Looks like the EDC got a grant for the Barber College at the old redone plaza (North Point Plaza) at Lake Lansing and Larch - it looks really nice! - to move to 4414 South Penn. It's a nice, glass faced modernist building just south of Cavanaugh; I'm trying to remember what used to be there, but can't recall. Anyway, nice little modernist group of offices and apartment buildings that back on to Kendon Park.
BTW, anyone else having issues with street labelling on Google Maps, atm?
Pulled it up: Michigan Retail Hardware Association, so a trade association headquarters, which makes sense. They usually have nice little buildings like this.
Yeah, North Point surprised me, because I really thought they were just going to tear it down and put some some cheap suburban-ish shlock. But this is a perfect example of how you can reuse existing old brick buildings and still make them look modern. I hope more of this is done around town. Still not a fan of QD putting their gas station at the corner, though. Traffic is already terrible, there, and there's not enough turn space in between Larch and East at that location. I'm not sure how you fix that short of buying the property (or part of it) at the northeast corner of East and Lake Lansing and moving the intersection to the east with a curve or diagonal street or something. I'm in this area often, so I'm pretty aware of the traffic patterns, and it doesn't work, especially after Eastwood was built.
Getting a bit off topic, here, but I'd always dreamed of the old rail ROW being used for a light rail or bus lane to make a direct transit connection between Eastwood and Downtown. You could turn the route off right where a continuation of Sam's Way would intersect with it and gets you the connection.
Yeah, on Google, the street names aren't loading at closer zooms right away, and I've had to zoom out and back in to get them to. Might be my browser; it had an update, today.
Right now the rail ROW is slated for a trail but I wouldn't be sad to see light or interurban rail there someday. If high speed passenger rail ends up getting built out I think a GR-Detroit via Lansing route is likely to be added and the Port Huron-Chicago route upgraded, along with a Detroit-Chicago route. In that scenario using the Lansing-Jackson RR, including that old ROW, as a smaller/slower interurban route would be a nice touch.
As for the Lake Lansing/27 intersection: I don't understand why they let EB Lake Lansing traffic turn left onto East at all. There's not room for that there, just eliminating that would do a lot to help. Long term maybe buying some of the properties on the south side of Lake Lansing in the block immediately east of 27 would be wise for the city. If a developer bought all the houses in that little disconnected neighborhood at the SE corner there and did something totally different I would not be unhappy at all.
I noticed the commercial plan review is occurring for the Hillsdale Place townhomes at Hillsdale and MLK. On on the BS&A website, there is a "view" hyperlink. But I've always wondered why this stuff is not publicly available when you click on it? You get an error saying that "Anonymous Users" can not access the process, and I've always wondered what is the justification for this opaqueness in the process aside from a developer's and a department's want for privacy for its own sake?
Some deserved discontent from the bike community about the bait and switch on Michigan Avenue.
Instead of dedicated protected bike lanes like shown here;
I guess the bikes are just sharing the sidewalk with pedestrians or light poles;
I was expecting it to look like bike lanes in Europe, which are very clearly differentiated from pedestrian paths. Maybe even like the lanes on the MSU campus. But this? Basically no bike lane for all intents and purposes. Seems like a huge miss by the city.
I saw a WILX report about the affordable housing that is going up downtown on the south side. The depictions are awful. I hope they are just first concept drawings.
Your friend was close. CATA announced they will be buying the old Greyhound bus station on Washington a block south of the CTC for their headquarters...which is fitting. lol How they describe it in such grand terms has me a bit confused, as I can't imagine this is that much bigger than their current offices on Tranter. But maybe I'm overestimating the amount of office space in that barn of their's. Anyway, they say there will be room for "another community partner" in the place, and that this will also serve as a central hub to connect a lot of their more marginalized customers with other services, so a sort of inter-agency center. I'm kind of curious, then, if they are going to do anything with the spot on the corner.
BTW, lots of cool artifacts left in the building. They say they don't know if they'll be reused, but if they are not, I'm sure they'll end up in a local museum here somewhere. That's what I'd hope, anyway:
With the Ovation, CATA office, City Hall and two apartment buildings all within a block or two of each other, I guess we're finally seeing them try to return some life to this side of downtown.
The Michigan Avenue redo is the worst bait-and-switch I've seen in a long time. It should have been illegal to keep up those schematics on their website if this is ultimately what they ultimately didn't contract for. A larger sidewalk is nice, yes; and I think it'll actually work in function for the kind of bicycle traffic we currently have on the street. But this is just kind of plain false advertisement.
I'm a little disappointed in the CATA move. I hate to see a half block of Washington frontage taken up for an institutional use, especially right across from Ovation. In the absence of a mid/high rise going on the site, I think the existing building being turned into restaurant/bar/club or something entertainment/retail oriented would have been nice. As far as I can tell that corner parcel is still owned separately from the old Greyhound station. It doesn't look like all CATA offices will be moving either:
"The vision is for a new facility to house not only some CATA offices, primarily for customer-facing employees, but also provide a new area for public meetings, a resource center for customers, and potentially space for another community partner," officials said in presentation materials for Monday's meeting.
I'm glad to get a CATA presence downtown and I'm sure they'll fix/maintain that building nicely but it's just one of those little decisions that will end up making this move sort of a net-neutral rather than a decisive net-positive for downtown/Washington Sq, at least imo.
