Pandemic scores another victim: LCC’s proposed parking ramp

FRIDAY, May 15 — Opponents to the proposed parking ramp on Capitol Avenue that Lansing Community College wanted to build had an unexpected ally in their successful fight to stop it: COVID-19.

LCC President Brent Knight said today that the pandemic played a big role in the decision to reconsider building the five-story, $51 million ramp at Capitol and Shiawassee Street.

“The biggest driver was the pandemic and the likelihood that the condition will last for a time and perhaps for a long time," Knight said.  “It caused the college to revisit the entire issue and ask ourselves if there’s a way we could build just one ramp."

That one ramp will be a bigger, taller replacement for the Gannon ramp on Grand Avenue. Knight said LCC will seek the city’s approval of a ramp that is five levels instead of the present three and that expands north to Saginaw Street. Right now, the Gannon ramp is buffered on the north by Schoolcraft Drive and green space. The Lansing City Council is expected to take it up starting Monday.

Meanwhile, city parking officials are considering a request by LCC for more metered spots on city streets and more spaces in the city’s North Capitol ramp, across the street from where the ramp would have been built.

LCC’s plans called for building the new ramp to handle parking while it tore down and rebuilt the Gannon ramp.

The pandemic offered a new option because of the low demand for paid parking on streets and in lots downtown while people work from home. “Nobody is thinking the economy is going to come back instantly,” Knight said, suggesting demand for parking will not return for a while to what it had been.

Nor does LCC know when students will return in person. Summer classes will be online, and Knight is not speculating on whether students will return to campus in the fall. He said LCC is being “prudent” as it looks at a combination of health concerns and legal and insurance ramifications if it reopens too soon.

In announcing its decision to abandon a new ramp, LCC played up the role of “community feedback” to the proposed ramp. Knight emphasized the pandemic’s role, but he didn’t deny that opposition to the ramp played a role.

Helping lead that opposition was Linda Peckham, who with her late husband, architect Bob Morris, renovated a convent into condos across Seymour from where the ramp would have gone. Peckham has lived there since the 1980s.

“The letters, the emails the contacts we had with zoning and with the Board of Trustees and with City Council became a community rift,” Peckham said, referring to the efforts of 18 people. “There was obviously more opposition than they thought.”

She said their messages were read aloud to the trustees. “While they sat there stonefaced,” said Peckham, who attended via Zoom, “I think they heard them.”

She also said opponents were able to get questions about the project in front of the four candidates for president to replace Knight, who will step down next month. She speculated that the community outcry may have made the trustees “stop and think whether they wanted to saddle the new president with such a controversy.”

Peckham referred to the stretch where the ramp would have gone as a “stepdown area” between downtown and the residential neighborhood that begins on Seymour and stretches in all directions away from Capitol. A “massive parking ramp” there would have eroded the neighborhood, she said.

Peckham said neighbors were “blindsided” by LCC’s plan to build a ramp. She said they found out about it only because the city requires neighbors to be notified of requests for rezoning.

But Knight said the only reason it sought a zoning change was to allow the public an opportunity to consider the plan. He said LCC was not required to seek a zoning change.

Peckham credited City Council President Peter Spadafore with “a lot of back-channel push” against the proposal. She said two more Council members were leaning against the project, which would have needed the Council’s approval after the city’s zoning board recommended the plan be approved.

“It’s not a secret I was not overly excited about another parking ramp taking up another block of downtown,” Spadafore said. “I talked to LCC officials, and the mayor, and the others.”

Despite his opposition, though, the zoning board voted in early April to recommend that the City Council approve the new ramp. The Council hadn’t acted on the recommendation.

Spadafore contended that the ramp was a 1990s solution, not one for the 21^st century, when other means of getting to school — from walking to public transit — need to be encouraged.

The pandemic, though, no doubt caused a shift in thinking on parking, he said.

“A giant parking structure might not be the best use of college resources and real estate,” he said.

He also said that LCC’s recent introduction of free parking for students may have created an “artificial demand” for parking. He said students think they are getting something free but in reality are paying for it through their fees.

Peckham, who retired from a career of teaching writing to LCC students, agreed.

“The root of problem is free parking for students,” she said. “A lot of students don’t need it because they ride the bus, don’t drive or live down here. We need to be teaching our students to walk three or four blocks away.”

Said Spadafore: “Students need to find alternative routes to school. CATA is a great service, particularly downtown.” And with the opening of Capitol View apartments on Capitol Avenue, next door to where the ramp would have gone, options for living within walking distance have improved, he pointed out.

Knight declared himself “delighted” that the ramp will not be built.

And he offered an olive branch to Peckham and others: improved “aesthetics,” such as more landscaping, are in the plans for the surface lot that will remain where the ramp would have gone.