What a basic, nondescript building. It looks like it belongs in a suburban office park in anywhere USA, if you told me it was literally a copy and paste design I wouldn't be surprised. I can't believe they wouldn't orient it to the corner if it was actually designed for this site. At least the facade isn't cheap metal panels or fiber cement or something, so that's a positive. Still being downtown is something I suppose. But even at the scale of a basic three floor building... Is doing something slightly more interesting with the design that hard? Take the same brick design, cut out a courtyard at the corner facing Grand and put the entrance there with a little glass and maybe small atrium. Add a (partial?) fourth floor with a different look (change the brick color, larger windows, maybe taller floor-to-ceiling height) for Council/other meeting chambers and the Mayor's (and maybe council's) offices. That doesn't seem too much to ask for.
New Vision and Ovation have a lot to make up for. Finger crossed that in 5 years there'll be enough positives where the Eastern and City Hall disappointments are overshadowed by better news.
I'm in a bit of disbelief, I think; like, is this a prank? lol I'm just now realizing that this will basically maybe be as tall as the neighboring Riverview 220 and Grand Vista Place? I'm genuinely confused. This is like a standard issue suburban office park building. How many tens-of-millions of dollars did we get to build this, again?
When I think of the two City Halls Lansing built in the past, I think of the excellent designs that reflected the era they were built. A Romanesque castle and a Mid-Century classic office and public meeting building. Remember the marbled walls and water fall in the lobby, the public square in front, the bas- relief sculpture on the street facing facade. I am not sure, but I think those buildings were built with local funds only, with no 40 million from the state. What the two former buildings had that in their designs that this one seems to lack is pride in the design as a reflection of the aspirations and vision of the future that the people of the day thought should be a part of any public structure in Lansing. This design could be any office, high school, hospital, anywhere USA. Nothing about Lansing or it's people. Very disappointing! I have one question that seems to apply to life today "why".
I've always been and continue to be in favor of bonding out extra money to build a city hall that'll be worth keeping for generations. I'd love to see the school district include themselves and to consolidate all/most city offices here. I don't see how they get away without building a parking structure, I would think any parking structure could be financed separately through the parking system or perhaps through a developer to avoid going against the city's bond amount.
I forgot to mention among my disappointments above the fiasco that is the public safety bond and the moving of those facilities out of downtown, let alone the specific design of the new site. The courts should have joined or been adjacent to 54b and I'd have preferred to have the police at city hall. My distaste for the prospect of decades of money out of my pocket to pay for something I firmly believe is a net-negative persists.
I am almost tired of complaining. Almost. lol What is clear is that even with Bernero, the singular focus was on getting the current City Hall to Beitler for their hotel, and literally everything else was of secondary concern to these city administrations. Like you said, someone with some vision would have pushed through a centralization and keeping as many things in one place as possible. Now, we're going to have this dinky city hall, here, police fire and courts somewhere else, the clerk's main division down on Miller....just shit scattered all over the place because they are rushing to get out of a building that I very much still believe should have simply been renovated/reconstructed. The new building doesn't have a gathering spot for city events out front, not even a lawn.
What I'm still a bit confused about, too, is the cost of this? We keep talking about $40 million, but that's just what we got from the state. My understanding was that the we were plowing some city money into this, too. And given that even a full day later, no actual details or additional renderings have been released make me question if this little "reveal" was done as an election year gimmick, and they don't actually have much figured out. Because I think it's clear from even just this close-in rendering that there has to be more to the building than this.
I'm just genuinely so confused by all of this. Nothing feels properly planned anymore, no vision, etc.
Yeah...this is a huge disappointment. I have to say, if they wanted to go the classical route, AM Stern would be an amazing architect to go with. I've always loved their work. I'd be curious how/why they chose Krieger Klatt. Are they cheap? Does somebody's relative work there lol? Seems like an interesting choice. I truly hope it was just a stunt and this conceptual design is only that.
Our city is just a sad, sad joke and I don't know how to help it get better. These are generational missteps that probably can't be rectified in a couple years or even decades.
Lymon, I had never heard about Krieger Klatt, but apparently it's a small shop based out of Royal Oak. It looks like their bread-and-butter are high-end customs homes, though they do commercial stuff, too. But it really does seem like a weird choice, and I'm very curious if there is some kind of political connection with Andy and them, quite honestly. lol I know the Bojis had been involved with this, even this new site, and they are based out of Metro Detroit, too, so maybe they are the connection. Honestly, if they were going to do something cheap, they could have kept it local and just have gone with Christman or Granger or something.
BTW, did a rough calculation on the square footage given the site dimensions, and this would put it at probably around 60,000 square feet. Weren't they originally looking for something around 100,000 sq ft, similar to the size of the current city hall? It's also crazy because they'd always talked about how bad parking was at the current site - not something that ever concerned me, quite frankly - and the situation here would be even worse.
