bridge and then either loaded right onto rail cars at new Hollow Yard or trucked out. Still not sure of the directions all of this process went in or what Lansing GM Building 150 was used for, and if trucked out exactly how they'd have gotten west of the Southbound MLK bridge to the storage lots.
I was down to Moores Park today and some sort of project is under way. They have built a ramp and are dumping huge boulders into the river right below the damn. Anybody know what they are doing there?
I can't quite orient myself from the rendering. It doesn't look like it's being built to line up with the field currently there.