Marketplace

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  • ok, I'll give a try! The drawing that I am speaking of is projected on a flat screen so photographing through the window might not work too well.

  • Sorry I could not get a good photo of the drawings through the windows. One thing I did notice was the area that looks like a parking structure is located on the Shiawassee side of the "new corner building" between the corner and the current newly constructed apartments. I don't know if it is a parking structure but that is what it looks like.

  • edited January 2018

    Came across the work zone cam for the Marketplace addition the other day. (I don't believe it had already been posted.) I imagine there's some interior work still to be done, but it looks nearly complete. Their web site indicates spring 2018.

  • That was pretty cool, I almost found the weather more interesting than the building. They have taken down the depiction of the next phase to be built at the studio, I will keep my eye open for any new drawing on display.

  • What I noticed is how underutilized the vehicle parking lot is. I did not count spots but ~1/3 of the spots appeared empty and some vehicles move infrequently. Maybe with adding many new apartments utilization rates will be higher. Seems like a poor use of space.

  • The parking lot definitely is full. Even if you just include phase one and consider that you have around 80 apartments, and consider that some apartments require more than one car per apartment, that's a fully-utilized lot.

    The lot isn't particularly large; they may have even got a varience to require less parking, I'd almost certainly bet. Just counting from an aerial, the old lot doesn't even appear to have had one spot per unit.

    The problem is how the site is oriented. Eventually, the building to be built on Cedar will cover up the lot, but until then it's something of an eyesore. But, more than that, Gillespie needs to be a bit more brave and start offering even less parking. Realistically - and they've been trying to get this done forever - there needs to be a parking garage on this side of the river for visitors, and then they could lease out a level or two for people who live in the area. Land in the literal core of a downtown area should never be devoted to private surface parking.

  • Excellent insight. I agree that offering less parking could be beneficial in many ways and would support this. I support more buildings or greenspace over parking any day. You are right about putting parking space to better use.
    From google maps, it looks appears there are 155 spots + 5 ADA spots. This is prior to the expansion of the lot to accommodate the new building. The camera view does cover the farthest part of the lot from the building. From the video, I could reliably count 39 (25%) of the total spots in the video. There were on average 12 spots occupied in this area, (n=30), which is a 31% utilization rate of the 25% of the total spots. While it is a fair assumption that residents are at work as the images are lit. So there is observer bias in this count. This could make the lot appear less occupied as the images do not capture the residents parking after work hours. If I only knew which frames were the weekend then I could get a better understanding.
    I would conclude that there is ample daytime parking in the lot. Is this a resident only lot, I do not know? Maybe this could be useful for businesses in the area to have shared day/night spots between business and resident parking.

  • edited January 2018

    I'm using Bing Maps bird's eye view in counting the spots in the old lot. Minus the two bays of covered parking in the middle of the lot - because I can't accurately count them under the awning - I don't even count 100 spots. So, it's more than I thought, but I'm not seeing 155 spots in the pre-expanded lot.

    Yes, this is a resident's-and-visitors-only lot. And, yes, the lot is largely filled after work/at night. Lansing is still a place where a lot of these downtown residents overwhelmingly own cars. The problem is that if you built the parking, it further encourages the eat your cake and have it to lifestyle. It's like road expansion in that way.

    EDIT: Keep forgetting that this is zoned G-1 Business District which means there aren't even any parking requirements, so this is doubly egregious.

  • edited January 2018

    I've noticed that they have the exterior lighting up on this one at night, so it looks like most of the work is left in the interior. This one may open sooner than scheduled. Funny thing is that the lighting is a bit different than the lighting on the south wing.

  • Fluorescents vs LED lights perhaps?

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