I think that this building will mostly be service and operations oriented so its not much of an attraction.
According to the construction website, it looks like the next big project will be the Eli Broad College of Business Addition. The city should improve the aesthetics of that area and try to have DTN make some improvements to Cedar Village. That area doesn't get much attention but it has great University buildings such as the Wharton Center and a great business school.
I don't foresee any new University building on Grand River. And I hope that future construction in that area is dedicated to University cultural and entertainment-oriented buildings that could be open during weekends and attract the general public, not just students, and contribute to a livelier and richer downtown.
I agree with your criteria for buildings on Grand River. I'd love to see an eventual Wharton replacement on Grand River, but that would likely be decades off. Besides that I can't imagine many buildings that would fit the bill, maybe a new planetarium and/or MSU museum someday.
Cedar Village would have been part of the East Village plan. I'm not sure how actively the City of East Lansing is pursuing that anymore but I'm sure it's still something they'd like to see happen.
Your mentioning of the Business College addition got me thinking about the STEM facilities upgrades that are also in the planning design stage. When I went to look at the master plan I found that the 2016 Master Plan update draft is available: 2016 Master Plan draft
It's not complete being a draft, right now it only includes various maps. The map of various building projects is missing its accompanying list, so it's hard to say how large new building'additions will be or what they'll be used for. The map of street changes has a couple interesting things though. Red Cedar Rd will be rerouted a little south to run closer to Spartan Stadium and IM West. Also, it looks as though they'll be closing North Shaw between Science Rd and Red Cedar, and eliminating all the surface parking along Shaw. Another map shows the parking areas on Shaw becoming protected green space for "program/research." The full master plan should have a lot more details.
My desire to place the Data Center closer to Grand River is to increase the amount of people working on or near Grand River. This building doesn't need to be standalone, and could have other offices or small ground-floor retail, though MSU doesn't usually build with ground-floor retail in mind (exception being the new 1855 Place development).
I'm certainly not against a data center being more centralized. At the same time, data centers are very rarely businesses placed in business districts, particularly on retail frontages because they are basically windowless server warehouses unless I'm not getting the concept of a "data center" right.
Yeah, I agree that there's not much foot traffic but when we look at necessary infrastructure it seems to always make sense to centrally locate new developments.
In downtown Lansing the AT&T building once was filled with phone switches, but as miniaturization has continued it is no longer necessary to fill the full building with phone switches. Its brutalist architecture can be off-putting, but the building could also find other uses.
In New York City, the Verizon building was built with the same brutalist architecture and is now going through the construction process to add windows as its being converted to office.
I think the giant switching buildings are a bad example to use, particularly given how much of a nightmare it is to reuse them (ridiculously tall floors, windowless, huge floor plates, etc...). You got basically one of the only prominent examples of a successful resue. They are notoriously hard to rework in urban areas. Not that they couldn't, because the Ottawa Street Station was a difficult retrofit, but data centers are hardly what you want to build in commercial districts these days; it's why they don't usually build server warehouses in city centers anymore. In fact, I've been waiting for AT&T to announce they are going to take down the switching building section of their complex in downtown Lansing. It's one of the worst parts of the skyline view from the north or northeast.
Just adding an image of the map showing the future street changes I was referencing:
...And some changes to south campus I didn't notice. They're going to connect Crescent Rd and Recycling Dr plus add an access rd off of Mt Hope. They will also build a proper road looping around the medical campus while adding access roads to Mt Hope and Hagadorn.
Wha?! They are going to close down a section of westbound Shaw Lanes and route both directions(?) along eastbound Shaw? Or, is the eastbound going to remain one-way and they are simply taking out the westbound shoot through campus? That seems weird to me, particularly because where it breaks off seems to have been chosen arbitrarily, which makes me think it's the latter, because otherwise it doesn't make sense. I don't know. lol
It looks like they'r going to make that section of South Shaw a two way road as far as I can tell. It seems as though they're doing this in an effort to make a more contiguous greenspace out of the Shaw parking lots.
Comments
According to the construction website, it looks like the next big project will be the Eli Broad College of Business Addition. The city should improve the aesthetics of that area and try to have DTN make some improvements to Cedar Village. That area doesn't get much attention but it has great University buildings such as the Wharton Center and a great business school.
I don't foresee any new University building on Grand River. And I hope that future construction in that area is dedicated to University cultural and entertainment-oriented buildings that could be open during weekends and attract the general public, not just students, and contribute to a livelier and richer downtown.
Cedar Village would have been part of the East Village plan. I'm not sure how actively the City of East Lansing is pursuing that anymore but I'm sure it's still something they'd like to see happen.
Your mentioning of the Business College addition got me thinking about the STEM facilities upgrades that are also in the planning design stage. When I went to look at the master plan I found that the 2016 Master Plan update draft is available: 2016 Master Plan draft
It's not complete being a draft, right now it only includes various maps. The map of various building projects is missing its accompanying list, so it's hard to say how large new building'additions will be or what they'll be used for. The map of street changes has a couple interesting things though. Red Cedar Rd will be rerouted a little south to run closer to Spartan Stadium and IM West. Also, it looks as though they'll be closing North Shaw between Science Rd and Red Cedar, and eliminating all the surface parking along Shaw. Another map shows the parking areas on Shaw becoming protected green space for "program/research." The full master plan should have a lot more details.
In downtown Lansing the AT&T building once was filled with phone switches, but as miniaturization has continued it is no longer necessary to fill the full building with phone switches. Its brutalist architecture can be off-putting, but the building could also find other uses.
In New York City, the Verizon building was built with the same brutalist architecture and is now going through the construction process to add windows as its being converted to office.
...And some changes to south campus I didn't notice. They're going to connect Crescent Rd and Recycling Dr plus add an access rd off of Mt Hope. They will also build a proper road looping around the medical campus while adding access roads to Mt Hope and Hagadorn.