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Originally Posted by Hayward
Very good news...especially the last sentence too. The more downtown workers, the more downtown residents and businesses to follow.
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Agreed. Although downtown is severely limited in its variety of housing. In recent years we've seen an uptick in downtown rental rehabs above storefronts, as well as newish developments/conversions like the Arbaugh and the Stadium District, but I still think downtown is ripe for some truly diversified multifamily housing of various sizes and types. Some of the loft conversions are really nice, but their pricing is such that you can buy a home in one of the adjacent neighborhoods for half the monthly cost and two or three times the space.
I realize the trends in the housing market have people favoring the flexibility/mobility of renting, therefore driving the rent prices up. But it's still a bit ridiculous for Lansing. $800-900/mo for a small studio might fly in Ann Arbor, but that's pretty astronomical for downtown Lansing given the lack of amenities. This just proves to me that there's a growing demand for downtown living and only a few developers are coming around to the "urban living" concept, still hesitant to take what is thought of as a big risk compared to green field development. Personally I'm not a fan of the Gillespie-type developments of 100+ units. I'd like to see some 10 or 20 unit buildings going in all around the core by some smaller developers. Townsend's developments seem to be more on par with a sustainable mixed use core, but some of his development proposals have fallen through lately.
Another thing looming in downtown Lansing is the impending retirements of many State of Michigan employees. My office, for example, is expecting about a 15-20% retirement rate by January. Most of the older workers in State government live out in the burbs. Almost all of the younger people I've known to come in to replace those older workers (including myself) live in the direct vicinity of downtown. I have a feeling there is going to be even more demand for downtown living in the coming months due to this trend. I don't think many of these corporate moves downtown are going to have as large of effect as one might think on housing because they are staffed by middle aged people, particularly the BCBS type office jobs. They will absolutely have an a positive outcome on downtown businesses, but I highly doubt many of those workers are going to change their living arrangements due to a corporate move of a couple miles.