The East Lansing City Council discussed proposed improvements to some of the city’s downtown parking structures during its Tuesday work session at City Hall, 410 Abbot Road.
Proposed changes would include extensive base structural repairs and repairs to elevators and lighting to three of the oldest parking structures in the city — Lot 10, or the Division Street ramp, the University Place parking structure at 300 M.A.C. Ave. and the Grove Street ramp — and likely would cost about $2 million, East Lansing Planning and Community Development Director Tim Dempsey said.
Dempsey presented a Parking Capital Improvements Plan to the council, which outlined some of the financial predictions on how the improvements would be paid for in a five-year plan.
He said the city was considering implementation of gradually increased parking rates in the structures and selling more leases in the structures to offset the cost.
East Lansing Mayor Vic Loomis said increased rates in the parking structures might cause concern among city residents.
“That just seems to be something that people would react to,” Loomis said.
Dempsey said the purpose of the improvements is to keep the parking structures usable for as long as possible in the future, and the increased parking rates would be gradual and necessary to keep the quality of the structures high.
“We want to make sure we expand the life of all these facilities,” Dempsey said. “Because of their age, they are facing some issues.”
Council also continued its discussion on the issue of distribution of medical marijuana in the city.
East Lansing City Manager Ted Staton brought forth a condensed list of unresolved issues with the ordinance before council for discussion, including hours of operation, capacity of caregivers operating out of dispensaries, physical separation between dispensaries and the number of individuals able to grow in an individual residential property.
Councilmember Nathan Triplett said some of his concerns with the current ordinance are brought about because regulations proposed on dispensaries are found nowhere else in the city code.
“I’d rather see consistency with the way we treat other establishments,” Triplett said.
East Lansing residents brought forth a few alternate suggestions for the council’s consideration, including proposals to put medical marijuana districts in primarily agricultural districts and to create one or more districts for medical marijuana cultivation and distribution.
Growing medical marijuana in agricultural districts likely would make the most sense because of the essential plant nature of medical marijuana, East Lansing resident Don Power said.
“We think it’s logical — it gets away from the emotional arguments,” Power said. “(Medical marijuana) is a crop, grown and sold for public use.”
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