Residents, officials at odds over EL proposal

The online version of this article has been corrected. The developer and the location of a development had been reported incorrectly.

Distrust is at the heart of opposition to East Lansing’s Park District ballot proposal.

“This is a referendum on whether we trust the people in government who for the last decade has been lying to us,” said city resident Eliot Singer.

The proposal would allow City Council to sell downtown parking lots 4, 8 and 15 in what Mayor Nathan Triplett calls “an essential procedural step toward any project moving forward to revitalize the western entrance of East Lansing’s downtown.” It does not mandate their sale.

DTN Management Co. of Lansing Township has a proposal to develop portions of the area called the Park District, which also includes the parking lots. East Lansing developer Scott Chappelle’s plan to develop the property collapsed in 2013 over financial concerns.

Bob Trezise, president and CEO of the nonprofit organization Lansing Econimic Area Partnership, supports a “yes” vote.

“Should the vote fail, it will set back any and all forward momentum the City of East Lansing has experienced for at least a year, maybe more,” Trezise wrote in a column for MLive.

“If, and only if, the measure passes can the city then move forward with the public approval process for the proposed developments. This process will include review and approval by city committees and commissions, followed by the negotiation of a development agreement between the developer and City Council. Throughout the entire process, there will be opportunities for public input to ensure the final project is a win-win for everyone,” Trezise wrote.

Countered Singer: “We’ve been lied to about this City Center II, now renamed the Park District project, for a decade. We’ve been promised wonderful things are going to happen with it, and nothing has ever come up of it, and we’re supposed to trust the process, and people in city government, including Mr. Triplett, who have quite frankly a record of recklessness when it comes to this stuff.”

Responded Triplett, who appeared on the “City Pulse on the Air” radio show with Singer: “When you look at City Center 2, the project would have added significant vitality to East Lansing’s downtown but the finances were not there, and so the Council unanimously approved a motion that I myself, in fact, made to determine the project was not viable and pulled the plug.

“There is an attempt to make City Center II into a boogeyman, and trust me no one would have liked more than me to move forward with the revitalization of this part of downtown sooner.”

Added Triplett. “These buildings are a terrible way to enter the western end of downtown. But that planning processed worked. It should give voters confidence that Council will not approve any project where the finances are not there. All those issues should be discussed, will be discussed, are being discussed.”

Singer differed with Triplett’s description of the parking lots as “ugly and blighted.”

Singer said redeveloping the parking lots will not reverse the “true blight,” which he said is the property “still in the hands of the City Center II developer.”

He invoked the name of another East Lansing resident, Ingham Co. Treasurer Eric Schertzing, who is involved in development issues in his role as head of the Ingham Co. Land Bank.

Schertzing, he said, “makes a wonderful distinction that is essential in terms of redevelopment. There’s redevelopment that government needs to do to reverse true blight. Then there’s redevelopment government wants to do, which is these discretionary things like redeveloping a parking lot.”

Schertzing said he doesn’t have a side in this issue.

But, speaking on the “City Pulse Newsmakers” TV show, Schertzing said, “You have to have a vibrant downtown. That is what the city is trying to do. Is there some tension between the populace of East Lansing and its leadership? Yes. I think there always has been.”