Lansing Vision

[hood]

I drew up a map of my dream projects for downtown Lansing, a few are realistic, most or visions.

1. A complete rehab of the 200 and 300 blocks of N. Washington, except for the Victor and SBC building. There should be a 10 floor minimum and required ground floor retail.

2. Lansing Center Expansion, more complete than the one currently proposed.

3. New Impression 5, rebuilt as a state of the art, very large museum, I would like to see a planetarium (I know, dreamin') It would be built on the Grand & Michigan surface lot and adjacent abandoned building.

4. New Hotel on the site of the Grandview Building and South Grand Ramp.

5. After new museums are built, the old Museum District can be razed, built up and redeveloped into residential.

6. Instead of mixing the conference and banquet room into the main body of the Lansing Center, I would propose building a tower along Michigan and using the rest of the Lansing Center as exibition space.

7. Build two state owned skyscrapers to consolidate the Secondary Complex downtown, also building a large ramp to the south end of the block.

8. Demolish the South Capitol Ramp and build a new R E Olds musuem, it should be very large, 250,000+ sq ft and built to look like an old multi-story factory.

9. Build a new State Police Headquarters and parking ramp along with rebuilding River St.

10. High Rise Residential, 12+ floors.

11. Midrise residential, 6-11 floors on the lot beside the old Masonic Temple.

12. Consolidate Ingham County Offices and Courts, about 350,000 sq. ft. and a parking ramp.

13. Zone for mid to high rise residential, encouraging high rise.

Lmich, perhaps you could come up with your own "dream" master plan. I just came up with what I figured would be realistic, assuming I had a few billion to make things happen my way. I'd say in my plan 1, 4, 5, 8 and 11 are realistic, 3 is realistic minus the planetarium. This thread is to get some talk going about what we would like to see and what we expect to see happen downtown, feel free to throw out any ideas.

[RustTown]

I'll come up with one, but the only thing that concerns me about your dreams is that they all seem to call for high-rises. There should be a good use. Along the streets on super blocks (such as #7) should always be lowrise building containing retail, and MAYBE a high-rise or two.

[hood]

The reason that I show almost all high-rise buildings is because those are the only projects I'm thinking of. This is a sort of dream map, not something to point out every single development that should happen. there is plenty of room for low rise and other types of development, I just didn't care to specify them. As for block 7 in particular, a dense office block blends nicely with the surrounding blocks, all dense office blocks themselves. There would be no reason to put retail in that block anyway, it just wouldn't fit in, it should be used for state offices.

Also, I was thinking that the building just south of the Arbaugh, I think it's the AFL-CIO building, would make for a nice location for some new mid-rises in the future. If the Arbaugh is successful it would be a very likely project in the near future.