I made my way over to the Jerusalem Bakery just in time to see them cutting the 40-year-old trees down in front of the church. What a shame it is that they could not find a plan that included saving at least some of them. Unless they plant mature trees and a lot of them it will be a long time before it looks like a shaded avenue. I know this is a great improvement [despite the tree cutting]and I am looking forward to seeing it finished. In my mind this should be the nicest and smoothest street in the city.
I took a little detour down Hazel to take a look at the Holmes Street School conversion, and I think it looks really good, they made it look more like a nice apartment building with nice windows and doors, outdoor lighting, a large outdoor deck in the back, and even color matching A.C. window units. It is evident that these features had a lot of thought put into them. The parking area had many cars, so it seems like a lot of people have already moved in there. I wonder if there are still plans for another building in the school yard behind the building. BTW the street is still a moonscape.
@citykid, I'd brought this up in the general thread, but City Market/Riverfront Drive is being certified as city street according to a council resolution for next week. Who did it belong to, before? I always thought it was a public city street. Is this perhaps an example of something that was mistakenly found when taking inventory of the city street system or something? lol The Lansing parcel viewer has shown it as street ROW. BTW, for anyone who cares, the city is also decertifying these sections of streets in the city:
E. Holmes Road – West of Ruth Avenue, 385 feet
Mifflin Avenue – South of Harton Street, 259 feet
Hoyt Avenue – West of Ruth Avenue, 470 feet
Island Avenue – 95 feet west of Reo Avenue, 359 feet (BWL Bridge)
Rivershell Lane – East of Bayview Drive, 195 feet
Seager Street – North end, 275 feet
To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what any of this means, though perhaps it has something to do with liability and such for ROW not currently being used for streets. I imagine this land stays with the city.
@MichMatters I do not have enough knowledge on this. My theory is that Riverfront Dr. came up because of the name change but there is a different process for that so I don't know. It looks like the rest of the decertifications is just Public Service cleaning up their inventory. All of those areas are either paper streets/unpaved or part of private property (Rivershell and Seager). Mitch.Whisler@lansingmi.gov will be able to give you the correct answers.
I'm not sure why they'd allow this option when they'd already moved the discussion to whether there 5-lane configuration should have a partial median or not. We should not be going back to the point of whether this reconfiguration should happen or not.
My guess is that residents nearby prefer the boulevard to remain and have voiced their opinions. The damage has already been done, why go back to a center lane that nobody in this city can use properly? If people obeyed traffic laws here, I wouldn't be so opposed to the concept.
I struggle with which I prefer. Initially, I hate seeing the boulevard go. I also see the arguments for reverting back to what it was. As a Westside resident, I think I prefer the boulevard option ultimately, so I appreciate they're at least looking at other options. They've really excluded an entire community up until now. Andy Kilpatrick has been a nightmare to work with, in my opinion, to get anything good done for neighborhoods in terms of traffic. Speaking from experience when living elsewhere in the city.
I guess my biggest concern with removing the median is that we're just going to end up with an even larger Eyde eyesore and suburban looking state complex. If more development were tacked on to this for all that new space, I'd be a lot more supportive. I'd love to see some decent commercial development along thar corridor, or even better, mixed use.
I mean, this is almost a no-brainer. The existing roadway + median is over 175 feet wide in some places. It's ridiculously overbuilt and there is no scenario from a traffic point where it makes sense to leave it alone. You essentially have a divided highway where people race on it 60 MPH, because that's what most parts of it feel like it's built for. We've been doing road diets and two-way conversions around town for decades, now; it's basically city policy, now, and what cities have been doing all over the country to reclaim streets. This is not some new-fangled science. All of the other stuff is frankly nearly irrelevant to the traffic and safety aspect. There is no scenario in which a wider slower road leads to fewer deadly crashes.
Anyway, looks like about half-a-dozen neighbors wrote thoughtful letters to the council for the next meeting in support of the road diet and making clear the initial reaction was by a minority of residents in the neighborhood. I was glad to see that and perhaps that's what the city will ultimately use to make their decision. I'm hopeful that they've offered this no-change option as cover for when they make their decision.
I have seen a few Tik-Tok videos of people complaining about how this road when it was widened displaced communities of color in the area, and they seem to be upset that reducing the road/boulevard size is disrespectful to the memory of that.
@mindbender That's the kind of logic I've almost come to expect out of people these days. I truly hope there's not a large contingent of people that think like that, this city's (and world's) future won't be very bright if so.
