Archive: Opinions

All the current activity around a Lansing Town Center is exciting.  If everything falls into place it will provide an actual village-like center to the town, a significant amount of housing, retail, professional buildings, and a business park.  If all of this comes to be, the part most Lansing residents -- significantly current Lansing residents -- will see is the retail/professional piece along 34B across from the Town ballfields.

That is the part that most pople will consider to be the 'town center' even though we are calling  entire 150 acre parcel the 'town center project'.  Aside from a small park that will probably primarily serve the residents of the new development, the retail/professional area will be the part that everyone goes to.  I think that strong design guidelines should be developed to make it the most attractive it can possibly be, to attract residents and others to congregate and shop there.

It will certainly be convenient to have a little village-like area with a pharmacy, a doctor, dentist, family restaurant and other stores and services the area may attract.  The question is, will the area have a strong sense of unified design or be a mess of disparate buildings we have typically seen around Lansing?

Chances are a strong design plan will attract businesses, and that is really the point, isn't it?  New business helps increase the tax base without putting large demands on services.  That has been a major part of the justification for building a town center all along, to increase tax revenue to help alleviate local taxes, especially school taxes.

Evidently the Lansing Planning Board will be working on design guidelines.  But the Planning Board has been historically liberal with zoning regulations, and in my opinion there is a unique opportunity to create an attractive shopping area with uniformity of design.

The danger is that initially each business that locates there will be building its own store.  While these buildings will have to meet some requirements, chances are they will look like a hodgepodge of buildings unless strict design guidelines are put in place and enforced.

It seems to me that it would be worth it for the Planning Board to work with an architect to come up with the look of the place, including what store facades should look like, and right down to the nitty gritty like street light design, sidewalks, benches, awnings, and even a color scheme.

Lansing only gets one shot at this, so it seems to me to be worth it to take the time now to make it the best looking center possible.  A little planning goes a long way.  More planning can insure that the town center is everything residents hope it will be.

v8i21