Southside Development

edited April 7 in Lansing
Restarting the old Southside Development thread

There's a pretty interesting new development in the April 7th Planning Commission packet: https://lansingmi.portal.civicclerk.com/event/8224/files/agenda/14909

From the agenda:
BACKGROUND:
Lovejoy Community Services, with the consent and support of the property owner, Pentecostal
Church of God in Christ, is proposing the split of the subject property to facilitate a planned unit
development that would result in 6 detached single-family homes, 18 attached single-family
rowhouse units, 40 attached multi-family rowhouse units, a 14-unit apartment building, a multi-
use community building, and accessory urban agricultural farm spaces and buildings.


These aren't some fantastically high-quality buildings nor is the development trying to be some new-urbanist mecca, but I really like this project. Especially for its location. My biggest question is does it actually get built like these renderings because if so it'd be a quite cool little place. It's really worth checking out the rather extensive document included in the planning document, lots of renderings, elevations and more information.

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Site Plan

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Aerial

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Apartment building

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Townhouses

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Barn

Comments

  • Very cool, South Lansing is where most people live these days and could use new housing. I like the lay out with the gardens and woods, the buildings are interesting if basic. OK Lansing make it happen!
  • Unfortunately the neighborhood came out en masse based on a lot of scuttlebutt that this is only for homeless persons and section 8, it will be a den of crime, and they will wreak havoc on wildlife. That notwithstanding, the Planning Commission tabled the request to get a better understanding of potential traffic impacts.
    My main thing was overall density - this will be the exact same density as the surrounding neighborhood, 6 units per acre, and S Catherine St. and Gibson St. literally dead end into the site for another subdivision that never came to be. If the property owner wanted to plat this tomorrow they could and it would look exactly the same as the neighborhood, they would have the exact same amount of people coming into the site while installing way more impervious surfaces and clear-cutting the site. Platted under current R-1 lot standards there could be 110 units, not 78. This at least takes care to limit site disturbance and rehabilitate a stream wetland and preserve as many trees as possible.
    This area was all farmland until at least 1955 according to historic aerials, and platted and developed during the 1960s-1970s. It is not a historic woodland. It is like people cannot fathom a nuanced understanding of how their 'quiet, little neighborhood' came to be.
  • I like this, infilling under-used space in the city, but retaining green spaces and promoting urban sustainability and connecting people with their food sources. The buildings are giving container-homes though, so I don't know about that, but I like the general idea of the community.
  • This would be exactly the kind of development that the South Side needs, modern housing with contemporary infrastructure [the design could be improved] that would be far better than the 60 to 70-year-old ranch houses of that area. It seems like the people they fear being neighbors already live there.
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