With the city filing suit to force the owners of Logan Square at MLK and Holmes into receivership, I was curious about what you guys would do to this property were the city ever able to get its hands on it?
The center has about 278,000 sq ft of space and sits on nearly 28.5 acres. Whatever else they do, I'd advocate for a significant residential component. That's enough space to to build practically a whole new neighborhood with a few new streets and everything. lol I'd run a street around it where the current "alleys" are, for sure, to cut down some of the traffic at the Holmes-MLK intersection.
I think this is a difficult site to address for sure. I'm not sure housing is a good idea, just because I can't think of anyone who would actually live there. Even if housing was done right, I feel like it would decline quickly. Providing decent housing over there is a nice idea, but I find it hard to believe it would work out.
I feel like it would need to be some type of commercial use, but I'm not sure what.
Providing decent housing over there is a nice idea, but I find it hard to believe it would work out.
lolwut? Anything at that site will have to include residential, particularly as retail and commercial uses are a shrinking part of the market. It's almost 29 acres in a middle of a city. lol
Are we not accepting alternate views/opinions? It was my understanding you wanted opinions on the use of the site. If you are talking wishes, sure. Housing sounds great. Realistically though, the area is busy and depressing. People avoid the area. No one is actually going to want to live there. Good luck finding a developer that wants to do housing there. Maybe I misunderstood your initial post though.
I'm sorry if my view differs. Realistically a lot of that site just needs to be given back to nature.
Seems like a lot of people on this site suddenly have formal education in planning.
I'd like a significant part of it turned into a park, perhaps a different style park than what is typically found in the area.
It could be a multi-use park with covered basketball courts, a railway crossing into Holly Park, soccer fields, hills and sitting areas, and a fountain that doubles as a splash pad. These could all increase the desirability of the area, as well as allowing for some commercial on the outskirts of the property.
I don't see a need to turn any significant amount of that area into a park. The wider area is not that undesirable, the neighborhoods to north off of Victor/Boston are quite nice, Colonial Village to the west is also pretty solid, the neighborhoods directly east of MLK are mostly decent and this site is relatively isolated from the south. Part of the reason these neighborhoods have suffered is because of the state of Logan Square and the MLK commercial strip more generally.
I absolutely think housing should be part of any redevelopment plan, but knowing how I'd want it laid out would require knowing which parcels would be part of any proposed redevelopment and what unit count/commercial square footage a developer thinks is viable. Is the rail corridor or the landlocked parcels between it and Logan Square up for grabs? Would the city consider making a concerted effort to get Reid Machinery to sell their building and land? Would a developer buy out any of the MLK parcels? If so then we can drastically change the nature of that area with a little effort. If we're just talking Logan Square proper, not even any of the standalone MLK-facing businesses, then it's a lot less exciting of a prospect but still could change things for the better.
For a Logan Square-only project I'd say it's pretty simple: housing everywhere except along the Holmes St frontage where I'd probably allow for strip-mall type retail. A mixed use building with ground floor retail, even with parking out front, would be a big win but not something to be a stickler for IMO. I'd love to see any redevelopment have a decently urbanist site plan with any houses/townhouses/apartments oriented to the street with parking to the side or back. The less it resembles a standard suburban apartment/townhouse complex the better.
If we're talking including some or all of the above-mentioned properties then maybe something (very) vaguely like the site layout below, not to be taken to heart but more just to illustrate that an entire neighborhood can be built here:
(red lines are streets, blue is commercial, yellow is residential, mixed use could go anywhere)
Hood, the Lansing Parcel Viewer is a great resource, and shows you the land subdivisions. Logan Square includes the retail buildings, the outlot building, the KFC, and a driveway out to MLK.
Whatever we're talking about would just include Logan Square.
At minimum I'd argue for suburban commercial along MLK and Holmes and residential on the interior. I really think it's wide open as the specifics. In a perfect world it'd be some sort of lifestyle center with mixed use buildings along the perimeter allowing for some surface parking along MLK/Holmes then mixed use buildings along a main corridor through the development with on street parking and some residential streets towards the back of the development.
I think the spacing on a street layout like this would allow for apartments along the streets with plenty of parking behind them. I'm just doing it in paint so no dimensions to verify but the general idea is that I hope if Logan Square is redeveloped that it's looked at as a blank slate to start fresh from.
BTW, it's zoned MX-2 - Community Mixed-Use Center. Suburban commercial is pretty much restricted to the major corridors south of Jolly. So whatever's developed here, at least by-right, has to be urban-ish; not necessarily downtown-type stuff, but something definitely above/most intense than what currently exist at and around the site.
Comments
The center has about 278,000 sq ft of space and sits on nearly 28.5 acres. Whatever else they do, I'd advocate for a significant residential component. That's enough space to to build practically a whole new neighborhood with a few new streets and everything. lol I'd run a street around it where the current "alleys" are, for sure, to cut down some of the traffic at the Holmes-MLK intersection.
I feel like it would need to be some type of commercial use, but I'm not sure what.
lolwut? Anything at that site will have to include residential, particularly as retail and commercial uses are a shrinking part of the market. It's almost 29 acres in a middle of a city. lol
I'm sorry if my view differs. Realistically a lot of that site just needs to be given back to nature.
Seems like a lot of people on this site suddenly have formal education in planning.
It could be a multi-use park with covered basketball courts, a railway crossing into Holly Park, soccer fields, hills and sitting areas, and a fountain that doubles as a splash pad. These could all increase the desirability of the area, as well as allowing for some commercial on the outskirts of the property.
I absolutely think housing should be part of any redevelopment plan, but knowing how I'd want it laid out would require knowing which parcels would be part of any proposed redevelopment and what unit count/commercial square footage a developer thinks is viable. Is the rail corridor or the landlocked parcels between it and Logan Square up for grabs? Would the city consider making a concerted effort to get Reid Machinery to sell their building and land? Would a developer buy out any of the MLK parcels? If so then we can drastically change the nature of that area with a little effort. If we're just talking Logan Square proper, not even any of the standalone MLK-facing businesses, then it's a lot less exciting of a prospect but still could change things for the better.
For a Logan Square-only project I'd say it's pretty simple: housing everywhere except along the Holmes St frontage where I'd probably allow for strip-mall type retail. A mixed use building with ground floor retail, even with parking out front, would be a big win but not something to be a stickler for IMO. I'd love to see any redevelopment have a decently urbanist site plan with any houses/townhouses/apartments oriented to the street with parking to the side or back. The less it resembles a standard suburban apartment/townhouse complex the better.
If we're talking including some or all of the above-mentioned properties then maybe something (very) vaguely like the site layout below, not to be taken to heart but more just to illustrate that an entire neighborhood can be built here:
(red lines are streets, blue is commercial, yellow is residential, mixed use could go anywhere)
Whatever we're talking about would just include Logan Square.
I think the spacing on a street layout like this would allow for apartments along the streets with plenty of parking behind them. I'm just doing it in paint so no dimensions to verify but the general idea is that I hope if Logan Square is redeveloped that it's looked at as a blank slate to start fresh from.