The flood zone kind of cuts diagonally across the area bound by Clemens on the west and Michigan-ish on the north. It really shows how if water gets in through the Kalamazoo Street opening in the freeway, how hard it is to get out since all the natural outlets to the south are closed off by the freeway. The Harton Street Pump Station is in the end of the district, but I think that's just a sewage pumping station; I'm not sure if there are any separate stormwater pipes for just the neighborhood that feed into it for local stormwater removal.
What the township did do for their section of Urbandale (east of Mifflin and south of Michigan) is rezone it all to "commercial" use to get the homeowners out of their as the property owners sell or die out. It's also why any multi-family residential that does get built over that way has the ground floor parking instead of apartments on the ground floor. But, this area would do much better in the city. But the city doesn't want it particularly because of its location and state.
It's funny, because I did some local history research on this area a few years back, and read through a lot of old Lansing State Journal articles on it, and it's been a bad area since it was developed. Like you said, parts of it were basically a shanty town. One article speaks of how people were renting out old chicken coops for housing and of course those didn't have running water or any sanitary infrastrucure, and I think the BWL or county had them clean this up. This was maybe even as late as into the 40s.
The irony of it all is that in the late 50s, Lansing did try to annex nearly every section of the township on the eastside, and it was actually approved. But it was then overturned on a technicality because it was included in an annexation that also included a small part of Delta Township on the westside. Then the laws changed a few decades later which made annexation almost impossible. So...here we are in this mess of jurisdictions. lol
Looks like the form-based code amendment and the ADU ordinance are up for review at tomorrow's Development & Planning Committee. I think this means this gets passed at the next council meeting (March 24)?
I have one small criticism, and it's that I think the colors on the map are still not differentiated enough to make it easy to read. lol The colors for the residential and commercial/mixed-use districts all meld together, especially with the property boundaries. I've been trying to put into words how you could fix this, but I can't really describe it.
Because of the map change it needs another public hearing. Ordinance changes require 15-day newspaper notices so unfortunately because of that scheduling, the public hearing will not be held until April 21. Earliest passage date would be May 5.
Man, I have fiddled with those colors so much because of your earlier comments haha. We will do another review.
Thanks for the update! So, what happened at the D&P Committee? I always forget the steps in this volleyball-like process.
I think what may be effecting it more than the colors is the darkness - of lightness - of the property lines overlay? Maybe there needs to be more contrast as the colors are kind of "flat" making them harder to differentiate? I don't know what it is. lol I don't remember the old pre-FBC map being difficult at all. Anyway, nothing major; it's certainly not unreadable, and that's really all that matters.
Regarding the zoning map colors, I see that green is an almost entirely unused hue on the map. Switching one of those tan residential zones (maybe R-3??) to a sort of pea green may help differentiate. A more pure deep green could be used anywhere else you want more differentiation. I think DT-1 could also use a hue shift, maybe a more pure pink color, less magenta. I have no idea what to do with the shades of MX.
Working towards fewer zoning designations is a noble goal. It sure would make the map a lot easier to create and to read. Just gotta nudge public opinion in that direction.
@citykid was looking at next week's Development & Planning Committee material, and see the FBC amendment and ADU ordinance is back up for discussion like you said. What I was curious about is that there are like three different versions of the ADU ordinance in the material. I know we'd kind of discussed this before, but which one is going to go before council? There is the original, Cllr Hussein's version, and then the "clean" one listed. I can't put them side-by-side, but aren't the original & clean versions identical?
I'm not quite sure why they did that except to guess drafts got added to the internal processing folder so they all got uploaded. Both 'in form' versions are the same. From what I understand, the CM Hussain version will be the one voted on by the full Council.
Yeah. Since ADUs got paused for the zoning map to be re-reviewed, D&P never had a discussion about Planning Commission's recommendation to pass the staff-proposed version. I think that will be reviewed and they will ultimately vote out CM Hussain's version.
Comments
What the township did do for their section of Urbandale (east of Mifflin and south of Michigan) is rezone it all to "commercial" use to get the homeowners out of their as the property owners sell or die out. It's also why any multi-family residential that does get built over that way has the ground floor parking instead of apartments on the ground floor. But, this area would do much better in the city. But the city doesn't want it particularly because of its location and state.
It's funny, because I did some local history research on this area a few years back, and read through a lot of old Lansing State Journal articles on it, and it's been a bad area since it was developed. Like you said, parts of it were basically a shanty town. One article speaks of how people were renting out old chicken coops for housing and of course those didn't have running water or any sanitary infrastrucure, and I think the BWL or county had them clean this up. This was maybe even as late as into the 40s.
The irony of it all is that in the late 50s, Lansing did try to annex nearly every section of the township on the eastside, and it was actually approved. But it was then overturned on a technicality because it was included in an annexation that also included a small part of Delta Township on the westside. Then the laws changed a few decades later which made annexation almost impossible. So...here we are in this mess of jurisdictions. lol
https://lansingmi.portal.civicclerk.com/event/6958/files/attachment/19400
I have one small criticism, and it's that I think the colors on the map are still not differentiated enough to make it easy to read. lol The colors for the residential and commercial/mixed-use districts all meld together, especially with the property boundaries. I've been trying to put into words how you could fix this, but I can't really describe it.
Man, I have fiddled with those colors so much because of your earlier comments haha. We will do another review.
I think what may be effecting it more than the colors is the darkness - of lightness - of the property lines overlay? Maybe there needs to be more contrast as the colors are kind of "flat" making them harder to differentiate? I don't know what it is. lol I don't remember the old pre-FBC map being difficult at all. Anyway, nothing major; it's certainly not unreadable, and that's really all that matters.
Working towards fewer zoning designations is a noble goal. It sure would make the map a lot easier to create and to read. Just gotta nudge public opinion in that direction.