I'm mildly in favor of the narrower boulevard. My objection is to the city not selling off the excess green space. To me the main reason to narrow the road is to better integrate the neighborhoods on the west side of the street with downtown, for that to happen you have to encourage urban development on the east side of the street.
I'd been clear I was disappointed by that, too. But then seeing the opposition to JUST a road diet as a general concept here, it's pretty clear that if part of the plan also included selling off that land to a developer, this would have been DOA. There's already those opposed to this who raised the spectre that this was some kind of secret land-grab. So I'm fine with them saying that this is just a road diet (for now) to get this part through. MDOT can do whatever it wants after that. Though, I do believe that this was never about selling land. MDOT is kind of consistent to a fault about that. A whole other issue, but I do wish they'd do an inventory of their property and sell off or donate in cases when there is obviously excess property they won't ever need.
But honestly, even if this ends up being all that there is, I support it. Because there are multiple beneifts to this, namely, a safer road for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists. I'm not going to oppose what is an obvious good because some big developer can get extra property. lol They actually have more than enough between Butler and MLK and haven't done anything with it for over 20 years.
The idea that the current road should be kept unchanged as some kind of a commemoration of the neighborhood that was once there is not logical. It is kind of like what happened in Detroit when a businessman wanted to plant tree farms on some of the tons of vacant land there, and some people got all upset saying it was a land grab etc. I could see a Green Way along this new strip of land with some stands of trees, gardens, and plazas in a linear park, perhaps a smaller version of the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston. That project spurred development of the neighborhoods that were once divided by an elevated highway.
Comments
I took a little detour down Hazel to take a look at the Holmes Street School conversion, and I think it looks really good, they made it look more like a nice apartment building with nice windows and doors, outdoor lighting, a large outdoor deck in the back, and even color matching A.C. window units. It is evident that these features had a lot of thought put into them. The parking area had many cars, so it seems like a lot of people have already moved in there. I wonder if there are still plans for another building in the school yard behind the building. BTW the street is still a moonscape.
E. Holmes Road – West of Ruth Avenue, 385 feet
Mifflin Avenue – South of Harton Street, 259 feet
Hoyt Avenue – West of Ruth Avenue, 470 feet
Island Avenue – 95 feet west of Reo Avenue, 359 feet (BWL Bridge)
Rivershell Lane – East of Bayview Drive, 195 feet
Seager Street – North end, 275 feet
To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what any of this means, though perhaps it has something to do with liability and such for ROW not currently being used for streets. I imagine this land stays with the city.
https://content.civicplus.com/api/assets/47961541-48aa-4f51-b21a-fc2af37fb763
I'm not sure why they'd allow this option when they'd already moved the discussion to whether there 5-lane configuration should have a partial median or not. We should not be going back to the point of whether this reconfiguration should happen or not.
I struggle with which I prefer. Initially, I hate seeing the boulevard go. I also see the arguments for reverting back to what it was. As a Westside resident, I think I prefer the boulevard option ultimately, so I appreciate they're at least looking at other options. They've really excluded an entire community up until now. Andy Kilpatrick has been a nightmare to work with, in my opinion, to get anything good done for neighborhoods in terms of traffic. Speaking from experience when living elsewhere in the city.
I guess my biggest concern with removing the median is that we're just going to end up with an even larger Eyde eyesore and suburban looking state complex. If more development were tacked on to this for all that new space, I'd be a lot more supportive. I'd love to see some decent commercial development along thar corridor, or even better, mixed use.
Anyway, looks like about half-a-dozen neighbors wrote thoughtful letters to the council for the next meeting in support of the road diet and making clear the initial reaction was by a minority of residents in the neighborhood. I was glad to see that and perhaps that's what the city will ultimately use to make their decision. I'm hopeful that they've offered this no-change option as cover for when they make their decision.
I'm mildly in favor of the narrower boulevard. My objection is to the city not selling off the excess green space. To me the main reason to narrow the road is to better integrate the neighborhoods on the west side of the street with downtown, for that to happen you have to encourage urban development on the east side of the street.
But honestly, even if this ends up being all that there is, I support it. Because there are multiple beneifts to this, namely, a safer road for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists. I'm not going to oppose what is an obvious good because some big developer can get extra property. lol They actually have more than enough between Butler and MLK and haven't done anything with it for over 20 years.