Frandor Shopping Center to allow buses but no shelters

Corr and CATA agree to six-month trial plan brokered by Schor

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MONDAY, Sept. 28 — CATA will remove its shelters from Frandor, but the shopping center’s owner relented on banning buses for at least six months.

Mayor Andy Schor said he brokered the deal today after word spread that bus service onto Frandor property would end Oct. 17 because of what owner Patrick Corr told CATA were “many safety concerns for our customers and employees.” City Pulse was the first to report the story.

Schor told City Pulse tonight in a phone interview: “The shelters will be removed but the stops will remain” on a trial basis for six months, followed by a review.

“Nobody got exactly what they wanted,” Schor said. “This was a compromise for all intents and purposes. The most important part of all this is people still have access — access to be near the stores, to get on and off the bus and be near the stores without walking the extra distance.”

Corr’s safety concerns center on the two bus shelters.

"Lansing Police are not effectively helping us with vagrancy, public intoxication/open container, aggressive panhandling, public urination and other major incidents at these stops,” he wrote CATA on Aug. 30.

He said the problems were causing “many safety concerns for our customers and employees.”

Earlier, Corr had given CATA a required 60-day notice of his intent to end the agreement that permitted CATA onto Frandor property. CATA said hundreds of riders a day used those buses to reach Frandor.

As for Corr’s complaint about police inaction, Schor said, “We will respond whenever there is somebody who needs social services. We will send out teams” of social workers.

“Our police will certainly respond to calls for trespass,” he said.

“We don’t criminalize homeless. We will do everything we can to help if we get a call,” he added.

Said Schor: “If someone calls to remove someone for trespass we will respond, but if they need help we will do everything we can to help them.”

“We’re working under the assumption that people need to come and go, and they will come and go. The stops will be the place to do that.”

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