Looks like we won the parking crater award! It is difficult to understand why we knocked down the whole west side of our city for surface parking lots from here, it must look really crazy from outside of Lansing.
So in an ideal world, SOM sells off the lots and uses revenue to build a garage or two. It's kind of a dead zone, so what gets built? You have high density office in the immediate vicinity, but it's "far" from the commercial density along Washington and Michigan.
I’d like to see some residential, like townhouses or something, in those empty fields north of Kalamazoo. There’s no real shortage of housing in Lansing, but there does seem to be a shortage of updated, move-in ready housing close to downtown. It’d be a perfect location for people who work downtown. You could market quality townhomes to an older demographic. They might even prefer the fact that it’s a little bit outside of the “hustle and bustle” of Washington and Michigan. It’s great that young professionals are moving in, but not everyone wants to live in tiny apartments, and downtown can’t just survive off of young people moving there for a couple years before leaving and buying a house in the suburbs.
I think there may have been plans for all of the surface lots downtown but it seems like the state is no longer interested in building on those areas and the private lots must be more valuable as parking lots. The corner of Michigan and Grand comes to mind. If you can't build on that lot where can you build? Outstate lawmakers detest spending money on Lansing and that is why it has taken forty years to build the buildings we have now. Back when they planned and evacuated the area it was supposed to be built all at once filling the whole area from Capitol Ave. to Logan/MLK. but there is still surface lots right in the center of the whole complex. Why?
I was walking down Capitol Ave the other day and the street itself is so cratered with potholes and seams breaking up it looks as though some battle had taken place.The brick street under the blacktop shows through in places and seems to be in better shape. The sidewalks are covered with debris from the street which one could fall on. What I wonder is what do these lawmakers think when they are going to work at the Capitol? Are they happy that Lansing looks like this? I suspect that there are some who are happy.
Looks like the first phase of the vision to redo Riverfront Park has been completed. This will be kind of the guiding concept for when the city actually finds the money to put towards the renovation. After public consultation, the project steering committee hired prominent architects SmithGroupJJR to design the renovation.
Looks like it would keep the central lawn, which can accomodate 15,000 concert-goers, and now oriented toward the south where there would be a stage area with minimal tiered seating, better river access on the westbank of the park, a smaller events plaza where the current rotting amphitheater now stands which would use the 5,6000-person north lawn.
On the eastbank, the shore would be naturalized allowing for a larger floodway thereby bringing the shore closer to the trail. The docks would loop out into the river. The eastern end of the bridge would be turned into more of a gateway plaza than it currently is.
This is a great plan! I am confused about whether it is just a plan or are they going to start building this soon? I am hoping that this plan along with the upstream improvements to the river banks is not going to be entirely dependent upon private sponsors and contributions. Maybe this has been all worked out, but if it has not I fear another great plan that never gets beyond a nice drawing.
They got a grant for a redesign, so that's all it is, a concept until they can find grants and such to actually go through with the renovation.
I was looking through the various upcoming agendas, and it appears the Planning Board is looking at the BWL's desire to sell a historic substation under under the Larch Street viaduct on the north side:
Unfortunately, the Planning Board doesn't have packets like the council committees and such, so we have no detail beyond that.
Speaking of council committees, the dysfunction of the current leadership has come to head, and I'm surprised it took this long. It's largely been happening behind the scenes, but the Committee on Planning & Development that sees most of the stuff we talked about called a special meeting this week, before two or the three members seem to believe that they can kill things referred to their committee, which is crazy. The city attorney has been very clear that the law says committees are there to give their approval or disapproval on something, but then it must be refered back to the full council. The whole thing is so silly.
The property owners over at Motor Wheels - the old Prudden wheel factory between Saginaw and Oakland - have been out planting evergreens along the perimeter of the property. They are really tightly packed, too. They already look nice, but when they mature in the years to come it's going to make the property look stunning on the Saginaw and Oakland frontages.
Anyone know what's going on at the huge lot at Pennsylvania and Cherry Street which is immediately north of Eastern High School? It looks like Eastern's baseball field is also part of this, but I hadn't heard of anything about it. The entire area is fenced off and dug up.
