I forget which one, but one of them has 2,000 sq ft of office space on the ground floor. I think it may be Grand Vista Place.
I'm not concerned with the tenancy; I feel like that's an old trope. It's not that they are low-income that the design is bad. That's just not an excuse, especially given how much state money is being invested, here. Walnut Park is affordable and it doesn't look bad:
Same with Stadium North, whose design is not great. But these have got to be the worst I've seen. Admittedly, the quality of the renderings if poor, but the design is bad all the way around to the oddly placed balconies to the colors; it just looks a mess of a design for both.
I know that in many places they have architectural standard boards that must be followed in order to get a permit, such boards would not have to be doctorial but might work with the developer to come up with a decent design for the same price. Plus, this looks like some sort of A-I kind of drawing, I think developer would do better if they had a human drawing their concepts.
While the renderings are bad, that's not why I call them projects, the design just makes things worse. Walnut Park, while a nice looking building, has had its problems. And I don't think it's as highly subsidized as these buildings will be?? Having 100% rent assisted properties isn't good for anyone involved, it often ends in a bad environment for the residents which has negative affects on the immediate surroundings and the area at large. Just spitballing, but I'd say the max should be around 50%-60% rent assisted units, the rest could be any mix of market rate or workforce housing. I get that these are far along in the process and probably can't be changed, but this shouldn't happen again and such developments should be discouraged everywhere in the city. I'm all for some sort system/ordinance that incentivizes/requires the inclusion of workforce and/or low-income housing into otherwise market rate developments but it'd have to reasonable and well thought out.
Nothing much for council next week. Just stuff making it through the process. Consent agenda has the OPRA for the old gas station in REO Town at Washington and Elm. Ordinances introduced and setting of public hearings are for the Form-Based Code stuff. The public hearing for rezoning of the lot at Pleasant Grove at Pleasant View for the construction of 10 units will be held.
Only other thing up for passage are the ordinances for PILOTs for Riverview 220 and Grand Vista Place.
Only interesting thing in the upcoming Planning Commission agenda is that the City Clerk wants to move its election's division into a sad, tiny, non-descript former Salvation Army distribution center, permanently, on the southside on Jolly near Washington. Disappointed in this, honestly. Anyway, this is an Act 33 review, which is required when the city wants to purchase real estate.
Union Missionary Baptist wants to put a common metal storage shed on its property along St. Joseph in the middle of the abandoned and rotted out portion of its excess parking lot fronting that road. Instead of making them tear up what is blight, the recommendation of the Planning Office is to add to it. The variance is because most of the site is a "front yard", that they are "only" requesting an extra foot over the requirement if it were in compliance, and that a masonry structure would be "too expensive" for them. But even they seem to know that this is blight, because they are conditioning this on them placing a few trees and shrubs in from of it along St. Joseph.
This town is so cooked. lol Church should have never been allowed to have been cited like it is in the first place, and we're just going to keep grandfathering these problems in. The code just doesn't mean anything if the planning office is constantly going to subvert it. It seems a little thing, but it keeps happening so often that it becomes the rule. Something like this should not even be considered before they first clean up their blighted parking lot on St. Joseph. So it's ass-backwards to give them permission to ADD to that problem.
Thanks for the information. It looks like a terrible plan. I wonder what they need this building for. I have always disliked the placement of the street and the church. These days they could close one side and still have no traffic problems. It was all kind of racist in the first place, clearing the oldest black neighborhoods for improved traffic flow seems to have been done with little thought for the people who lived there and for a future that now and even as it was built, was overbuilt. Then they "gave" the folks that space for the church to "reconnect" the neighborhood. If we can see how bad these plans were and are why can't the city planners
This is exactly the kind of little negative thing that I've seen too much of in this city in recent years, it's part of why I feel so torn on this city's future. If this kind of stuff is making to committee I can only imagine the other kinds of mistakes and short sighted decisions going on behind the scenes. I mean, a pole barn on a prominent downtown corner? Are they serious?
They should be encouraging the church to sell the land for development or build church owned apartments there, but instead they recommend approval of this pole barn. Why even have zoning laws? Why bother to adopt a form based code? You'd be hard pressed to propose a building that was more against the spirit of the form based code than this.
Yeah, I almost didn't want to post it. But it's exactly these kind of tiny things that get my blood boiling. I've been complaining forever that they let that entire part of their property become blight. You can literally see it on aerials of the site.
