Block600 (600 East Michigan)

1568101118

Comments

  • It's why I've been so incessant this get back before council. It would solve so many development issues we complain about.

    Do you think there may be some intentional delays here as to why this hasn't been brought up sooner by the Planning Department or someone else?

  • Yes. At first I thought it may have been because of council turnover during an election year and they'd simply forgotten about it. But after I'd written them about to various members, the feeling I got is that it'd been basically defeated by the more conservative wing of the council coming to power that following year. The Planning Department - they largely guided the city's 2012 masterplan redo, of course - is fully behind it and has been pushing it.

    If I had any advice it'd be to write council vice president Spadafore to see if he can get a majority on council to take this up, again. He's a millennial and seemingly open to this. Last I wrote him he'd just been elected, so he had no idea about this. The Mayor I got the sense isn't against this, but it was also something he wasn't concentrated on.

    BTW, I think the Planning Department has said this might have to start back at the beginning of the process (Planning Board), but that would be up to them.

  • I traveled west down Michigan Ave the other day and I noticed that the hotel will stand out quite prominently, as the neighboring buildings are set back and along with the tracks do not block the view. It could look pretty cool.
    I was noticing also that there seem to houses still standing on the south side of Barnard, they look still occupied, could be wrong about that. It would be a shame I think to leave those six or eight houses still standing on one side of an isolated street. They seem to be leaving the hill there on the north side of Barnard. All the trees are gone that's for sure. I know! they never stood a chance.

  • I meant leveling not leaving!

  • The southside of Barnard was never part of this plan; Barnard was a bounding street of the block.

  • That seems wrong to me, business is business I guess. Who is ever going to buy a house up there, I would hope they get their property taxes reduced.

  • I don't understand. They need the northside of the block because it was in the footprint of the development; they didn't need the southside. Apart from that, homes weren't selling on that street, regardless, as it was a dead-end street in an industrial district.

    I'm genuinely confused what you think is wrong about this. Are you saying they should have bought both side of the street and demolished every house?

  • edited May 2019

    The block was still livable if awkward. There's other parts of the city that are mixed industrial and residential. Now that the front yards will be a large parking lot it's going to be worse to live on the block.

  • edited May 2019

    I mean, I understand that. But then what are you advocating the developer should have done? Buy up the entire street and demolished the homes on both sides? I guess my point is that this block wasn't long for the world in any case with development spreading throughout the district, and any redevelopment of the 600 block was going to encroach on it. I personally hadn't thought they were going to go as far south as Barnard, but I also was surprised when I found out it was the southern boundary of the development site.

    I guess in an ideal development, Liskey's would have given up their site, so then the parking wouldn't have been forced all the way to the back boundary of the site. That is really the reason the "back" of the site looks the way it does.

  • Well, ideally the parking lot wouldn't extend that far south period. The parking lot that is planned is oversized, and it will be like the edge of most Meijer parking lots that are empty save for a couple employee cars and people who use the parking lot as their temporary storage area.

    The Liskey's placement is awkward, but the site could still be so much better if the ground floor or underground was at least half parking.

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