Again, I'm still completely baffled about what we see, here. Like, at this point, I'm still not even all that mad, because I simply do not believe what I'm seeing. lol Here's the city's page on this; no updates, still:
Yeah, I wonder if they could've done design build with a contractor...seems like the stupid route they would try. I am confused how this is a $40 million building, especially when previously mentioned, I thought the city had a budget and then the state contributed. Like where is that all going with thus design?!
Yeah...I only vaguely know of them from when I was looking for work awhile back. I get the impression from LinkedIn that they're primarily high end custom homes, and not ones that were well thought out but that's a personal opinion. There are just more notable options I'd go with for such a building which should be notable, even MI based options still. Though, I do have a weakness for RAMSA lol.
Yeah...the parking complaint always had me baffled, and I can't see how this is addressing that...I hate how everything is so focused around parking. I've never had a problem with parking downtown. Maybe it's because I worked down there for years and know where to look...I never got the parking complaints for any of downtown.
Fingers crossed this just isn't real and just a stunt haha.
Thanks for the photos of wonderful buildings in other cities, now I really do have a case of project envy! I remember the first drawings of the "Ovation" which were rather strange imo, that project did benefit from a lot of input from citizens I believe. The city changed the plan to a much more interesting one. Perhaps if we let the mayor know Lansing can do better, we want a city hall that is proper for Michigan's Capital City. I think a good design would not be necessarily more expensive than a poor one. Or they could just build a steel pole barn out on S. Cedar somewhere and use the left-over money for a real civic center. I also believe we had better get these projects rolling before the orange menace and the muskrat destroy the economy, I have seen this before when really cool projects planned during good times end up not built or "scaled down" when the economy tanked. I also don't understand the very long time between the announcement of these projects and the date the project actually gets built. How long have we been hearing about The Ovation? I think the fence around the site has been there for over a year, what's the hold-up!
Comments
lol
What a basic, nondescript building. It looks like it belongs in a suburban office park in anywhere USA, if you told me it was literally a copy and paste design I wouldn't be surprised. I can't believe they wouldn't orient it to the corner if it was actually designed for this site. At least the facade isn't cheap metal panels or fiber cement or something, so that's a positive. Still being downtown is something I suppose. But even at the scale of a basic three floor building... Is doing something slightly more interesting with the design that hard? Take the same brick design, cut out a courtyard at the corner facing Grand and put the entrance there with a little glass and maybe small atrium. Add a (partial?) fourth floor with a different look (change the brick color, larger windows, maybe taller floor-to-ceiling height) for Council/other meeting chambers and the Mayor's (and maybe council's) offices. That doesn't seem too much to ask for.
New Vision and Ovation have a lot to make up for. Finger crossed that in 5 years there'll be enough positives where the Eastern and City Hall disappointments are overshadowed by better news.
https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2025/03/06/andy-schor-lansing-state-of-the-city/81799770007/
https://www.ramsa.com/projects
https://www.dmsas.com/portfolio/
I've always been and continue to be in favor of bonding out extra money to build a city hall that'll be worth keeping for generations. I'd love to see the school district include themselves and to consolidate all/most city offices here. I don't see how they get away without building a parking structure, I would think any parking structure could be financed separately through the parking system or perhaps through a developer to avoid going against the city's bond amount.
I forgot to mention among my disappointments above the fiasco that is the public safety bond and the moving of those facilities out of downtown, let alone the specific design of the new site. The courts should have joined or been adjacent to 54b and I'd have preferred to have the police at city hall. My distaste for the prospect of decades of money out of my pocket to pay for something I firmly believe is a net-negative persists.
What I'm still a bit confused about, too, is the cost of this? We keep talking about $40 million, but that's just what we got from the state. My understanding was that the we were plowing some city money into this, too. And given that even a full day later, no actual details or additional renderings have been released make me question if this little "reveal" was done as an election year gimmick, and they don't actually have much figured out. Because I think it's clear from even just this close-in rendering that there has to be more to the building than this.
I'm just genuinely so confused by all of this. Nothing feels properly planned anymore, no vision, etc.
BTW, did a rough calculation on the square footage given the site dimensions, and this would put it at probably around 60,000 square feet. Weren't they originally looking for something around 100,000 sq ft, similar to the size of the current city hall? It's also crazy because they'd always talked about how bad parking was at the current site - not something that ever concerned me, quite frankly - and the situation here would be even worse.
Again, I'm still completely baffled about what we see, here. Like, at this point, I'm still not even all that mad, because I simply do not believe what I'm seeing. lol Here's the city's page on this; no updates, still:
https://www.lansingmi.gov/1219/New-City-Hall
Yeah...I only vaguely know of them from when I was looking for work awhile back. I get the impression from LinkedIn that they're primarily high end custom homes, and not ones that were well thought out but that's a personal opinion. There are just more notable options I'd go with for such a building which should be notable, even MI based options still. Though, I do have a weakness for RAMSA lol.
Yeah...the parking complaint always had me baffled, and I can't see how this is addressing that...I hate how everything is so focused around parking. I've never had a problem with parking downtown. Maybe it's because I worked down there for years and know where to look...I never got the parking complaints for any of downtown.
Fingers crossed this just isn't real and just a stunt haha.