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  • I lived on Sunnyside for a while in the 70's when Scott Woods was a very isolated park behind Lansing General. Then as now you can access the park from a small parking lot at the end of Clifton Street. Of course the woods were there but Hawk Island was a gravel pit and I think that the smaller lake was also a gravel pit. The area is atop a glacial deposit that runs through Lansing kind of north and south all the way over to Groesbeck. Along these ridges they would dig for gravel and stone that created the little lakes in the area where they dug down far enough to hit underground springs. I think the area you point out was a gravel pit but I do not remember anything ever being on that area, there was not much reason to go up Aurelius road in those days, so I could be wrong!
  • I have returned to Lansing after living on the East Coast for 35 years. I grew up here went to Barnes Ave, Dwight Rich ,Sexton, LCC, and MSU
    I was born at Sparrow, were my Mother went to the nursing school, my Dad owned a Sunoco Station at Logan and Main Street and worked at REO my Grand Father worked at Olds my brother was on the 1963 Sexton Big Reds football team that won State. So I guess that make's me a Lansing guy and I have been interested in Lansing Development since I was a boy growing up here. I witnessed the "urban renewal" destruction in the 60's of half of the 19th and early 20th century Lansing and have almost always been kind of disappointed by what replaced it. I mean it has kind of worked out as planned, but there are still surface parking lots on N. Washington where theaters and stores were, and the buildings although nice enough look like they were picked out from different suburban office parks. I wish we could aim higher make real places that are reason in them selves to visit. That being said I was wondering about a few things that happen in the time I have been away. When did they rebuild Quentin Park, what did they do with the boulders that made up the rock gardens that lined the hill? When did they put in those speed bumps in some neighborhoods? Did the residents want them? I use to be so nice to take a drive down Moores River Drive now it's a pain. I think stop signs and traffic circles like on Barnes work better and not so jarring. I'll have more comments and ideas, it is great to have have found a place to discuss Lansing I love being home!
  • edited August 2015
    If it was part of the quarry, it would totally make sense why it might still be vacant/never was developed in the first place.

    Yep, the glacial deposit is called the Mason Esker, and it doesn't just stretch up to Groesbeck, but it stretches all the way down to around to Mason. Basically, they were rivers underneath glaciers. When the glaciers melted, the esker was what was left. The Mason esker is supposed to be one of the longest of the contiguous ones, and Ingham County is filled with them, apparently. Most of it, as you pointed out, have been quarried, so Groesbeck and neighboring Bancroft Park is really the only place where you can see it undistrubed in the city. You can also see parts of it between Holt and Mason, though a lot of the little lakes in Holt that run along Cedar are also former parts of the esker.

    Eskermap.jpg

    BTW, had no idea that Scott Woods could be accessed off Clifton. Always assumed if was one of those inaccessible parks that you had to bike in to, or just find your way into if you lived in the immediate area.
  • Hmm, since I'm quite a bit younger than you, some of this stuff I may not be able to answer. For instance, how Quentin Park is now is how I've always known it. As for the speed bumps on Moores River Drive, I don't remember them any earlier than the late 90's. Speed bumps were (and kind of still are) kind of the national trend for traffic calming. If the neighborhood didn't request them, specifically, they certainly didn't fight them in a major way. I'm sure they requested traffic calming, though. I've gotten use to them. With how fast people use to drive down the street, I can completely understand. There is really no need to be racing through this scenic drive, but people still try to.
  • I live about a half mile away from that lot on Aurelius. I've been here since 2003 and I've never seen any signs on that property. But like you said it's always maintained. The deer from Hawk Island, Scott Woods, and all the other little parks around this area congregate in this and other open areas along Aurelius. It really does feel like living in the country sometimes. I grew up in the middle of nowhere west of Charlotte and it's a very similar feeling. The lack of sidewalks along this stretch of Aurelius is one of my pet peeves. I'd like to see Aurelius resurfaced so that the bike lanes are not so rough and so that you can drive down it without feeling like you're going over railroad tracks. The road surface went downhill when Aurelius was used as the detour for the Pennsylvania bridge replacement.
  • Kind of related, but just generally, if the city better maintained bike lanes that would do a lot. And, I'm talking simple regular street sweeping. Since debris collects on the side of roads, naturally, a lot of trouble with bike lanes is simply that all kinds of crap on the roadway ends up on the side like small branches, loose asphalt and gravel, etc...this is even true is less urban settings. As for the state of Aurelius proper, it's honestly a much smoother drive than most similar streets in the city, to be honest, and I'm talking in the immediate area. Mt. Hope directly eastbound of Aurelius is horrible by comparison. Everyone uses the center lane at least all the way down to Elmwood Cemetery, and the area under US-127/I-496 is embarrassing. Soon as you get to the East Lansing border, though, everything's alright.
  • Regarding the traffic calming measures, I can't stand speed bumps and the chicane style obstacles, like the one on Mary Ave, are even worse. I'd agree that stop signs and traffic circles are far better and probably safer. I think the City had a traffic engineer awhile back who was responsible for all these traffic calming measures, I vaguely remember him fielding questions at a council meeting defending them. They seemed to all be installed over a fairly short period of time, around the late 90's and early 2000's I think.
  • Thank you for answering my questions about the speed bumps, I understand why they are there I just think they could us better more attractive ways to slow traffic. The bumps are ugly all scraped from bottom outs some of then are really huge like on Lindbergh Drive, I don't know what would be worse cars going too fast or the clunk clunk sound of cars going over that bump. I don't suppose that they will ever remove or rebuild them. Since I have been home I was wondering at what point they stopped repairing the streets. All of Mt Hope is pretty bad some place all four lanes are potholes. Get the people who rebuilt S Washington and the Boulevard part of MLK to just rebuild the streets.I Lived in small town in New England were they rebuilt the roads with permeable pavement that lets water flow through into the ground, it worked really well and in the winter no potholes because there was no water to freeze and thaw. I see where the construction on Mt Hope is moving along but they are only replacing the sidewalks not repaving the street. As for bike lanes we have nice smooth ones on S. Washington to Barnes Ave anyway, but most people still ride on the side walk, which seems to mean they like being separated from the traffic, as most bike lanes are on streets that were once four lanes now three so there is a good amount of space to put down a curb with cuts for drives. I think a street like Kalamazoo could have a scooter/bike lane down the center lane with left turns like on E Michigan. You can still see some of the boulders on the east side of Quentin Park there were rock gardens and walls the stones seemed to be specimen from out of state there were many of different colors shapes and sizes there was a wild ramble we called the gully that lead up the the park house which was used as a warming house for winter skating and sledding.There was a kind of stage area at the foot of the hill with huge cedar trees as the back drop. In the summer there were "counselors" there who would direct all kinds of activities. At some point they took down the park house filled in the gully cut down a lot of trees and took out the rock gardens. It looks nice enough now but I rarely see anyone there.
  • Agreed. Just simple maintenance like sweeping the bike lanes would help immensely. I did the Hawk-I Triathlon in May and the stretch of Mt Hope from Aurelius to 496 was the worst section of the bike ride, although Beaumont and Forest were pretty bad also. I'd like to see more bike-friendly designs in the area. Hopefully trails to more areas of the county can be built with the money from the Ingham County parks millage.
  • Mt Hope from Aurelius to 127 is one of the worst major streets in the area, the only other main street I can think of that's as bad is Jolly from MLK to Waverly (I don't go on the north side much so I can't really speak for roads up that way.) Road maintenance is one thing where Lansing, and Michigan as a whole, lag extremely far behind.
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