Just a little tree update. The nice row of flowering plum trees that were blooming the other day at St Joe and Washington are indeed gone. I am sure they were in an area that will be a parking lot when the bank opens, car vs tree, the car always wins in Lansing.:{
Looks like Pablo's sold their property in REO town a couple weeks ago. The purchaser is L&P Properties LLC, which seems tied to a general contractor called Trumble Group. Their website shows that they did work on a number of recent developments in the Lansing area. This makes me wonder what the planned purpose will be for this site now that Pablo's has backed out. Hopefully more information will be public soon!
Thank you for that information. I hope there will be something fun that will be going in there, and also I hope they don't just sit on it, it would be nice to see activity on that corner. I wonder if Pablo made a profit on the sale, they did do a lot of preliminary work over on the building.
I noticed that the new Lake Trust building is being built right next to the sidewalks lining up with the small office building next door on S Washington. It is great to see the parking will be away from the corner and they did save one tree! I am impressed that they considered a more urban design fronting the sidewalk and street. I hope it is a nice looking building when finished.
That's really good news, those projects should prove really beneficial for their respective neighborhoods. I was wondering about the Allen Neighborhood Center project in particular, it's good to see that it's moving forward. I think the Kalamazoo corridor has some potential in the future to compliment a much more developed Michigan Ave, it could really use this to kick that trend off.
In a building site tour, I noticed the Red Cedar site has grown up a lot. It looks taller and more densely spaced than had expected. So far so good, at least it is going up! The new hospital looks impressive on its spot out there in the fields, bit further down the road the new housing complex looks like the first set of buildings next to Collins Road is nearly finished they were paving the roads, there are new landscaping and advertising for the model apartments. For this type of housing and in this location I think this development looks great. Downtown I am trying to get the big picture at the 600-block, there are many pluses and minuses, I noticed they were putting up some that corrugated metal siding on the apartments, I really do not like that stuff but I guess they think it looks modern and contemporary. It was in 2007. On the plus side, it is being built! The new Lake Trust building on S.Washington has a two-story steel frame standing, they are putting this one together pretty fast. And they were filling the fountain at Rutter park today!
I noticed work seems to be beginning at the Temple Building in Old Town. It will be interesting to see how this building is redeveloped.
Over on Hosmer, the "The Wing"/ grow house building has had it's first-floor windows bricked over and they are installing barred metal siding that looks like hurricane shutters over the bricks. It looks OK if a bit prison-like, better than just cinderblock bricks. I can not tell if they are going to take out all of the windows, there are huge windowed spaces on the north side of the building.
The new Lake Trust building is looking larger than I was expecting, and it is in a more urban position being built next to the sidewalks with parking in the back.
I was wrong about the corrugated metal siding being used at the 600 Block, that has been covered over with light to dark grey to black rectangle tiles simular to the green tiles on the Market Place building. The hotel facade is looking pretty good, I guess I am liking the building but there is a lot going on for one building. I wonder if they have had any dates set for the supermarket? It will nice to have a store so near me and to have a reason to visit a new building.
I've been holding my thoughts on this until it's finished, but as I see it now I agree with you. The materials/ construction quality on the first floor is genuinely good with proper brick and stone work along with good quality storefront windows, the wood ceilings in outdoor areas and glass railing visible in that rendering are nice touches also. The paneling on the upper facade is looking better than expected (except in the back, which I'll forgive), it looks a lot cleaner and more well put together than what's on Marketplace or Midtown.
I'm still holding out for my final opinion on this one but it looks promising.
I saw the blue colored walls being installed on the balconies for the easternmost apartments, I see them now in the drawing, it is interesting that the design is again using many different colors on the facade, as opposed to the new Metro Place which is basically monotones of the same color on each side. The color treatments do look more successful for this building, real bricks, and nice big windows so far so good! Maybe the hotel will have a good restaurant which could be another reason to visit this building.
I believe the building on the corner of Washtenaw and Capitol was part of Knapp's Department Store in the '60s and you can still see some of the sidings that look like the main building. I can not remember what departments were in that building, but you'd cross into a small alley from the main store to enter the expanded departments in different buildings. The building across from the library was the sporting goods department, I do remember that. I think it is kind of a shame that they built a Washington Ave, street fronting parking lot on this block next to Knapps as that area should be good sites for development. I have put out this idea before, I think a modern tower connected to the Masonic Temple building would make a very cool hotel/residential development, or even possibly a new city hall/police/courthouse development on both side of that corner. Anything but a parking ramp. There was an "Eye Sore" in the City Pulse about this building, saying the Eydes were considering what to do with the building but something like it was not a priority at this time.
Comments
Over on Hosmer, the "The Wing"/ grow house building has had it's first-floor windows bricked over and they are installing barred metal siding that looks like hurricane shutters over the bricks. It looks OK if a bit prison-like, better than just cinderblock bricks. I can not tell if they are going to take out all of the windows, there are huge windowed spaces on the north side of the building.
The new Lake Trust building is looking larger than I was expecting, and it is in a more urban position being built next to the sidewalks with parking in the back.
I was wrong about the corrugated metal siding being used at the 600 Block, that has been covered over with light to dark grey to black rectangle tiles simular to the green tiles on the Market Place building. The hotel facade is looking pretty good, I guess I am liking the building but there is a lot going on for one building. I wonder if they have had any dates set for the supermarket? It will nice to have a store so near me and to have a reason to visit a new building.
I'm still holding out for my final opinion on this one but it looks promising.