Lansing Off Topic

[hood]

It was on the news last night and in Mlive: State in new fiscal year with a $318 million surplus

[RustTown]

I'm still very skeptical for some reason. This doesn't seem right, and seems like it would have been a huge story if correct, especially after all of the bad news we've been hearing for years now of the state of our economy.

[hood]

I know that the story was on WILX, Fox 47 and, of course, Mlive. I won't question it anymore.

[ZachariahDaMan]

Michigan State lost to Illinois yesterday I was hoping they would get their first win in Campaign since 2002. Dee Brown had a GREAT game!

[statedude3]

Michigan State lost to Illinois yesterday I was hoping they would get their first win in Campaign since 2002. Dee Brown had a GREAT game!

The Spartan hockey team won last night, to salvage an otherwise sad week for spartan sports.

[statedude3]

On the way to my parents' place today, I drove through the Logan Shopping Center (Holmes and MLK) for the first time in a long time. WOW!! When I was a little kid, that was a thriving place, and for the last 10-12 years it has been in steady decline. I just hope they can get shops better than Big Lots and All-of-us-Express in there now that the building looks good. I could not tell though, was the interior rennovated?

[RustTown]

Yes, the whole thing (interior and exterior) are being renovated. In fact, my recent development tour showed the exterior renovation.

While it's a huge change, I think we better get use to there being lower-end shops in the plaza for the forseeable future. The area around the center has changed (it's steadily getting poorer). Until that changes, there isn't going to be too many upscale, or even decent stores.

I hope I'm wrong, though. Still, maybe the exterior renovation will attract good stores that might have been scared off by the poor storefronts before. It was beginning to look very bad for awhile.

I've always hopped that they could make it an actual square, and put a plaza somewhere within that HUGE lot with a fountain and a restaurant, and really make it a meeting place.

[hood]

Just a little news on some possible areas for development downtown based some properties for sale. First, that cheap little one story office building is for sale on S. Capitol It sits on .79 acres and they want $875,000 for it, not all that bad of a price. And it is being listed as office land, not an office building.

Secondly there are two adjacent parking lots for sale, one on Hillsdale (.16 acres $215,000) and another on St. Joeseph (.29 acres $530,000) Both of these are pretty close to the Printers Row condos. My guess is that for those kind of prices these lots won't likely remain parking lots, they will likely be developed either into lowrise office (3-5 floors) or residential, either lowrise apartments or rowhouses.

[jaredw]

Hey, I dont mean sound rude or anything, but how do you know those are low prices? just wondering because i'm not sure on what a good price would be for land in those areas.

[hood]

The parking lot's prices seem a little iffy to me, but the office building is a steal compared to them. It's cost runs just over $1 million per acre compared to the parking lots which are running at $1.5-$1.9 million per acre which does seem pretty steep to me.

[hood]

Check out this story in yesterdays LSJ: Growing Lansing: Bernero, Hollister say reviving downtown is key

Among other things they say that "Lansing and East Lansing already are working on some joint initiatives, which will be announced later this month, Bernero said." They also speak to a real estate person who says that the commercial real-estate market is begining to improve.

[RustTown]

Cool, I'll read the article, but I can almost be certain that the Lansing/East Lansing venture is the trolley bus...for now. I can't believe I missed the article. I read the paper everyday.

Edited January 20, 2006 by Lmichigan

[hood]

Yeah, I read the online version and I'm still getting used to having to look at the business section seperately.

Also, Neogen is moving forward with their development of Allen St. School. From the 1/23 council agenda:

Resolution setting a public hearing for SLU-9-06 for Monday, February 13, 2006, request by Neogen Properties LLC to rezone the property at 1614 E. Kalamazoo Street from

[RustTown]

Allen is an invaluable historical assest, and I'm glad to see it being reused. I couldn't even imagine the city being so shortsighted enough to tear it down. Actually, I've been VERY surprised at how many of the recently closed schools have got deals for reusal so quickly. I was fearing what everyone else was, a Detroit scenario where they sit vacant for years as havens for crime.

