Volaris Lansing

edited July 2020 in Lansing

This is a proposal for four, 4-story apartment buildings containing 286 units at 3600 Dunckel, and old hotel property. From the LSJ:

LANSING — A four-building, $52 million apartment complex at the site of a former hotel near the intersection of Dunckel and Collins roads could start construction later this year.

The complex is designed meet the housing needs of new medical professionals who will come to Lansing for jobs at McLaren Greater Lansing's new hospital. The hospital announced in December plans to consolidate operations at its two south Lansing facilities into one $450 million facility near Michigan State University.

“This will be one of the first few incidental positives that comes out of the McLaren announcement," Lansing Mayor Andy Schor said.

The proposed housing development will have four buildings holding 286 market-rate units. The project will include garage parking, an outdoor pool, courtyards, grilling stations, an enclosed outdoor dog park, a clubhouse and a leasing center.

This is a brownfiled plan (#73) and will formally be introduced at the Lansing City Council's July 23 meeting so that the Planning & Development Committee can review it and set a public hearing for it in a few weeks. This starts on page 172 of this week's agenda.

A few interesting things we find out are that they only takes in part of the 12.09 acre 3600 Dunckel parcel, cutting off some of the not-built areas to the north and west and includes the the "Collins Road" parcel in total. In total, this would make these two parcels 9.6 acres.

Waypoint

3600 Dunckel

This is very generic, but I'll give a bit of a pass because 1. it's still really early 2. this is literally at the edge of the city 3. they are at least using some hard surfacing on the facade, and 4. it's appropriately scaled when they could have done something even smaller/generic. I look forward to seeing the site plan. I do want to see them use less vinyl siding, though, and the council should push for some design changes.

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Comments

  • Let's hope for something more interesting, maybe even nice looking.

  • edited July 2018

    A bit more information I got on this one. Apparently, the zoning map is out-of-date and the rezoning of this site did go through way-back-when. It shows a DM-2 zoning, which is moderate multi-family (up to 31.1 units/acre), when it's really a E-1 zoning, which allows the highest residential densities (up to 87.1 units/acre) and also mixed usage. Also, either Waypoint or someone they will choose will develop commercial along Dunckel, which is why we are seeing the lot split in this brownfield plans, so that puts my mind at ease.

  • The added commercial space could be quite beneficial for those in the area. Looks to add substantial value to Collins Rd.

  • I like the look of these buildings but I'm disappointed that they're going with vinyl siding rather than fiber board or LP. Switch out the materials while keeping the design and I'd be happy with this one.

  • The council's committing on development and planning at their August 6th meeting reviewed the plan and recommend council set a public hearing for this brownfield plan on August 27th.

    At the same time, since the developers are requesting to develop this under the "planned residential development" (PRD) overlay, they have to go through the process for that - a special land use permit for the PRD - which they started at the August 7th planning board meeting. The next step for that will be for it to be referred the council's committee on development and planning for a review and recommendation of setting of a public hearing, which I imagined happened at the August 7th meeting.

    So the Special Land Use Permit is a step behind the review and approval of the brownfield plan. In either case, this seems to be moving very quickly.

  • edited August 2018

    This continues to move apace. The council will be holding a public hearing on the brownfield plan for this project on Monday. After that, I'm not 100% sure of the next step. I think it gets sent back to the Development and Planning Committee for their next meeting to make their final recommendation.

    The "planned residential development" (PRD) request for this one will also be introduced to the council on Monday, at which point they will refer the request to the Committee on Development & Planning. Development and Planning will then review and make their recommedation on it at their next meeting early next month, at which point the full council sets a public hearing. I think it's then sent back to Committee on Development & Planning to make its final recommendation at their next meeting.

    After the committe makes its final recommendation on both of these, I believe the full council then decides at their next meeting whether or not to put it on the full agenda. I'd guess this whole process will wrap up no later than early October, probably sooner. They want to have shovels in the ground by December, with a June 2020 completion.

  • edited September 2018

    The new planning board agenda for early September is out and as it always does include minutes from the previous meeting. We already know the PRD was approved by the planning board since it's gone to the city council, but we find that the planning approved this on a 5-1 vote.

  • edited September 2018

    The Committee on Development and Planning gets the brownfield plan for this one back next Monday at which they'll recommend this one or not to the full council. So after Monday, there is only one more step for the brownfield plan and that's the full council vote, which should happen by the end of the month. Oh, we find out that there will be 548 parking spaces (only 494 spaces were required) for the 286 units in the four buildings on the 9.6 acre site, and we get a color site plan. 468 of the spaces will be the surface parking with the remainder being the "tuck-under" parking.

    And, apparently, the PRD is not a step behind, as the Committee on Development and Planning will be deciding their recommendation at this meeeting for the PRD, too.

    So it looks like the all approvals will be done for this one by the end of the month. Their Decemeber construction start doesn't strike me as overly ambitious at all, then.

    Oh, the project has finally been given a formal name: Volaris Lansing.

  • edited September 2018

    The Committee of D&P appears to have held their Monday (Sep. 17) meeting that was to make their final recommednation to the full council on the Brownfield Plan & PRD for this project, along with a few other items. But then I see they've a special meeting of the committee for this Friday (Sep. 21) with the Brownfield Plan & PRD being the only items on the agenda. So it sounds like either two of the three councillers must not have been present at the beginning of Monday's meeting but got their in time for the later agenda items, or there was some problem on the developer's end that required these two items to be discussed again this Friday. In either case, the Brownfield Plan & PRD should be going up for final approval at next Monday's council meeting, depending on exactly what's going on with having to have scheduled this special Friday meeting.

    Anyway, I pulled the site plan I talked about out of the brownfield plan packet to give you an idea of the layout:

    Super auto-oriented, but what you gonna's do?

    EDIT: WTF? The Friday meeting of Committee on D&P has been cancelled.

  • edited September 2018

    Committee on D&P agenda is out for next week, and so it includes the last meetings minutes. We find out what happened on Monday and then the Friday cancellation of the special meeting. Apparently, out of nowhere, Councilwoman Washington called for the approval process to be stopped until the developer could prove they were doing a local labor agreement for this one. Seems like this would have been something they'd have stated they want to see from the beginning. So, they tabled the item on Monday and scheduled another meeting for it for last Friday, and then of course we find out that was cancelled, too. So I don't know what's going on. Hopefully, it was just the members of the committee not being able to make the meeting and not something more serious.

    Anyway the the brownfield and planned residential development special land use permit are back for next Monday's Committee on D&P agenda.

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