East Lansing Development

[jaredw]

Construction has started on Gaslight Village, including 60 condominiums and town houses, and five to eight retail shops.

See the article for more info: http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=32483

[davidb]

I saw the article on Gaslight Village today and I was really surprised. How come nothing was posted on here? Any renditions available?

[jaredw]

New Photo Update

New five story building on West Rd and Lake Lansing by US 127. The future home of Independent Bank and Thrun.

Water Tower Place, a new development right down the street is under construction. It is of an office park type, I think underutilizing the area. Here is a picture of the first built building.

This picture shows how deep the property is:

Here is a two story building being built just down the street from Water Tower Place, this is more of what I would expect.

A new Independent Bank is being built next to Meijer on Lake Lansing Rd. It will be 27,000 sq ft, feature five teller windows, three drive up banking windows, and one drive up ATM. It is expected to be finished by January.

Gaslight Village, over on Lake Lansing, east of Abbott Rd, is under construction. Four commercial units have already been built, so you can get an idea of what the property will look like.

Stonehouse Village, the original building has now been torn down, and the footprint of the building remains. Here is the current look of the property.

[RustTown]

Great update, man! I hope that if they must sprawl, that we see more mid-rise architecture like that of the new West Road building.

[dnast]

Not to take away from anything, but that shot looks so much like a model neighborhood. If I didn't know any better I would think that it was done by student for some kind of class project. I'm not saying the houses look bad (they don't) I'm just commenting on this particular photograph.

[davidb]

Not to take away from anything, but that shot looks so much like a model neighborhood. If I didn't know any better I would think that it was done by student for some kind of class project. I'm not saying the houses look bad (they don't) I'm just commenting on this particular photograph.

I am not too big of a fan of how this is being developed. Those are being advertised as "Office Condos" Not very appealing to me.

The office parks on North Coolidge do seem to have some poor land use patterns, but then I saw how many three to five story buildings were intermixed with the smaller ones. Either way, this looks to be heading up to State Road pretty quickly.

[jaredw]

Small update: MSUFCU is looking to build a new headquarters north of Lake Lansing by West Road and Coolidge. I expect that their building will be near Independent Bank and 5/3 Bank's headquarters too.

[RustTown]

Has anyone heard anything about the proposed Museum Place?

[jaredw]

From what I hear, Scott Chapelle plans on having the site plans in to the city by the end of this year. They are going to remove the lower grade level, and make the building substantially bigger.

Here are two articles about it:

10/05/05: Structure May House Museum For MSU

09/08/05: New Museum Place Planned For East Lansing

[jaredw]

Here are two pictures that I found for the parking garage being built by MSU. One is really old, when they just dug the hole, and the other is from 10/18

[GR8scott]

^ is that right off grand river? I always thaught it would be a good idea for MSU to put there own school owned bookstore and appearal shop on the campus side of gr.

[RustTown]

Yes, that is on Grand River. The MSU Bookstore is on campus in the basement of the International Center.

[jaredw]

^ is that right off grand river? I always thaught it would be a good idea for MSU to put there own school owned bookstore and appearal shop on the campus side of gr.

Yeah it is right off of Grand River, but I don't think there are any plans for commercial space planned in the parking ramp, just a parking ramp. The university bookstore is in the international center.

[statedude3]

I am really excited about this parking ramp, as it has been promised to visually blend with the surrounding turn of the century buildings that dominate the north campus area. I cannot find the rendering I had used before, but I'm sure the wonderful LMich would help me out here... thanks in advance...

[RustTown]

I don't have it either, but remember seeing it in a State News article. You may want to try looking it up there. I wish I could remember the architect, because they had small renderings of it on their website.

[jaredw]

You can find those in post #19 of this thread

[jaredw]

$110M revamp plans could be ready by Jan. on the Museum Place

The potential eight- to 10-story structure, located near the intersection of Abbott Road and Grand River Avenue, would most likely include restaurants, three floors of the MSU Museum — to be moved from its on campus location — and loft-style residential units, said the project's developer Scott Chappelle, president of Strathmore Development.

Costs have changed from $180 million to $110 million due to the State Of Michigan Museum pulling out for financial reasons.

The approval process is expected to take about 12 months.

http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=33262

[statedude3]

Considering the proposed location, this is one of the ugliest developments that I've ever seen. That would look entirely out of place at the corner of Abbott and Grand River.

[hood]

I think it will look great, I've been wanting to see a large modern or ultra-modern building in the Lansing area for awhile. Given, this isn't the best choice of location for such a design, but I will still be very glad to see it go up. I'm going to start new topic for this project also.

[RustTown]

That is of course a prelim. rendering (i.e. sure to change), but I agree with Hood. The metro area needs more innovative architecture, and I'm sure that with much needed refinement, the basic shape of this design would look great. The status-quo, PoMo designs are really starting to get old, IMO.

One question that has concerned me is I don't see any mention of what's going to take the museum's place on campus, and why it even has to move at all. It would be like moving the City Hall of East Lansing on campus. It doesn't make sense.

[statedude3]

Ok, I know by living at Chandler Crossings, I'm a part of the sprawl problem...but it's getting a little bit rediculous. I drove through the Hawks Nest neighborhood and the Strattford Condominiums, both on Coleman Rd., and this is getting out of hand. The area roads (Coleman, Coolidge, Chandler/Abbott) are nowhere near capable of handling such a traffic load. Not to mention the quickly developing office parks on Coolidge.

I really wish East Lansing would do something to attract some residents to the city core. It's not going to be too long before neighborhoods go up north of I-69. Just imagine if they ever put highway access rams on Chandler Rd.

[RustTown]

Yeah, the city should be practically racing to put up quality, affordable housing in the city center. East Lansing has the problem of having little room left to really expand the city center, and they are hitting some roadblocks with trying to do that with East Village, but they have to get serious if they don't want their new growth occurring ALL in Bath Township.

[statedude3]

It would seem to me like they could make better use of Grand River and the retail frontage. I would not mind seeing the entire strip being rebuilt, with more height, with a residential focus on the upper floors.

[RustTown]

Yeah, downtown Grand River is really built too small. It never quite grew as fast as the rest of the city. It also lacks a central focus which is so common of smaller cities and college towns (i.e. no central courthouse square or any large historic civic structure to speak of).

[jaredw]

Well, you know that a highway ramp is being planned for Chandler Road so it is only a matter of time. I think it really has to do with zoning. The city knows that people will build out there so the land that the city has acquired in the northern tier they have zoned it so it will be built on. If they used smart growth, then they would have rezoned some of the neighborhoods by downtown for much higher occupancy and bring the populations closer to the core.