@gbinlansing Thanks, wouldn't have watched the video otherwise. Yeah, both buildings look horrible. These buildings are each supposed to cost around $20m, around $370k per unit. I just don't get how these buildings can be that expensive to build. I also can't imagine these (I'm assuming) 5-over-1 or entirely stick built buildings will age well in the LHC's hands. I live very close to these places, if it goes poorly they could easily be the impetus for me to leave. I have a bad feeling about how these are going to turn out. https://www.wilx.com/2024/09/11/housing-proposal-could-put-over-100-affordable-homes-downtown-lansing/
Regarding the Michigan Ave thing, as someone who rides my bike a lot recreationally I was really looking forward to these bike lanes until I realized how they're set up. It's a completely botched design by the city, apparently the result of budget related design changes. They may as well forget the bike lane and just have wider sidewalks with the potential for sidewalk dining, maybe put the bike lanes in the street when they get rid of the asymmetrical lane. Riding up and down the ramps at intersections won't be pleasant, I can't imagine pedestrians will respect the bike lane and most importantly encounters with cars on the side streets will be dangerous on a bike when you're that far back from traffic/stop signs. I've seen complaints on Reddit and Facebook as well.
Comments
BTW, anyone else having issues with street labelling on Google Maps, atm?
I'm not seeing anything unusual with Google Maps myself.
Yeah, North Point surprised me, because I really thought they were just going to tear it down and put some some cheap suburban-ish shlock. But this is a perfect example of how you can reuse existing old brick buildings and still make them look modern. I hope more of this is done around town. Still not a fan of QD putting their gas station at the corner, though. Traffic is already terrible, there, and there's not enough turn space in between Larch and East at that location. I'm not sure how you fix that short of buying the property (or part of it) at the northeast corner of East and Lake Lansing and moving the intersection to the east with a curve or diagonal street or something. I'm in this area often, so I'm pretty aware of the traffic patterns, and it doesn't work, especially after Eastwood was built.
Getting a bit off topic, here, but I'd always dreamed of the old rail ROW being used for a light rail or bus lane to make a direct transit connection between Eastwood and Downtown. You could turn the route off right where a continuation of Sam's Way would intersect with it and gets you the connection.
Yeah, on Google, the street names aren't loading at closer zooms right away, and I've had to zoom out and back in to get them to. Might be my browser; it had an update, today.
As for the Lake Lansing/27 intersection: I don't understand why they let EB Lake Lansing traffic turn left onto East at all. There's not room for that there, just eliminating that would do a lot to help. Long term maybe buying some of the properties on the south side of Lake Lansing in the block immediately east of 27 would be wise for the city. If a developer bought all the houses in that little disconnected neighborhood at the SE corner there and did something totally different I would not be unhappy at all.
I noticed the commercial plan review is occurring for the Hillsdale Place townhomes at Hillsdale and MLK. On on the BS&A website, there is a "view" hyperlink. But I've always wondered why this stuff is not publicly available when you click on it? You get an error saying that "Anonymous Users" can not access the process, and I've always wondered what is the justification for this opaqueness in the process aside from a developer's and a department's want for privacy for its own sake?
Instead of dedicated protected bike lanes like shown here;
I guess the bikes are just sharing the sidewalk with pedestrians or light poles;
I was expecting it to look like bike lanes in Europe, which are very clearly differentiated from pedestrian paths. Maybe even like the lanes on the MSU campus. But this? Basically no bike lane for all intents and purposes. Seems like a huge miss by the city.
Your friend was close. CATA announced they will be buying the old Greyhound bus station on Washington a block south of the CTC for their headquarters...which is fitting. lol How they describe it in such grand terms has me a bit confused, as I can't imagine this is that much bigger than their current offices on Tranter. But maybe I'm overestimating the amount of office space in that barn of their's. Anyway, they say there will be room for "another community partner" in the place, and that this will also serve as a central hub to connect a lot of their more marginalized customers with other services, so a sort of inter-agency center. I'm kind of curious, then, if they are going to do anything with the spot on the corner.
BTW, lots of cool artifacts left in the building. They say they don't know if they'll be reused, but if they are not, I'm sure they'll end up in a local museum here somewhere. That's what I'd hope, anyway:
With the Ovation, CATA office, City Hall and two apartment buildings all within a block or two of each other, I guess we're finally seeing them try to return some life to this side of downtown.
I'm glad to get a CATA presence downtown and I'm sure they'll fix/maintain that building nicely but it's just one of those little decisions that will end up making this move sort of a net-neutral rather than a decisive net-positive for downtown/Washington Sq, at least imo.
@gbinlansing Thanks, wouldn't have watched the video otherwise. Yeah, both buildings look horrible. These buildings are each supposed to cost around $20m, around $370k per unit. I just don't get how these buildings can be that expensive to build. I also can't imagine these (I'm assuming) 5-over-1 or entirely stick built buildings will age well in the LHC's hands. I live very close to these places, if it goes poorly they could easily be the impetus for me to leave. I have a bad feeling about how these are going to turn out.
https://www.wilx.com/2024/09/11/housing-proposal-could-put-over-100-affordable-homes-downtown-lansing/
Regarding the Michigan Ave thing, as someone who rides my bike a lot recreationally I was really looking forward to these bike lanes until I realized how they're set up. It's a completely botched design by the city, apparently the result of budget related design changes. They may as well forget the bike lane and just have wider sidewalks with the potential for sidewalk dining, maybe put the bike lanes in the street when they get rid of the asymmetrical lane. Riding up and down the ramps at intersections won't be pleasant, I can't imagine pedestrians will respect the bike lane and most importantly encounters with cars on the side streets will be dangerous on a bike when you're that far back from traffic/stop signs. I've seen complaints on Reddit and Facebook as well.