To me someone who lived in a small village sixty miles from the nearest mall, everyplace in Lansing seems really close especially if you take the highways. I find it more interesting to take local streets to different centers as I live in REO town near downtown. I often use Kalamazoo to get to Frandor or East Lansing which take less than tens minuets if you roll with the green lights. I think that street would be great for an urban pedestrian and bike path more for bike and walking commuters and shoppers that could go right into the Red Cedar and Frandor areas. It would be very cool to have a trolley system using the old railways to stitch togeather all the new and classic neighborhoods.
Is the hotel building ban in downtown is in effect? Many cities have hotels downtown, and if I were visiting Lansing I would feel kind of stranded out there at Eastwood if I did not have a car. It is close to Old Town and Downtown, but not walk able. Any way when and where could they build a hotel downtown?
There isn't a hotel building ban downtown, there's an agreement with the Radisson that says the City can't give tax credits to a hotel project until sometime in 2017, I don't expect a new downtown hotel until then.
I see. I do understand that Lansing nearly had to beg someone to build downtown back when the Raddisson was built, it is really exciting to me that Lansing is in so much better shape now. I bet in 2016 we could hear about a hotel downtown. Is the casino planning have a hotel?
Again, in a revitalization where developers are still very much addicted to the various development incentives, no hotel is going to consider downtown with the deal with the Radisson in place. I personally think a hotel could be successfully developed without incentives, but try convincing developers of taking such a risk. Not taking incentives is basically viewed as unilateral disarming for them, and why shouldn't it be? No, there was no firm plan for a hotel with the casino, and it's because of the Radisson deal. There was talk some years ago of a hotel attached to the Lansing Center, but it was also only thrown around as a distant option because of the Radisson deal. The Radisson deal kills any actual and serious talk of hotel development in downtown Lansing.
I was talking with someone with GLCVB and asked them if they were in favor of a casino downtown. They said that officially they have no position, unofficially they want it because it would mean another hotel downtown, which we do need.
It seems like they gave Raddisson a huge amount of power here. This whole tax abatement deal or what ever the city has to offer to convince someone to build something seems to me should be outdated. To me it sounds like the people who say "I cann't pay the minimum wage it would kill my business". To me if you can not pay the minimum wage than you don't really have a business. Now developers "I can not build anything without a tax incentive that would kill my development". I know they will just go somewhere else but maybe we should try to end this. Make a business plan that includes paying taxes.
We saw a movie in Eastwood tonight, and out Uber driver on the way there commented that if they keep building stuff there they're going to have to widen the entry/exit roads. Sure enough, coming home we found ourselves in a gigantic line of cars inching their way down one-lane Preyde Blvd. to Lake Lansing.
Yeah, traffic can be pretty rough in the Lake Lansing/127 area. Running Coleman Rd under the freeway through to Wood Rd would help, I think they would really need to add a freeway ramp at Coleman or State Rd also.
I just came across the Facebook page for the Vista at the Heights. Does anyone know when the building was completed? Because the page seems to imply that it's open for occupancy. Leasing started in October, but that could have been before it opened. A December 19 post has a picture captioned that it was taken by a resident:
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Is the hotel building ban in downtown is in effect? Many cities have hotels downtown, and if I were visiting Lansing I would feel kind of stranded out there at Eastwood if I did not have a car. It is close to Old Town and Downtown, but not walk able. Any way when and where could they build a hotel downtown?
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Did they announce the opening of the place and I missed it?