While shopping downtown yesterday I noticed the entertainment venue on S. Washington has its front facade enclosed with nice-looking walls of glass windows and doors. They have also renovated the part of the exterior facade on the second floor. Now with the Summit games store expansion that whole block is full. I took a look at the new apartments on Hillsdale, they are looking pretty good clad with the same sort of exteriors you see on many new developments, nice colors, however. The "Sky Bridge" has some new metal "planks" on the sides that suggest something cool, but it is basically the same old bridge. Is the ice rink in Reutter Park in operation? I have never seen anyone there. I did not notice that the construction of the Ovation had begun, but I did see the "REOtown sign lot" development has started at least one more building. Take some time to shop downtown it's kind of fun with no big crowds the Capitol Tree looks so pretty this year. Also, the Cuban diner is super good as is the Turkish cafe, and the new pan-African restaurant is also very good!
Today's LSJ.com has an artical about the new improvements being made to the "City Market" building, now called 'Lansing Shuffle" I believe. It sounds better than I was expecting. It also sounds like a real business plan with several restaurants each with their own kitchen sharing sitting of about 150. They have real already successful restaurants opening in the food court and will open the shuffleboard courts later this year. Could be fun!
Noticed the three remaining old houses at and near the northwest corner of Saginaw and Penn are being deconstructed. Sad to see them go, as they appear to have been built between 1900 and 1925, but they were in poor repair. Anyway, looks like the owner is the same PO Box in town, so it looks like whoever bought/owns them are looking to piece together a larger parcel. In fact, including the parcels directly to the north owned by the county land bank, you get a clean rectangle site of almost exactly 1 acre. Being on a busy corner and given their zoning - a mixture of higher density residential and downtown mixed uses - I suspect that someone is trying to build something more intense at this corner, which makes sense since it sits along a busy highway. The nice dispensary across the street was opened a few years back. I do hope whatever is built here, though, is a bit more urban that the siting of that building.
Here's the larger area I've outlined in the city parcel viewer. You can see the three old homes at the south end:
I noticed those houses boarded up too, they were in pretty sad shape, it would be noisy corner for a single-family home rehab. Too bad they did not buy the "apartment house" at 909. It looks beyond rehabilitation as well. On the south side of Cedar, a block south on Penn. the Darius Moon house there has recently been painted and looks very nice. There is a similar Victorian house on the block, I wonder if that is a Darius Moon house as well.
Hood, got curious and looked up the PO Box, and...yep, they are behind this AND it appears the shell company for the old apartment building/commercial building is them, too. It's interesting, because they are currently involved with the renovation of the old office space in the Motor Wheels factory.
Hepler/H Inc. is focusing on this block and has some understanding with the Land Bank for a serious modular/prefab housing development, but yeah definitely not moving swiftly enough to see any results besides more dilapidated structures.
One of his LLC's does own the 909 structure.
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Here's the larger area I've outlined in the city parcel viewer. You can see the three old homes at the south end:
One of his LLC's does own the 909 structure.