Wednesday, September 19,2012

Development digest

Where are they now? The greater Lansing area's major development projects and where they stand, revisited.

by Andy Balaskovitz

Of seven major development projects waiting to rise in Lansing in 2009, four — Capitol Club Tower, City Center Studios, Lansing Gateway and SOBI Square — never got off the ground. The other three — Pat Gillespie's Market Place and Ball Park North projects and the Lawton Group's The Lenawee (now called Reutter Park Place) — are still waiting to be built.

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Wednesday, September 12,2012

Stoned troubadour

East Nashville's Todd Snider brings 'agnostic hymns and stoner fables' to Lansing

by Andy Balaskovitz

I genuinely believed Todd Snider when he said he was unsure if Saturday night will be his first time playing in Lansing.

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Wednesday, September 5,2012

A venue cometh

A performing arts center is coming to Lansing Township — what's that mean for downtown Lansing?

by Andy Balaskovitz

Whoooooosh. That's the sound of Lansing Township leaving the city of Lansing in the dust on the goal of creating a performing arts center. On Oct. 1, construction is set to start on a 12,000-square-foot, 1,500-capacity performing arts venue at Eastwood Towne Center in Lansing Township.

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Wednesday, August 29,2012

Where's Niowave?

Company sends a representative to a community meeting with little knowledge of the pole barn controversy

by Andy Balaskovitz

Residents of the Walnut Neighborhood want to move beyond airing their complaints about a 14,000-square-foot pole barn in the neighborhood. Problem is, their corporate neighbor is not showing up to community meetings to discuss solutions.

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Wednesday, August 29,2012

Convent down

A Church of the Resurrection building on the East Side comes down as a cost-cutting move for the Catholic Diocese of Lansing

by Andy Balaskovitz

There will be no resurrecting a convent that stood for over 50 years on the campus of a historic church on the East Side. An official with the Catholic Diocese of Lansing confirmed Monday that the old convent, which was one of six buildings at the Church of the Resurrection in the Eastfield Neighborhood, was demolished because it was rarely used and too expensive to maintain.

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Wednesday, August 22,2012

Father and son Jerome

"Not your normal developers" put all their eggs in the Red Cedar Renaissance basket

by Andy Balaskovitz

With a host of outsized personalities involved with the redevelopment of Red Cedar Golf Course, who are the two guys who paired up with well-known developer Joel Ferguson on this ambitious, 61-acre plan to bridge Lansing and Michigan State University?

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Wednesday, August 22,2012

One year later

Few dispensaries remain, leaving little doubt that medical marijuana activity has gone back underground. Now, all eyes are on the state Supreme Court.

by Andy Balaskovitz

Once the neon flashes of an open sign and maybe a cannabis leaf showed plainly in the windows of 41 storefronts across greater Lansing. A half-dozen or so remain. Where once 11 medical marijuana dispensaries operated on the 1.6-mile stretch of Michigan Avenue between Cedar Street and U.S. 127, one remains.

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Wednesday, August 15,2012

The Master Plan

by Andy Balaskovitz

If City Council approves putting a new Red Cedar Golf Course proposal on November ballots, what will we get out of it? Nobody really knows.

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Wednesday, August 8,2012

Eyesore of the week

by Andy Balaskovitz

Architecture critic Amanda Harrell-Seyburn says: Enclosing a front porch to gain extra living space, as seen here at 1915 Harding Ave., is a common practice in cold-climate states. It’s easy to underestimate the value of a front porch, especially in Michigan.

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Wednesday, August 8,2012

Death and foreclosure

The tense final days of Steven Rigby and the posthumous fight over his possessions

by Andy Balaskovitz

We’ll never know how Steven Rigby would have wanted this to go down. We do know the Ingham County treasurer and his relatives disagree on how it should.

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