@MichMatters I've been wondering that myself. I think you brought up that property recently, didn't you? I think you had looked it up and noticed it was still owned by the state, or am I thinking of something else?
Comments
Looks like we won the parking crater award! It is difficult to understand why we knocked down the whole west side of our city for surface parking lots from here, it must look really crazy from outside of Lansing.
I'm sure others from this forum know, but this topic generated some interesting discussion on /r/lansing on the reddit site.
https://www.reddit.com/r/lansing/comments/8dpv9d/lansing_is_your_2018_parking_madness_champion/
So in an ideal world, SOM sells off the lots and uses revenue to build a garage or two. It's kind of a dead zone, so what gets built? You have high density office in the immediate vicinity, but it's "far" from the commercial density along Washington and Michigan.
I think there may have been plans for all of the surface lots downtown but it seems like the state is no longer interested in building on those areas and the private lots must be more valuable as parking lots. The corner of Michigan and Grand comes to mind. If you can't build on that lot where can you build? Outstate lawmakers detest spending money on Lansing and that is why it has taken forty years to build the buildings we have now. Back when they planned and evacuated the area it was supposed to be built all at once filling the whole area from Capitol Ave. to Logan/MLK. but there is still surface lots right in the center of the whole complex. Why?
I was walking down Capitol Ave the other day and the street itself is so cratered with potholes and seams breaking up it looks as though some battle had taken place.The brick street under the blacktop shows through in places and seems to be in better shape. The sidewalks are covered with debris from the street which one could fall on. What I wonder is what do these lawmakers think when they are going to work at the Capitol? Are they happy that Lansing looks like this? I suspect that there are some who are happy.
Looks like the first phase of the vision to redo Riverfront Park has been completed. This will be kind of the guiding concept for when the city actually finds the money to put towards the renovation. After public consultation, the project steering committee hired prominent architects SmithGroupJJR to design the renovation.
Rendering
Looks like it would keep the central lawn, which can accomodate 15,000 concert-goers, and now oriented toward the south where there would be a stage area with minimal tiered seating, better river access on the westbank of the park, a smaller events plaza where the current rotting amphitheater now stands which would use the 5,6000-person north lawn.
On the eastbank, the shore would be naturalized allowing for a larger floodway thereby bringing the shore closer to the trail. The docks would loop out into the river. The eastern end of the bridge would be turned into more of a gateway plaza than it currently is.
This is a great plan! I am confused about whether it is just a plan or are they going to start building this soon? I am hoping that this plan along with the upstream improvements to the river banks is not going to be entirely dependent upon private sponsors and contributions. Maybe this has been all worked out, but if it has not I fear another great plan that never gets beyond a nice drawing.
They got a grant for a redesign, so that's all it is, a concept until they can find grants and such to actually go through with the renovation.
I was looking through the various upcoming agendas, and it appears the Planning Board is looking at the BWL's desire to sell a historic substation under under the Larch Street viaduct on the north side:
https://accessmygov.com/ASSG_Sketch/GetAttachment?id=vcVZGsGIdA0=&uid=384
Unfortunately, the Planning Board doesn't have packets like the council committees and such, so we have no detail beyond that.
Speaking of council committees, the dysfunction of the current leadership has come to head, and I'm surprised it took this long. It's largely been happening behind the scenes, but the Committee on Planning & Development that sees most of the stuff we talked about called a special meeting this week, before two or the three members seem to believe that they can kill things referred to their committee, which is crazy. The city attorney has been very clear that the law says committees are there to give their approval or disapproval on something, but then it must be refered back to the full council. The whole thing is so silly.
The property owners over at Motor Wheels - the old Prudden wheel factory between Saginaw and Oakland - have been out planting evergreens along the perimeter of the property. They are really tightly packed, too. They already look nice, but when they mature in the years to come it's going to make the property look stunning on the Saginaw and Oakland frontages.
Anyone know what's going on at the huge lot at Pennsylvania and Cherry Street which is immediately north of Eastern High School? It looks like Eastern's baseball field is also part of this, but I hadn't heard of anything about it. The entire area is fenced off and dug up.
@MichMatters I've been wondering that myself. I think you brought up that property recently, didn't you? I think you had looked it up and noticed it was still owned by the state, or am I thinking of something else?