Urban density with some human comfort is a very good for true urban "village" neighborhoods. In my crazy dreams I could see a "canal district" on the northwest side next to the river, a couple of u-shaped cannels with some dense housing and retail, and ta-da you could have a tourist district and a new neighborhood. The river naturally downhill flows to the north that could fill the cannels, and it would be possible to change the water each day like they do in Amsterdam. It would be cool to think outside of the money box once in a while. In Holland MI they built a windmill with the thought that people would want to visit the windmill in the future, and it was true it is one of the most popular attractions in the state.
You all mentioned some renderings of the two affordable apartment buildings being constructed down in Cherry Hill, and I was curious if anyone knows who the architects are, or were the designs done in-house of the developers of these properties?
They have been using www.hookerdejong.com
The city told them about the proposed rules for articulation and prohibiting different styles/materials from crossing multiple floors/horizontal segments and the blue and brown stripes on the wilx news story made me smack my forehead in frustration.
It's weird, the September 9th council packet shows "no attachment files" when they did the presentation for both of these. And the most D&P meeting doesn't have any actual drawings on it either. But the media somehow gets them? lol
I do hope that there's at least some modest changes to the design. I also really wish they would've included at least a small retail space in the building to the south.
I think at most there is a small office space for the apartment/LHC in the riverview 220 building. I know they explored commercial early in the process and it got scrapped pretty fast because they could not identify any demand and whatever happened with the CATA discussions happened.
Yeah, especially since COVID, it seems the concept of "ground floor commercial space" is mostly dead when we're talking about apartment buildings. They were having hard times leasing space before then. But now you don't even hear it broached.
How could they identify demand when there's nothing on Grand Ave and no similar space has been built anywhere downtown west of the river? I don't think looking at COVID-era retail vacancy rates are much use either. Not to mention that between City View, Tower on Grand and these LHC buildings we're talking around 600 new units within a few blocks, probably over 1000 new nearby residents.
It sucks to see these Grand Ave projects getting minimal or no retail. I cannot understate how much of a joke it is that our city's main downtown shopping/entertainment district is basically four blocks (or really just the two blocks from Michigan to Washtenaw) of storefronts along one street. Downtown Lansing will never not be a joke as long as that's true. Even little Kalamazoo has Lansing handily beat when it comes to a cohesive and walkable shopping & entertainment district.
I have noticed that retail space in my building right in downtown East Lansing has not been fully leased out in the building built in 2019, as well as the newer buildings along Michigan Avenue all have never rented retail space. I often think if landlords would offer an affordable rent for startup businesses rather than owning an empty space there may be some more storefronts open in our retail districts. I think the new developments are going to have more housing units. It seems like Lansing has never really had a good plan for the downtown district, starting with its destruction for the '60s '70s urban renewal that turned downtown into an office park. Kalamazoo had one oof the first pedestrian malls in their downtown, from the start it was a better project. Now that we have people moving back downtown, there need to be stores and services for those people.
I'd love to know at what price point retail space in a new mid rise or 5-over-1 becomes viable. A lot of times developers of new buildings are picky about their commercial tenants which is part of it, another reason is that developers and real estate agents in some areas seem to like to keep rents high to bump up the rental market and/or to support certain market valuations for their properties, it's more evident in some super high demand markets in big cities. I don't understand the economics of it all, a lot of factors go into those decisions and not everyone in the industry seems to agree with the strategy. Provident Place wants $16.50/psf which is high for that stretch of Michigan Ave and pushing the limits of what I'd expect a local business to want to pay but it's not expensive in the grand scheme of things. Downtown EL has some properties asking $35/psf, the Vista at Eastwood is $25-$27/psf, older strip malls along W Saginaw seem to run $11-$17/psf.
Comments
The city told them about the proposed rules for articulation and prohibiting different styles/materials from crossing multiple floors/horizontal segments and the blue and brown stripes on the wilx news story made me smack my forehead in frustration.
It sucks to see these Grand Ave projects getting minimal or no retail. I cannot understate how much of a joke it is that our city's main downtown shopping/entertainment district is basically four blocks (or really just the two blocks from Michigan to Washtenaw) of storefronts along one street. Downtown Lansing will never not be a joke as long as that's true. Even little Kalamazoo has Lansing handily beat when it comes to a cohesive and walkable shopping & entertainment district.