Looks like CATA has developed its first significant exanpsion of service in years, and after one of the toughest years in the transit agency's history. I've been screaming about the downtown circulator for years, and, well, here it is.

I'd like to see more improvements on the weekday routes, but this should make moving around on the weekends significantly easier in most cases.

A few little odds-and-end during June:

1. Lansing ends up saving another piece of its historic utility infrastructure in selling an old BWL substation up on Larch in north Lansing for conversion into office space. From the LSJ:

2. To the west, the old Waverly Golf Course & Michigan Avenue Park in Lansing Township has finally been rezoned to allow its redevelopment into mixed-usage. From the LSJ:

East Lansing Buzz is saying that the facade on the Grand Avenue building in Center City will begin application starting Monday. It looks like they are up to floor three on the Albert Avenue building and floor four on the Grand River Avenue building. The next elevated deck poor is on the Grand River side for next Friday.

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Over at The Hub will finally make its way above ground next week with the framing for the first flood deck, and they'll also be pouring the grade slab. Apparently, there were some issues found when pouring the foundation that slowed things down.

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Wow, the revised plans for Park District down the street from The Hub and Center City District in East Lansing have been released and it's quite a surprise. The expectation was that the developer was going to downsize it after the finances for the last plan for this prominent corner didn't work out. In fact, they've kept it at 12-stories (about the max for East Lansing) and split off the hotel into a seperate 10-story building. This could be four high-rises in downtown East Lansing under construction all at the same time.

Building A would have ground floor retail, a level of parking above that hidden from view, and then 10 floors of 213 market-rate apartments. Building D would be a 10-story hotel with ground floor retail, second floor ballroom and meetings rooms, and the 8 floors of 194 rooms with a rooftop restaurant and bar. This building will have no parking. Then finally, Building C which will have ground floor auto and bicycle parking, and then five floors of 71 affordable market-rate units.

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Looking north from Grand River along Evergeen:

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Looking south along Evergreen back towards Grand River:

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Looking east along Grand River:

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The architecture on the hotel I'd like to be better, but so long as it's not the centerpiece, I can deal.

That looks appropriate for that corner. Of all the designs we’ve seen over the decades, I think I like this layout and format the best.

^^ Nice renderings, impressive density.

The weakest part of the proposal (to me) is the new five-story residential structure to the north. I think it's mostly because of all of that parking surrounding it. The rest looks good.

The more I've looked at the hotel portion, the more concerned I've become of the architecture and poor massing. I hope to god that's not rough concrete they are using for the facade. And all of the blank walls are concerning. It'd be better to have a central elevator core so you could have windows all all faces of the building. But given that this was in danger of being majorly downgraded in scale, I won't complain too much. I just hope that the downgrade isn't going to result in sub-par facade materials.

BTW, every plan for this site that has included that north parcel has been unimpressive, but I guess they feel that the apartment buildings there currently aren't impressive. Developers routinely give their affordable housing portions short-shrift. Anyway, the parking you see around it already exists. In fact, the building actually takes up a bit of the surface parking to the immediate west of the existing building, so you're going to end up with slightly fewer open-air/uncovered parking spaces. The parking immediately west of that across the street (Valley Court) is actually for Valley Court Park. The parking immediately to the south is what I guess is for the existing apartment buildings and thus will be used for the new larger apartment building.

Saw the Notice of Public Hearing for July 11 by the Planning Commission on this one in the paper, and we get a few more technical details on this one.

100 West Grand River: 11 stories and 140 feet tall (East Lansing's height limit).

120-140 West Grand River: 10 stories and 119.5 feet tall.

314-345 Evergreen: 5 stories and 52 feet tall.

It looks like they will lay out the site plan for approval and request a special land use permit, which I believe is because the downtown zoning doesn't allow for by-right multi-family residential usages.

Planning commission put out a packet with elevations and such. Fortunately, the facade of the hotel is just light-colored brick, and not concrete, thank god.

In other news, now that it's been under construction for months, it seems the developer finally added this project to their website. We also have a name: Center City is now Newman Lofts. Not sure if that name is just for one component of the block or the whole thing. In any case, they've also released a new rendering. This is the Albert Avenue (back) side:

http://www.newmanlofts.com/wp-conten...018.04.13a.jpg

http://www.newmanlofts.com/

Beautiful rendering. Target is on the Grand River side; the two buildings are split by an alley.

