I’m pretty sure Andy Schor has mentioned Saginaw and Oakland conversion as being on their radar. I’d love to see a way to revert both streets to two-way in their entireties, but even just keeping them one way and giving them a diet for like a mile around downtown would be a great improvement. It would still allow pretty good flow in and out of downtown from the east and west but also help discourage through-traffic as everything slows down around downtown. Really, anything would be better than how it is now.
And until Delta Township starts to shift away from its “strip mall or die” mindset, which shows no signs of slowing, I can’t imagine increased bus service will do too much to reduce car use. There’s absolutely no residential density along Saginaw heading west.
It seems like traffic on Saginaw and Oakland, Cedar and Larch travels mainly in packs that fill all the lanes side to side due to the traffic signals. The packs fill the lanes because the can but are not many cars deep. With single lanes like on S. Washington the packs become longer lines of traffic of course but does seem to move smoothly if a little more slowly. I guess the benefits of this plan would be more for the neighborhoods and the safety of bikers and pedestrians of Lansing, not for suburbanites speeding to get out of town as fast as they can.
According to their Facebook page, Pablo’s is opening a second location in one of the commercial spaces at the Venue building on Michigan (where Strange Matter is). It will be good to see some more of that retail space fill up.
Pretty excited for this one as it's within walking distance for me. I'm wondering on ETA and if they will serve alcohol. If I'm remembering right they had bought a license for their now defunct REO town location, but I'm not sure if they sold it to somebody after those plans fell through.
Looks like the small building that abuts the Lansing Brewing Company parking lot is getting remodeled into a coffee shop of sorts. The address is 316 N Cedar St.
I had always thought this was part of the LBC parcel but it looks like it actually is a separate parcel. Used to be owned by one of the Eyde's, but was sold to Gillespie back in 2015. It's always great to see new places open but that section of Cedar is a racetrack of sorts. It does get a lot of visibility from the street so it may get a fair bit of business with commuters, people going to lugnuts games, or those in the nearby apartments.
Planning Board has been really missing over the summer; might have something to do with the change of the zoning code and people trying to figure it out. Anyway, this month is the first meeting of the board since June; the only two items of business on the agenda is the vacation of Schoolcraft between Grand and Capitol on the LCC campus since the streets are going two way basically making the circulator street obsolete, and the the approval to sell Lot#50 - a small surface lot at the northwest corner of Pere Marquette and Shiawassee at the eastern edge of downtown - to "GG Acquisitions, LLC" which is almost certainly the Gillespie Group.
On the first item, LCC will take over Schoolcraft and cut it off on both ends so that it'll only served the new parking garage as a circulator. The other big change, though, is that the garage will open the vacated street & garage mid-block to Saginaw. I see that as not being great for traffic unless they are going to slow down the speeds along Saginaw.
On the second item we get absolutely no other news that the plan to sell.
The minutes of the June meeting showed the Board approved the purchase of the 65 acres in southwest Lansing to expand Fine Park. They also approved the acquisition of two small parcels near the new McLaren hospital to add to a trail, though, there is no packet for this meeting, so I'm unsure where exactly this is. Finally, they approved some minor changes to the Form-Based Code.
I'll miss that little lot at Shiawassee and Pere Marquette as a spot to watch the fireworks from but it is a good spot for apartments. I'd love to see Gillespie to a simple brick building with the look of an old warehouse converted into apartments there, it would be great for the aesthetic of the area.
There is an article about the plan for Clara's on LSJ.com [paid site] to open a Starbuck's "Community Store" in the western side of the building. A Starbuck's Community Store includes space for community groups and activities, I guess geared towards the people of the area of all income levels. There will a coffee shop with large patios, a small park on Michigan Ave a drive-thru on Pere Marquette and lots of other nice features. It seems like this will be a lot more than just another Starbucks. I am thinking this will be successful and will add a lot of people to the area. I was at the Capital City Market yesterday and noticed the parking lot for the hotel was nearly full already. The big game is bringing lots of people here and staying at our new hotels for the first time.
@gbdinlansing I have mixed feeling about the Clara's thing. Seeing the a chain place go in there and the place divided up isn't the most ideal use of the space imo. They also mentioned replacing windows, I hope they retain as many of the stained glass windows as possible.
@MichMatters I like the way that building has turned out, it's a nice addition to that area. Nearby, they're well under way on the structure of the new LCC parking garage.
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And until Delta Township starts to shift away from its “strip mall or die” mindset, which shows no signs of slowing, I can’t imagine increased bus service will do too much to reduce car use. There’s absolutely no residential density along Saginaw heading west.
I had always thought this was part of the LBC parcel but it looks like it actually is a separate parcel. Used to be owned by one of the Eyde's, but was sold to Gillespie back in 2015. It's always great to see new places open but that section of Cedar is a racetrack of sorts. It does get a lot of visibility from the street so it may get a fair bit of business with commuters, people going to lugnuts games, or those in the nearby apartments.
On the first item, LCC will take over Schoolcraft and cut it off on both ends so that it'll only served the new parking garage as a circulator. The other big change, though, is that the garage will open the vacated street & garage mid-block to Saginaw. I see that as not being great for traffic unless they are going to slow down the speeds along Saginaw.
On the second item we get absolutely no other news that the plan to sell.
The minutes of the June meeting showed the Board approved the purchase of the 65 acres in southwest Lansing to expand Fine Park. They also approved the acquisition of two small parcels near the new McLaren hospital to add to a trail, though, there is no packet for this meeting, so I'm unsure where exactly this is. Finally, they approved some minor changes to the Form-Based Code.
@MichMatters I like the way that building has turned out, it's a nice addition to that area. Nearby, they're well under way on the structure of the new LCC parking garage.