Lansing-East Lansing, MI Development - Page 17

uaarkson · #**321** Posted **Jan 10, 2012, 5:16 AM**

I was just at El Az a few weeks ago.

Memories.

subterranean · #**322** Posted **Jan 10, 2012, 2:04 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hayward

^ Nice! More of that is needed.

Agreed! I feel like Lansing is finally maturing, however slowly.

subterranean · #**323** Posted **Jan 18, 2012, 2:20 PM**

The Gillespie project at Marshall and Michigan is moving right along. As of yesterday, most of the third floor is up. It's a pretty dramatic change for the intersection and one that will be highly visible...I'm hoping that it will be the catalyst Michigan Ave needs to jump start some more mid density mixed use along the corridor. I'll try to get more photos as it moves along.

subterranean · #**324** Posted **Jan 22, 2012, 6:17 PM**

The Marshall/Michigan project today:

Untitled by With Any Luck, on Flickr

subterranean · #**325** Posted **Jan 22, 2012, 6:23 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by LMich

http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20120109/BUSINESS02/201090317/Construction-7-9M-St-Anne-Lofts-project-moves-forward?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Apparently this is what the St Anne Lofts will look like:

http://stannelofts.com/

LMich · #**326** Posted **Jan 23, 2012, 10:28 AM**

I'm ambivalent about this, at best, and lean toward the opinion that Michigan is probably already oversaturated with casino gaming. This likely won't happen given the concerted efforts by the other tribes in the state to stop this, and given the federal approval that this will have to be granted. Anyway, the only thing I really agree with is that this would finally stabilize the Lansing Center.

BTW, the rendering is looking southwest from outside the stadium along Cedar Street. This will be built on the parking lot of the Lansing Center.

Quote:

An artist's rendering shows the proposed casino project in downtown Lansing. The project would be called Kewadin Lansing.

Lansing casino plan includes 2,200 jobs

By Lindsay VanHulle | Lansing State Journal

January 23, 2012

A tribal casino proposed for downtown Lansing would create 2,200 jobs, improve the viability of the city's convention center and fund scholarships for Lansing public school students, Mayor Virg Bernero said.

Bernero and leaders of an Upper Peninsula American Indian tribe today plan to announce the casino, a $245 million venture adjacent to the Lansing Center.

The casino, tentatively called Kewadin Lansing, would be owned and managed by the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and would offer gamers as many as 3,000 slot machines and 48 tables when completed. The 125,000- square-foot facility is eyed for a strip of land along Cedar Street near Michigan Avenue.

Bernero said the $245 million investment would be recouped through revenue, projected to exceed the project cost on an annual basis.

A smaller, temporary casino would open first near the permanent location.

It's far from a done deal. The tribe has yet to obtain federal approval from the U.S. Department of the Interior to hold the land in trust. The city would need to sell the land to the Sault tribe.

...

How soon the project could start is uncertain, but Bernero said he hopes construction could start in 12-24 months. The project would take 14-18 months after groundbreaking to construct the casino and parking decks.

The Sault tribe would cover the costs to build the casino, as well as the city's legal fees, Bernero said.

Lansing would receive an annual 2 percent cut of revenues — roughly $5 million to $6 million — to start a scholarship fund for Lansing School District students.

...

Video:

• Video Link

subterranean · #**327** Posted **Jan 29, 2012, 8:02 PM**

Moving right along...

Untitled by With Any Luck, on Flickr

Untitled by With Any Luck, on Flickr

For reference, this is what used to be at this site:

IMG_3293 by StephCarlisle, on Flickr

Michi · #**328** Posted **Jan 30, 2012, 7:56 PM**

Very nice to see. Thanks for the photos!

hood · #**329** Posted **Feb 5, 2012, 4:20 AM**

There is now a webcam for the Board of Water & Light's new plant in REO Town: BWL webcam

LMich · #**330** Posted **Feb 10, 2012, 8:26 AM**

Kind of a demonstration project, and maybe a bit of public art, but I still like the sound of this:

Quote:

A Modest Wind

by Lawrence Cosentino | Lansing City Pulse

February 8, 2012

They come in sets of three cylinders about 3 feet tall and swirl like barber poles or washing machine agitators. They can be stacked or lined up like Legos on roofs, ledges and other high places.

Unlike the towering three-bladed windmills Don Quixote mistook for giants, vertical micro-turbines nestle modestly into urban areas, converting modest winds into modest amounts of energy.

In his State of the City address Jan. 30, Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero said the city was working with an Indiana manufacturer to put micro-turbines on city buildings as the first in “a series of small-scale green energy technologies” to be piloted here.

The mayor’s spokesman, Randy Hannan, said it would be the first municipal installation of micro-turbines in the nation.

“We are working through the scope of the project, cost and site location,” Hannan said. The administration hopes to have the turbines in place by summer.

