Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero made a rare appearance of late at Monday’s City Council meeting — perhaps coincidentally the first session since the Lansing State Journal renewed its editorial campaign saying he should choose between being mayor and running for governor.

On the day Rochelle Rizzi first saw the grand, brick house along Pine Street in Lansing, it was “complete construction zone.” The 6,000-square-foot Colonial Revival house was once the home of the superintendent of the School for the Blind but had been vacant more than a decade. Rizzi was on a quest to find the perfect space for her marketing firm, Rizzi Designs, and when she stepped inside, she knew she had found the right place. “I knew which furniture was going to be in what room,” she remembers. “It just seemed like a great fit.”

A public hearing is scheduled for tonight’s Lansing City Council meeting on a proposed ordinance to establish four overlay districts in the city. Overlays are land-use planning tools that encourage “smart growth” development and pedestrian-oriented movement in commercial areas.

U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Brighton and Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero used to hang out together at Adrian College in the 1980s. They got to know each other quite well then and stayed in touch as they moved up their respective political ladders.

It’s safe to say the Tea Party didn’t exactly take over Michigan politics during the August primary. Not even close.

Sharon Parks will retire soon as president and CEO of the Michigan League of Human Services, where she started 33 years as a policy analyst. The League is an advocacy group for low-income residents. Kyle Melinn and Berl Schwartz interviewed her last week on City Pulse’s radio show, which airs weekly at 7 p.m.

No excuse for speeding I’m outraged, but not for the pc-required reason. Every event descibed ("Driving while black?" 8/11/10) has happened to me at one time or another — except when I get stopped for a traffic violation, I get a ticket. Councilmember status gets Q...

Hear “urban farming” and think “oxymoron?” The reality is that farming has an incredibly urban tradition. In fact, the first cities in human history occurred as a direct result of the simultaneous agricultural revolution of the Neolithic period.

When entering the Genesee Neighborhood near downtown Lansing from the south, a large two-story white house at the corner of Butler Boulevard and Ionia Street gives you a forbidding welcome. For about the past year, the property at 824 W. Ionia has been overgrown with weeds, its boarded-up windows hiding the charred remains of a fire.

After serving 5 1/2 years in Ingham County jails, Manning was released on parole. Two of the conditions were that he was not to use any device with Internet capabilities and he was not to look at sexually suggestive material.