Entertainment returns to Brenke Fish Ladder with the opening of Fish Ladder Music Park

The giant crane he rented wasn’t going to cut it, so muralist Brian Whitfield had to learn how to rappel to paint his latest vision, dangling by ropes above the Grand River this summer.

Whitfield put the finishing touches on a $3.6 million park renovation, and now his mother calls him “Spiderman” because of his new skills.

The more intricate details on Whitfield’s mural — a colorful band of aquatic creatures jamming out — start to fade as it reaches the water. For effect, of course, and also it was a lot tougher to rappel there, Whitfield said with a laugh.

Lansing’s newest park upgrade adds the Fish Ladder Music Park to the Brenke Fish Ladder. The music part is an amphitheater built into an odd river feature: a 1981 concrete fish ladder with staggered rising pools so salmon and other fish can navigate the dam on the Grand River just outside the Old Town neighborhood in Lansing.

“For too long, we’ve turned our back on the riverfront,” Laurie Strauss Baumer, president and CEO of the Capital Region Community Foundation, said. “Now it’s our front porch.”

The multi-million-dollar amphitheater, largely funded by the private foundation, will be home to the annual Dam Jam, as well as concerts, theater and other performances. About $1.7 million came from a state grant in 2023. The city will pay to redo the connected Lansing River Trail paths.

Local muralist Brian Whitfield learned to rappel to paint this piece.

Raymond Holt

A bunch of new concrete added near the still-operating fish ladder has created stadium-style seating for several hundred people, with built-in electricity and a sound system.

Strauss Baumer said the stage is the big feature, but even with someone hired on a contract basis to promote events, and even when there are multiple events in a week, the area will spend more time functioning as a park than as a music venue.

To help fill the park the rest of the year, she said, there are permanent metal instruments, elevated bench swings that overlook a fence-free vision of the river, a working fireplace and picnic tables.

The project is part of the Community Foundation’s long-term goal of promoting the river, Strauss Baumer said, and follows work on Rotary Park (2019) and the Play Michigan! accessible playground (2023). She said the foundation will soon consider its next steps.

Flames N’ Dames brought fire dancing to the grand opening of the new waterside venue.

Raymond Holt