Mark Clevey, consumer education and renewable energy program manager at the state of Michigan’s energy office, called it a “smart play.”

“We have an asset — roof space,” Clevey said. “There’s buildings all over Lansing that can handle them. The bottom line is, get ‘em up there, on the city’s tallest buildings, as high as you can.”

There’s an ample supply of wind in Lansing, and not just from the state House chambers, City Council and the mayor’s office. Micro-turbines, designed to catch winds as low as 4 or 5 miles per hour, are a way for cities to fish for energy right off the side of the boat.

...

Hannan said the city will work with the Lansing Board of Water & Light to see how the turbines perform and evaluate their potential to beef up the city’s renewable energy portfolio in the long term. Private partners, including downtown businesses, may also be brought into the Lansing deal.

...

Rizzo · #**331** Posted **Feb 10, 2012, 9:43 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by LMich

I'm ambivalent about this, at best, and lean toward the opinion that Michigan is probably already oversaturated with casino gaming. This likely won't happen given the concerted efforts by the other tribes in the state to stop this, and given the federal approval that this will have to be granted. Anyway, the only thing I really agree with is that this would finally stabilize the Lansing Center.

BTW, the rendering is looking southwest from outside the stadium along Cedar Street. This will be built on the parking lot of the Lansing Center.

Video:

• Video Link

The design is pretty good for a casino. The architects respond to site surroundings and viewsheds as well. Stadium, corner condition, farmers market, river.

LMich · #**332** Posted **Feb 16, 2012, 10:27 AM**

The REO Town Cogeneration Facility is coming along nicely:

Quote:

Lansing State Journal | Rod Sanford

subterranean · #**333** Posted **Feb 16, 2012, 2:28 PM**

I actually like the design by Studio Intrigue. I was glad to see it this far along when I drove by this past weekend. I bet it won't be long before we see some residential development along that corridor, too.

LMich · #**334** Posted **Feb 29, 2012, 10:09 AM**

Quote:

Lansing area part of Gig.U super-high-speed Internet initiative

by Matthew Miller | Lansing State Journal

February 29, 2012

EAST LANSING — Like a thousand other communities around the country, the Lansing region made a pitch two years ago to become a test site for Google Inc.'s super-high-speed broadband fiber network and came out empty-handed.

The prize went to Kansas City.

But, according to Steve Webster, CEO of the Prima Civitas Foundation, the competition set something in motion that didn’t end when the Internet search giant announced a winner.

“It caused all of us across the country to aspire higher and higher for the sort of innovation that would come with that kind of connectivity,” he said.

On Tuesday morning, Webster and a handful of community and business leaders gathered at the foundation’s offices in downtown East Lansing to announce their own plan to pave the way for what Google might have done: bring widespread 1-gigabit broadband service to mid-Michigan, 100 times faster than what’s available to most homes and businesses in the region.

“This is a highly focused partnership between governmental units, economic development organizations and broadband suppliers to build a capacity in this region that competes on a global level with broadband connectivity anywhere,” Webster said.

The plan is both to lower barriers to investment by getting local municipalities to expedite, for example, the permit process for installing new broadband networks and to “aggregate demand,” as Webster put it, convincing potential users to locate their businesses in certain key areas “so that the number of users per dollar invested goes up.”

The first targeted areas, identified because they have significant numbers of high-tech, health care and engineering companies, will be a corridor that extends from downtown Lansing to Michigan State University, the Capital Region International Airport “Aerotropolis,” the University Corporate Research Park just southwest of MSU’s campus, parts of Hagadorn and Okemos roads, and areas in south Lansing near Cedar Street and Interstate 96.

Webster said the community is “exquisitely close” to having all of the fiber-optic cables in place to make the first stage of the plan a success, though a wider distribution of 1-gigabit services would require more substantial infrastructure upgrades. The intention, he said, is to “let the marketplace tell us next where to go.”

...

http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/a...text|FRONTPAGE

uaarkson · #**335** Posted **Feb 29, 2012, 9:22 PM**

Awesome.

LMich · #**336** Posted **Mar 14, 2012, 8:40 AM**

Looks like Eatran, the public transit operator for Eaton County (western suburbs), is finally adding fixed-routes to fix their grossly inadequate dial-a-ride service. It also looks as if Lansing's public transit agency (CATA) might actually be able to extend the #2 deeper into Delta Township, where it currently stops at the Lansing Mall:

Quote:

EATRAN seeks tax renewal, efficiencies

by Allan Miller | Lansing State Journal

March 10, 2012

...Major changes to the way EATRAN operates are being considered. The goal of is to increase efficiency by putting more riders on each bus and meeting more riders’ transportation needs.

That decision will be made by the EATRAN Board after the vote on tax continuation, said Peterson, who is also the Mayor of Olivet.