Another brewery is coming, this one to REO Town south of downtown. After a fire damaged it last year, East Lansing-based Ellison Brewery purchased the building late last year and unbeknownst to much of us began the renovation to turn this into a brewery and beer hall in January.

Photos courtesy City of Lansing.

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^ Very cool looking space for that brewery.

You'd never know from the outside. It's about as generic and old building as you'll find, and they've had the windows openings covered in wood for years. I hadn't even realized until it caught fire that Quality Dairy was actually using the building. So then imagine my surprised after the fire to find out they'd been in there renovating it since January. Everyone was wondering why they've taken the mural down and just assumed it was because of the fire.

From about a year ago:

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/d61...-Fire-7300.jpg
Kevin W. Fowler | Lansing State Journal

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Kevin W. Fowler | Lansing State Journal

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Kevin W. Fowler | Lansing State Journal

Great for REOTown. Such an underappreciated asset in the Lansing area that has struggled to become relevant even in the face of much revitalization. I wish someone would do something cool with a couple of the corner buildings, namely the old bank at 1200 S Washington and the building at the southeast corner of Washington and Elm (but maybe something has been done to this one since I left). What I think the area desperately needs, too, is some high density residential and not the type like Fountain Place.

1200 South Washington has been occupied for years by Prosthetic Center, Inc., and as the name implies a local retailer of prosthetics. I believe a new restaurant is moving in next door where the biker club was. A taco joint is moving into the old art deco gas station at the southwest corner of Washington and Elm. An antique jewelry store just moved into 1136 South Washington Avenue. Off the beaten path, the old laboratory in the old Moores Elementary school building is being replaced by an internet company.

I believe I've heard 1101-1103 South Washington (southeast corner with Elm) is currently being renovated.

Lots going on in REO Town.

MSU is building its STEM Teaching, Learning and Interdisciplinary Research Facilities. The big thing here is that it'll resue the old Shaw Lane Power Plant as part of the campus.

Apparently, construction started this month, though the design above is tentative, so it's probably just site prep. work for the time being. This is scheduled for occupancy in September of 2020.

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Shaw Lane Power Plant by rexp2, on Flickr

Update from East Lansing Buzz:

Center City/Newman Lofts: Underground utility work is almost done on Albert Avenue along the back of the project. It included all kinds of electrical and water upgrades. Underground utility work now shifts to the south side of the development, which will close two of the three westbound lanes of busy Grand River Avenue (M-43).

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The Hub: Work continues on the foundation. They've encountered way more problems with soils than they anticipated. Though, they begin this weak pouring the first floor.

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The Newman lofts look great. Amazing what a well designed base can do to conceal parking

Well, the new mayor and city council have pulled the plug and are finally giving up the ghost on the Lansing City Market. It cease being a farmers market years ago, so now the mayor wants to sell the building and the land for some unspecified project.

I won't miss the building if they decide to demolish it; it was truly a joke and one of many factors that hastened the market's demise. But it's sad to see how former Mayor Bernero treated this facility as an after-thought, since all he ever really wanted was the private development of the area.

To be clear, this doesn't necessarily mean the end of the Lansing City Market, though it likely does. What it does mean is that this is the end of the market at this particular site, downtown. The area has plenty of other farmers markets; in fact, the proliferation of farmers markets in the area after the recession is yet another factor for the waning downtown market. The whole thing is a mess, and only the mayor seems to know what he wants to see on the land.

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old market

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The LSJ picked up the story on MSU building it's STEM Teaching and Learning Facility. They also have an additional rendering we hadn't seen.

MSU hadn't used the building as a power plant since 1975, and they demolished the old chimney in 2011 and folks feared the building would be next. Anyway construction begins this summer and will wrap up in 2020.

Speaking of MSU, lots of other major construction courtesy the Infrastructure and Planning and Facilities Department:

Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building: This one began construction last year, and will be completed next August. Since the building's interior is highly technincal laboratories, some interior spaces won't be built out totally until 2020. But, the exterior is largely done, already.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfgHwlbVAAAoybq.jpg

Business College Pavilion

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Solar carports - covers 5,000 spots on campus producing a peak of 10.5 megawatts

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