Also, did you ever find out the name of the contractors working on the Hub? I believe their name is "Strample" or something similar - again, it is on a large sign across the street from the construction.
The city council followed the planning commissions approval last month by voting to allowin hotels in the B-4 Restricted Office zoning districts. Ostensibly, the reason given for the change is that since this zoning district is largely north of Lake Lansing in the Northern Tier, that the types of hotels would be geared toward the big office buildings up that way, so business travelers.
I'm skeptical. This looks like East Lansing wanting to get in on all of the hotel development happening in Lansing Township across the freeway the hotels being planned for Red Cedar. I just continue to wonder why the city is concentrating so hard spreading itself out up Coolidge and West roads, when they'd be much better off on focusing their attention placing hotels closer to the university, which is where the real demand for accomodations are needed in East Lansing. Realisticaly, most hotels in the area serve large events at the university; it's not like East Lansing is some prominent office center even with the office development up the Northern Tier. This really just seems like the effect will be to cannibalize the hotel market, really, and then create more traffic from the Northern Tier when folks have to get down to the events at the university.
Meh, rant over, but it strikes me as another example of the region not really working together to more smartly uses its land resources. Preferably, you'd want to see Lansing, the township, East Lansing and MSU work way more closely together than they are to centralize all kinds of development in between these areas (i.e. a few corridors between something like Lake Lansing to the north and Kalamazoo/Trowbridge to the south).
One top of this, the planning commission is even recommending allowing hotels in the more broad B-1 General Office zoning district, so that would be even more competion. To be clear, when the city captured all of this land right after 2000, the plan was for this to be an office district since there were so few areas left in the city to develop large, corporate office buildings.
It seems unlikely, but maybe there could be a Greater Lansing Authority with all the big and little municipalities represented. The Authority would oversee regional resources, parks, and trails, transit, airports, roads and take up planning for development. Perhaps this would help focus on issues as a region instead of a dozen different smaller myopic communities that seem to think they are islands, not surrounded by a larger overall community. County government does take on some of these issues without stepping on the local official's toes. A good example of these artificial boundaries is on Michigan Ave. in the very center of our true city is a line where the new pavement ends and where Lansing Township begins and that is where huge potholes again open, just down the street is the City of Lansing again. It's just not logical if there was a coordinated effort the Township could have had their funds lined up with Lansing and East Lansing, etc. to pave this important street from the Capitol to Okemos. Just dreaming!
The LSJ ran a story yesterday about the various construction projects in East Lansing (they included Park District even though there is no current proposal).
The four developments they covered are Park District, Center City, 565 E. Grand River Avenue, and The Hub.
Most notable item I saw was:
The Target should be operational by the spring of 2019. The parking garage should be accessible around the same time, he said. The entire project should be finished in August 2019, Dempsey said.
I wonder if the time has come to open up Park District to smaller scale developments. After 15 years it looks like the market just doesn't want to build up that site the way East Lansing wants. The more I think about it, while Abbot and Grand River may appear to be a logical center point for downtown, in reality it seems like the main axis of downtown has shifted to the east over the years. Really Park District is almost more on the outskirts of the modern downtown than in the heart. It immediately dies off to the west.
The main reason it dies off is due to the absence of life there for 15 years. There used to be a lot of businesses in that Thai Hut block, and you can see how that extends towards Crunchy's etc. Building something at Park District has the potential to reconnect the western end of downtown East Lansing.
From east to west 20 years ago there was:
1. a large office building at Abbot and Grand River,
2. a Subway restaurant
3. a pizza buffet restaurant with student apartments above
4. a couple small businesses (I believe)
5. People's Church
6. 7-11 (Jonna's To Go is there now)
7. a McDonald's Express (now the parking lot for People's Church)
8. a car wash (still there)
9. Crunchy's (still there)
10. Biggby's (still there)
11. a Chinese restaurant (I think the name may have been "happy day" or ended with "sun")
12. and a Greyhound station (now 300 Grand apartments with vacant ground floor retail)
Building Park District has the potential to bring people further west which may provide the necessary foot traffic to fill in the vacancies at 300 Grand. If the proposed residential addition to the car wash ever gets re-proposed and accepted, as well as if a development goes in on the People's Church parking lot we could see a very different East Lansing than today
I kind of disagree about the premise that development shifted. If anything, the last decade saw development shift west extending the downtown along Grand River and Michigan. Yeah, some businesses left, but a lot of new housing was built west. Basically, you had Stonehouse Village growing up on the east, but everything else was on the west end. And, quite frankly, Abbot sort of marks the western end of downtown, anyway, just given how Grand River and Michigan split. In fact, I was impressed given how funky the lots are that we saw as much redevelopment as we did west of Abbot, and I'd actually argue that Center City and Park District are more the "west" end of downtown than the "east."
"West" downtown is doing just fine, really, save for the whole that is Park District. Developers have developed there in spite of that cursed project.
East Lansing officials still seem confident that another proposal for Park District is imminent and I don't have any reason to doubt them. They've made it sound like Evergreen Ave may essentially stay in place making for at least two separate buildings facing Grand River. There's the real potential for this to become a positive.
As for the state of Abbot/Grand River area I agree with the others in that it's been doing well besides the Park District property. I will say that the thing I most hope for in downtown EL is an impressive high-rise at the Michigan/Grand River triangle. There's good potential for downtown EL to expand to essentially fill the Michigan/GR/Harrison block; probably with residential low & mid rises on the interior and mixed use buildings fronting the main streets on the perimeter.
Comments
Also, did you ever find out the name of the contractors working on the Hub? I believe their name is "Strample" or something similar - again, it is on a large sign across the street from the construction.
