About a mile-and-a-half up Michigan in the center of the eastside near Michigan and Clemens, a group of businesses are cobbling together a plan to grow a new commercial brand:
East Town. They want to replicate the coalescing that brought us Old Town in North Lansing and REO Town on the near-southside.
Quote:
Welcome to East Town
By Allan I. Ross | Lansing City Pulse
Jun 25, 2014
Twenty years ago, Old Town wasn’t Old Town. It was North Town, a Bohemian neighborhood that even the people who lived there called “seedy.” Today, the quaint boutique district is home to art galleries, home decor stores, hair salons and a yoga studio. The New York Times even gave it a shout-out last year in an article about the Broad Art Museum. Old Town represent!
A similar transformation is well under way in REO Town a couple of miles to the south, while downtown Lansing has continued to draw large crowds, even if the focus there has shifted away from retail toward restaurants and bars. But hey, traffic is traffic.
And with those three areas humming along, a fourth neighborhood is primed to join the ranks as the capital area’s newest hotspot. A novel experiment on Lansing’s east side has local businesses reaching out to their neighbors to forge a new(ish) identity for the diverse neighborhood. That outreach involves transforming the block into a hub of social activity, including adding outdoor pianos, tables with umbrellas and the creation of “parklets” that will try to turn passerby into lollygaggers.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to East Town, Lansing’s newest … Town.
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A series of brainstorming sessions — a technique called charrettes, which condenses months of meetings into a single week — was held last year and earlier this year. Business owners and community members were brought together to think up ways to maximize a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to fund the Capitol Corridor project, intended to transform the stretch of Michigan and Grand River avenues between the Capitol and Webberville into a bustling center of activity. A rapid transit bus system is also part of the plan, which could debut as soon as 2017.
White said to be a success, this project will take the combined effort of municipalities, business districts and neighborhood associations working together. East Town is the first blush of that type of effort.
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Probably the most eye-catching addition will be the parklets, where barriers will block off two parallel parking spaces on the street — one in front of the Avenue Café, the other in front of Emil’s — to create public space in the street. Andy Kilpatrick, transportation engineer for the City of Lansing, provided technical guidance for the parklet setup.
“From the city’s perspective, this was very easy to implement,” Kilpatrick said. “This was the first time this was tried in Lansing. And from transportation perspective, I’m eager to see how this works. Michigan Avenue is going to be reconstructed in next five years and this will help us start to see what the move important use of this space will be.”
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I was always surprised this area didn't have a brand, already. I was also curious driving by the last few weeks about the new street elements I was seeing, and now it all makes sense. It's funny, because just last year this area was going through a major transition that had it looking very vacant, and I was thinking it was on its way down. Within just the last few months a lot of buildings were sold and new tenants found and it's off to a great start, again. What really needs to happen, however, it near development directly to the east to really sustain this.