BTW, the former Danzo's Hardware store in REO Town next door to Discount Dave's I saw had scaffolding up and the sidewalk blocked. It looks like someone got that one quick. I assume it's going to be top floor lofts, first floor retail/office. This was one I assumed may sit empty for some time. The developer is NeoPhase.

Also, the old car dealership-turned-loft across the street in REO Town is finally getting it's facade reconstructed. I'm a bit disappointed because it looks like they are using cheap materials, but at least it's an improvement over what was there before.

Now, I'm just waiting for Dalmations grill to move to the former Bozo shop, and for the Michigan Electic building next door to the new lofts to see a reconstruction (the blue building).

[hood]

The Danzo's hardware will be ground floor retail with lofts above, they got taw exemptions and all that good stuff, I think plans were made before the store even closed. I'm still extremely skeptical about high end lofts in this area, why would anyone want to live in REOtown and pay more than what they would Downtown, or even Old Town. I don't think there will be anymore sizable projects until the current ones have fully proven themselves.

[RustTown]

Who says that they have to be high-scale? I don't think that's what REO Town is going for. But, I really don't want to retread the whole REO Town thing, again. I think it's going to do just fine as a neighborhood-focused node.

[hood]

I had heard that those dealership lofts are going to run $1100 per month, thats what someone told me who was working on them and I seem to remember a number like that in the City Pulse or something, but I'm not sure. I would say the highest feasable rent for REOtown would be about $750-800 for a two bedroom, and that would have to be a quality loft.

[hood]

I just noticed after reading the 1st quarter 2005 office market report for Lansing that they said 202,000 sq. ft. of speculative office space was slated for the CDB, they said none of it was expected to begin construction in 2005. That space figure did not include Capitol View, any ideas on what their talking about?

Report (PDF)

[RustTown]

I have no idea.

[patrickom]

I was happy to see in the LSJ article that the forum included someone from Forsberg. At first I was going to write one of the all-too-common city-vs.-suburb rants that you see on other forums ... and then I stopped. It's a great first step to even see these folks at a meeting that has downtown development as its key point. Bravo.

[hood]

Bernero is slated to make his State of the City address tomorrow at 7pm. In the LSJ he is quoted as saying

"During the speech, I will be announcing exciting new initiatives that will help grow our economy, tackle our city's budget deficit and work with our regional partners to strengthen our communities."

Bernero to detail plans for boosting city's future

I'm really hoping that he will be announcing one of those unamed projects that he was speaking of earlier in the year, anyone have any speculations?

[RustTown]

This sucks. The council just shot down the Michigan Avenue streetscape improvement which would have added a decorative median to parts of East Michigan Avenue that do not need a left-turn lane, which would have also functioned to filter storm water runoff, so it was also practical. The terrible thing is that they will have to build something similar along the avenue sometime in the near future to filter the water, anyway, and the government was giving them grant money so that they could have done this now.

What killed the proposal was two issues. The first was many wouldn't vote for it because the city would have to maintain it, and they feared that they wouldn't have the money. The second was that some council members saw this beautification as unnecessary, even though they will be forced to do it in the future.

I can definitely see both sides, though.

[hood]

I thought they just postponed voting on it? I'm always confused by the way council acts, many of them seem to lack inteligence, many of the councilmembers seem very confused, very often. I think that was part of the problem tonight.

[RustTown]

Ms. Bauer wanted to postpone it, but was informed that tonight was the only night that the rest of the council would allow this. It also had something to do with time, and that they had to act tonight or they would miss the grant.

The big problem is that the council doesn't communicate very well amongst itself. There are a few clear divisions in the council. As you know, each of them are assigned to a appropriate number of committees. The problem arises when certain council persons don't relay things to the whole council keeping everyone in the dark until it's time to vote.

[jaredw]

Do you guys know if East Lansing still plans on expanding the median down Michigan Ave towards Hagadorn? I know that they wanted to do it before, but were met with opposition from business owners who would suffer without the left turn lane.