East Lansing has moved forward on loosening restrictions in East Village to allow for taller residential development.
Some background on East Village. The area is immediately east of North Campus and bound by Grand River to the north, the Red Cedar to the south, and Hagadorn to the east. It was originally platted for single-family homes, but by the 60's and 70's as MSU exploded with growth it was filled in mostly with apartment complexes and buildings. All existing single-family housing was turned into rentals during the 70's. It's most well known nationally for having been the source of most of the city's student riots. East Village is actually the rebranded name of the area to disassociate it from it's original name: Cedar Village.
The name change came about in 2004 as the city sought to zone the district in such a way as to push the student population out of the area so as to be able to ostensibly "improve" it, and by 2006 the city had drawn up a master plan and came up with a form-based code to do this: East Village District Code. The form-based code required new development to be mixed tenancy; generally the goal was to have an equal mix of student rentals, mixed-market rentals and owner occupied housing. What was also driving this revisioning of the area was that the city had also been working with a developer, and entered into a rough agreement with them August 2006. By the fall of 2009 the plan had failed because of the recession leaving the entire district in limbo. Because of the new form-base code, landlords weren't able to make certain improvements to their properties in the district since so many of them were now deemed non-conforming exacerbating the districts limbo status.
Anyway, with downtown East Lansing starting to overflow with upcoming development and having seen the error of their ways in trying to micro-manage, the city has been moving forward fairly quickly this year in
revising the form-based code for the area to lessen some of the stricter requirements, and letting the market guide more of the redevelopment of this area.
Specifically, whereas any new building in the district was required to have groundfloor retail/office space, it will now only be required along Grand River Avenue, though new buildings in certain parts of the district are permitted to have this usage. Given how narrow the district is from north to south, this makes sense. As for height of buildings in the district, the "as of right" height remains the same at 112 feet, as does the 140 feet limit which can be permitted by the council on a special case basis. The difference for the special case basis, however, is that it has been widened from "a building of significant public benefit" to "As long as the additional building height will cause no significant negative impact on adjacent properties, public streets and parking facilities, or public utility and services." which essentially turns the 140 limit into an "as of right" height.
Not huge changes, and in fact you could still make an argument that the city should have stuck to its guns given that they were pushing for mixed-usage in East Village. But the code has not only not attracted the redevelopment the city hoped for, but also stifled current property owners from improving their properties. There is another legitimate criticism, though, and that's that it was made because a Chicago developer wants to build this at the corner of Bogue and Grand River, which would have had a tough time getting past the current form-based code given the height and tenancy:
Core 1 by
NewCityOne, on Flickr
Core 2 by
NewCityOne, on Flickr
Core 3 by
NewCityOne, on Flickr
Prev
Linear Mode