The plan being considered by the EATRAN Board, and recently presented to the Eaton County Board of Commissioners, calls for the addition of a regularly scheduled fixed route between Charlotte and Delta Township, together with fixed routes to carry passengers to points within Delta Township, such as LCC West Campus, the Marketplace shops, the Lansing Mall, Auto Owners Insurance, Great Lakes Christian College and the Waverly Public Schools.

Two versions of the Delta Township portion of the plan are under consideration, depending on whether or not EATRAN and CATA can reach agreement to extend CATA’s Lansing Mall service to the Marketplace shops west of the I-96/I-69 freeway.

The plan would, in some cases, require passengers to change buses. A rider going from Eaton Rapids to the Lansing Mall would be picked up by a door to door bus, as is currently the case, but then taken to Charlotte to connect with the scheduled fixed route bus going to the Lansing Mall.

...

If CATA can negotiate this extension, this would be a major 2.5 mile extension for the #2. To be honest, I'd like Delta Township to eventually join up with CATA so it wouldn't be so difficult to work these things out. This is yet another example of the problems of regionalism in a central city wedged up into a corner of its county where parts of the city and suburbs spill into two other counties.

subterranean · #**337** Posted **Mar 14, 2012, 1:14 PM**

I'm totally for more efficient bus service in Eaton County, but I don't quite understand an extension of CATA to "Marketplace". There are nothing but big box stores out there, mostly selling large items for the home, e.g. furniture and home improvement stores, with barely any housing in the vicinity. The only destination I see typical bus riders accessing on that extension would be Walmart. You certainly can't fit a couch on a CATA bus.

If it's part of a larger plan to connect the two systems, then maybe it makes sense. But would there be the ridership? And I don't quite understand connecting Charlotte to Lansing. Who the heck rides a bus from Charlotte to Lansing, especially if it's a connection from other parts of the county? I would guess it would take nearly an hour and a half to get from Eaton Rapids to "Marketplace", and then another 30-45 minutes to downtown Lansing, if one were so inclined.

My philosophy: live where you work, work where you live. Eaton County is rural small towns and Lansing sprawl. This is one case where I think countywide transit is just plain stupid. We should be doing a better job of desnsifying our corridors with housing in a land use pattern that makes sense for transit. Otherwise, we're just putting a band-aid on a gaping wound.

LMich · #**338** Posted **Mar 14, 2012, 1:29 PM**

The connection from Charlotte is to the Lansing Mall, which is in Eaton County, not Lansing proper. I do think you're underestimating commuter rates within Eaton County. This wouldn't primarily be for shoppers. A lot of the folks that work at Marketplace actually live on the eastside of Delta Township around the Lansing Mall and some even in Lansing Township and the westside of Lansing, and a lot of them don't have cars, so they are bumming rides or doing the dial-a-ride. There is also a lot more business in the county seat than I think people think that Delta Township residents have a hard time getting two because of the inadquate connections.

I think people often forget the type of people and workers that live on the eastern side of the township and how tied are they in both with the stuff further out (jobs) but also with the city of Lansing (doctors offices, family, hangouts, etc...). Mass transit out on the westside is horrible. I agree we need to densify existing corridors, and Marketplace is actually about the natural limit of the commercial sprawl to the west, now.

I'd understand the concern if we're talking about far-flung townships, but Delta is one of the "urban" and continguous townships.

subterranean · #**339** Posted **Mar 14, 2012, 4:56 PM**

Some good points about the county seat, but I still think people need to come to grips with the reality of $4+ for a gallon of gas. I'm sorry, but if you live in Eaton Rapids and work for $7/hr at the Lansing Mall, I have no sympathy for you when there are apartments directly behind it. perhaps a couple shuttles a day would suffice for county business matters or hospital visits, but I don't see frequent service being sustainable.

subterranean · #**340** Posted **Mar 19, 2012, 8:21 PM**

On the site formerly owned by Pete Townsend, Scott Gillespie hopes to buy the bank-owned property to transform it into a mid density mixed use development:

Quote:

Developer, neighbors huddle on plans for land near state Capitol

LANSING – A vacant plot of land across from the state Hall of Justice building near the state Capitol could see as many as 84 apartments and some retail space, according to a proposal drafted by local developer Scott Gillespie.

Gillespie presented plans to members of the Downtown Neighborhood Association last week, saying he wanted to involve the community and be a good neighbor.

Gillespie, brother of fellow developer Pat Gillespie, is also redeveloping a former gas station on Michigan Avenue.

Tentative plans call for four buildings on the property, which is bounded by Ottawa Street to the south, Ionia Street to the north, Sycamore Street to the east and Butler Street to the west.

Three of the buildings are planned as three-story residential structures with 24 rental units in each.

The fourth, a three-story commercial building, would be built at the corner of Sycamore and Ottawa Streets with residential units above.

Published: Monday, March 19, 2012, 4:06 PM
By Angela Wittrock | awittroc@mlive.com

http://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/in...huddle_on.html