Haven't been able to catch a sign driving by, unfortunately. I guess I could check with the city.
Spence Brothers, not Strample... I see from the Hub thread that you also got this info from the city.
The city council followed the planning commissions approval last month by voting to allowin hotels in the B-4 Restricted Office zoning districts. Ostensibly, the reason given for the change is that since this zoning district is largely north of Lake Lansing in the Northern Tier, that the types of hotels would be geared toward the big office buildings up that way, so business travelers.
I'm skeptical. This looks like East Lansing wanting to get in on all of the hotel development happening in Lansing Township across the freeway the hotels being planned for Red Cedar. I just continue to wonder why the city is concentrating so hard spreading itself out up Coolidge and West roads, when they'd be much better off on focusing their attention placing hotels closer to the university, which is where the real demand for accomodations are needed in East Lansing. Realisticaly, most hotels in the area serve large events at the university; it's not like East Lansing is some prominent office center even with the office development up the Northern Tier. This really just seems like the effect will be to cannibalize the hotel market, really, and then create more traffic from the Northern Tier when folks have to get down to the events at the university.
Meh, rant over, but it strikes me as another example of the region not really working together to more smartly uses its land resources. Preferably, you'd want to see Lansing, the township, East Lansing and MSU work way more closely together than they are to centralize all kinds of development in between these areas (i.e. a few corridors between something like Lake Lansing to the north and Kalamazoo/Trowbridge to the south).
One top of this, the planning commission is even recommending allowing hotels in the more broad B-1 General Office zoning district, so that would be even more competion. To be clear, when the city captured all of this land right after 2000, the plan was for this to be an office district since there were so few areas left in the city to develop large, corporate office buildings.
https://www.cityofeastlansing.com/694/Northern-Tier-Land-Use-Plan
Current B-4 zoning:
https://eastlansinginfo.org/sites/default/files/b4_map.pdf
It seems unlikely, but maybe there could be a Greater Lansing Authority with all the big and little municipalities represented. The Authority would oversee regional resources, parks, and trails, transit, airports, roads and take up planning for development. Perhaps this would help focus on issues as a region instead of a dozen different smaller myopic communities that seem to think they are islands, not surrounded by a larger overall community. County government does take on some of these issues without stepping on the local official's toes. A good example of these artificial boundaries is on Michigan Ave. in the very center of our true city is a line where the new pavement ends and where Lansing Township begins and that is where huge potholes again open, just down the street is the City of Lansing again. It's just not logical if there was a coordinated effort the Township could have had their funds lined up with Lansing and East Lansing, etc. to pave this important street from the Capitol to Okemos. Just dreaming!
The LSJ ran a story yesterday about the various construction projects in East Lansing (they included Park District even though there is no current proposal).
https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2018/04/05/4-developments-watch-downtown-east-lansing/479839002/
The four developments they covered are Park District, Center City, 565 E. Grand River Avenue, and The Hub.
Most notable item I saw was:
I wonder if the time has come to open up Park District to smaller scale developments. After 15 years it looks like the market just doesn't want to build up that site the way East Lansing wants. The more I think about it, while Abbot and Grand River may appear to be a logical center point for downtown, in reality it seems like the main axis of downtown has shifted to the east over the years. Really Park District is almost more on the outskirts of the modern downtown than in the heart. It immediately dies off to the west.
The main reason it dies off is due to the absence of life there for 15 years. There used to be a lot of businesses in that Thai Hut block, and you can see how that extends towards Crunchy's etc. Building something at Park District has the potential to reconnect the western end of downtown East Lansing.
From east to west 20 years ago there was:
1. a large office building at Abbot and Grand River,
2. a Subway restaurant
3. a pizza buffet restaurant with student apartments above
4. a couple small businesses (I believe)
5. People's Church
6. 7-11 (Jonna's To Go is there now)
7. a McDonald's Express (now the parking lot for People's Church)
8. a car wash (still there)
9. Crunchy's (still there)
10. Biggby's (still there)
11. a Chinese restaurant (I think the name may have been "happy day" or ended with "sun")
12. and a Greyhound station (now 300 Grand apartments with vacant ground floor retail)
Building Park District has the potential to bring people further west which may provide the necessary foot traffic to fill in the vacancies at 300 Grand. If the proposed residential addition to the car wash ever gets re-proposed and accepted, as well as if a development goes in on the People's Church parking lot we could see a very different East Lansing than today
I kind of disagree about the premise that development shifted. If anything, the last decade saw development shift west extending the downtown along Grand River and Michigan. Yeah, some businesses left, but a lot of new housing was built west. Basically, you had Stonehouse Village growing up on the east, but everything else was on the west end. And, quite frankly, Abbot sort of marks the western end of downtown, anyway, just given how Grand River and Michigan split. In fact, I was impressed given how funky the lots are that we saw as much redevelopment as we did west of Abbot, and I'd actually argue that Center City and Park District are more the "west" end of downtown than the "east."
"West" downtown is doing just fine, really, save for the whole that is Park District. Developers have developed there in spite of that cursed project.
East Lansing officials still seem confident that another proposal for Park District is imminent and I don't have any reason to doubt them. They've made it sound like Evergreen Ave may essentially stay in place making for at least two separate buildings facing Grand River. There's the real potential for this to become a positive.
As for the state of Abbot/Grand River area I agree with the others in that it's been doing well besides the Park District property. I will say that the thing I most hope for in downtown EL is an impressive high-rise at the Michigan/Grand River triangle. There's good potential for downtown EL to expand to essentially fill the Michigan/GR/Harrison block; probably with residential low & mid rises on the interior and mixed use buildings fronting the main streets on the perimeter.