A group of city officials and representatives from different city commissions came together to discuss the six proposals for the Park District Area at a meeting at City Hall, 410 Abbot Road.
The meeting was the first of several that will eventually lead to a recommendation of one to three plans for city council to discuss and possibly choose one.
The next meeting is scheduled for March 27 at 4 p.m., and subsequent meetings are scheduled for April 10 and April 17, both at 3 p.m. Sites for the meetings have not yet been determined.
The first meeting mainly was to organize the team on how to move forward to review the proposals going forward and discuss questions that need to be asked of the developers, said Doug Jester, the Downtown Development Authority vice-chair and the chairperson of the Park District Planning Area Review Team.
Several of the developers sent in proposals under a limited liability company, or LLC, and some of the questions are geared toward learning who is behind or who is leading the LLC.
“It wasn’t clear to us who’s behind those,” Jester said. “In some cases there can be partnerships and we weren’t sure who had what role. So when we’re evaluating their qualifications, it’s a little difficult.”
Jester said the committee also will be asking developers to demonstrate if they have the financial capabilities to be able to go through with the project.
The meeting laid the groundwork for how the next several meetings will take place.
The March 27 meeting will look over the qualifications of each developer and the April 10 meeting will look over evaluate the proposals.
The April 17 meeting might include inviting the developers to discuss their proposals.
The meeting hopefully will end with a recommendation to council for a project, Jester said.
The meeting also detailed how the review team will look over the proposals, using a point system to rank how each proposal faired for each member and make suggestions on how the team looks over the plans.
MSU Campus Planner Steve Troost requested during the meeting that each committee member write down notes detailing why they gave a plan a certain number of points.
“As people go through, do their assessment, jot down notes as to what their thinking they mean by those words…just be more specific as to why they rated things,” he said.
Originally, seven proposals were sent for consideration by the city, but Core Campus, LLC, withdrew their proposal.
Part of their proposal included plans to acquire properties at 100 and 130 W. Grand River Ave., and 341 and 345 Evergreen Ave.
According to city documents, Core Campus couldn’t come to terms with the property owners for the land that would be needed for their proposals, therefore dropping their plan from consideration.
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