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Madison Ave Design Charrette Results

ModSquad

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ModSquad Hamlet

ModSquad

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Madison Square Design Charrette

Lighthouse just posted today the plans developed by the residents and business owners in the Madison Square Business District.

The link above takes you to the the Charrette page on our web site. The links along the left side take you to tons of PDF files. Warning...they take some time to down load.

Please check them out. I would be happy to answer questions and really value your input. We just launched this page 30 minutes ago, so you all are the first to see them.

GrDad maybe you can figure out houw to post some of the cooler graphics from these PDF's?

Alright UP...let's hear from you.

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grcitydog Whistle-Stop

grcitydog

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That's a lot of new stuff in one neighborhood! I assume (knowing what I know of your organization) that the home prices in this area will remain reasonable. I know that this is the conundrum of development: you want to make things really nice, but in doing so you run the risk of pricing out the very people you were helping make a better neighborhood for.

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GRCentro Hamlet

GRCentro

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This looks FANTASTIC Dave! Can you get grants for this kind of work?

A while back savegarfieldpark.com made a list of other large, under-used land parcels in the city that they thought would be better suited for the Salvation Army Kroc Center. On the list was the land bordered by Madison-Jefferson and Cottage-Crofton. Do you think that could be a possibility?

And my most burning question...the charette was held at my church; how did I not even know about it?! :P

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ModSquad Hamlet

ModSquad

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I will try to quickly answer a few of the comments and questions posed here:

GR Centro-You will have to ask Syd Harvey, Tom Mockabie and Pastor Dave about that one. I repeatedly encouraged them to come. These plans have a STRONG affect and influence on the church's expansion plans. You will be happy to know we are working on some dates for me to come and present all of the neighborhood plans to the church. Hint hint nudge nudge...we are looking for a few families from the church to move into the neighborhood. We are looking to develop some townhomes or loft style condos. Stay tuned.

I have been in conversations with Ed DeVries about a sire near the park for the Sal Army Center, we will see where it goes.

We got a grant for the charrette through the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. It cost about $25k

Jayblogger-More than likely the final version of the park will include one baseball field and one soccer field. This will be a privately owned park and we are working on our operating proforma right now. We need to diversify our rvenue stream as much as possible...baseball leagues AND soccer leagues just makes sense.

grcitydog-The question about gentrification is a big one... more than I can answer here. I think I may start another thread about gentrification on UP. This is a subject we have given a lot of thought and pre-planning to and I think the conversation would be good for UP to have. Here is a quick commecial to that thread though...in the Madison Square Neighborhood (Soon to be called Southtown) property values have risen 240% faster than incomes. In other words if we are not careful...this is a neighborhood ripe for gentrification. I will lay out our plans to asddress this in a new thread later this weekend.

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ModSquad Hamlet

ModSquad

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I just spent the last 45 mins looking at the plans. This is all very exciting. What are your hopes for the industrial building north of the proposed park, loft condos?

Thanks twoshort...We are negotiating on the building currently. Our hope is that once we develop the park, we will be able to develop that building into some form of entertainment venue. Live jazz and blues club is one suggestion. The plan is for a rooftop outdoor bistro overlooking the park.

The PB Gast Building, which is next to the industrial building, has been purchased by an Internet Service Provider. They are re-developing the building using the first floor for their offices and then considering either offices for internet dependent companies or residential.

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PBJ Burg

PBJ

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grcitydog-The question about gentrification is a big one... more than I can answer here. I think I may start another thread about gentrification on UP. This is a subject we have given a lot of thought and pre-planning to and I think the conversation would be good for UP to have. Here is a quick commecial to that thread though...in the Madison Square Neighborhood (Soon to be called Southtown) property values have risen 240% faster than incomes. In other words if we are not careful...this is a neighborhood ripe for gentrification. I will lay out our plans to asddress this in a new thread later this weekend.

I'm very interested in this topic as well. So many times we see developments or improvents to areas causing skyrocketing housing costs. Many TND developments have the same sort of issues, it looks like a great community, but pricing increases to the 250k+ level. I would love to live in some of the developments/areas you've already hit ( :whistling: ), but income limits restrict a lot of that. It's interesting b/c you want a community of mixed income/race/backgrounds, but how do you accomplish that effectively?

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