I would begrudingly be okay with this if they were forced to tear up the blighted parking lot around. I get they might need somewhere to store grounds crew equipment out-of-site (though, they could do that in that little garage across MLK). But to just give them this variance because they sited their building in the wrong way on the property?
What I hope is that people call into council so they rejected this recommendation, but going after a church is hard. But why aren't they being fined for their blighted parking lot? Any homeowner gets a ticket if there grass is a milimeter too tall.
You want a variance for a shed? Condition it on returning all that property on the south side to permeable surface. The idea that a church this large doesn't have money for that, or even just to make it masonry is laughable.
It's revolting to see that satellite view cropped like that, it makes it impossible to ignore how horrible of a use of land it is.
I honestly couldn't get behind a pole barn anywhere in front of the church, especially near the street, under any circumstances. As you said, the church's poor planning is not the city's nor the neighborhood's problem. An attached structure on the backside of the church would be the best outcome imo.
The thing is that that's not really the "front" of the property, at least not functionally, which is kind of what the variance is trying to get around. Since it's a parcel surrounded by public streets, every side is technically the "front." But even in this case, the St. Joseph entrance is almost never used. You can see by the different colors of the parking lot surfaces. They have simply abanonded everything along St. Joesph and the parking and driveway off of that to the Hillsdale-level entrance to the lot. If you can drive by, you can tell they simply stopped maintaining it. It's full of weeds. and most disintegrated.
Functionally, the "front" of the church is that part off the northwest entrance drive. And the planning office shares its opinion that forcing them to put it in the back would be impractical. /eyeroll The entire report is written on every point as if the church wrote it; it's BIZARRE.
Comments
I'm not concerned with the tenancy; I feel like that's an old trope. It's not that they are low-income that the design is bad. That's just not an excuse, especially given how much state money is being invested, here. Walnut Park is affordable and it doesn't look bad:
Same with Stadium North, whose design is not great. But these have got to be the worst I've seen. Admittedly, the quality of the renderings if poor, but the design is bad all the way around to the oddly placed balconies to the colors; it just looks a mess of a design for both.
Only other thing up for passage are the ordinances for PILOTs for Riverview 220 and Grand Vista Place.
Only interesting thing in the upcoming Planning Commission agenda is that the City Clerk wants to move its election's division into a sad, tiny, non-descript former Salvation Army distribution center, permanently, on the southside on Jolly near Washington. Disappointed in this, honestly. Anyway, this is an Act 33 review, which is required when the city wants to purchase real estate.
This town is so cooked. lol Church should have never been allowed to have been cited like it is in the first place, and we're just going to keep grandfathering these problems in. The code just doesn't mean anything if the planning office is constantly going to subvert it. It seems a little thing, but it keeps happening so often that it becomes the rule. Something like this should not even be considered before they first clean up their blighted parking lot on St. Joseph. So it's ass-backwards to give them permission to ADD to that problem.
They should be encouraging the church to sell the land for development or build church owned apartments there, but instead they recommend approval of this pole barn. Why even have zoning laws? Why bother to adopt a form based code? You'd be hard pressed to propose a building that was more against the spirit of the form based code than this.
I would begrudingly be okay with this if they were forced to tear up the blighted parking lot around. I get they might need somewhere to store grounds crew equipment out-of-site (though, they could do that in that little garage across MLK). But to just give them this variance because they sited their building in the wrong way on the property?
What I hope is that people call into council so they rejected this recommendation, but going after a church is hard. But why aren't they being fined for their blighted parking lot? Any homeowner gets a ticket if there grass is a milimeter too tall.
You want a variance for a shed? Condition it on returning all that property on the south side to permeable surface. The idea that a church this large doesn't have money for that, or even just to make it masonry is laughable.
I honestly couldn't get behind a pole barn anywhere in front of the church, especially near the street, under any circumstances. As you said, the church's poor planning is not the city's nor the neighborhood's problem. An attached structure on the backside of the church would be the best outcome imo.
Functionally, the "front" of the church is that part off the northwest entrance drive. And the planning office shares its opinion that forcing them to put it in the back would be impractical. /eyeroll The entire report is written on every point as if the church wrote it; it's BIZARRE.
https://lansingmi.portal.civicclerk.com/event/6647/files/agenda/8743
I'm not going to ask citykid to defend his boss, because, quite frankly, you can't in any real seriousness. lol