LANSING TWP. - Krystal Teamer shops at Meridian Mall, 1982 W. Grand River Ave. in Okemos, because it is the closest one to MSU’s campus.
The criminal justice senior has no car and said Meridian can be easily reached by bus.
But next summer, Teamer and other students can enjoy shopping at the Lansing area’s newest shopping center, at the northwest corner of Lake Lansing Road and U.S. 127, in Lansing Township.
The new 191-acre center, which officials hope to begin construction on this summer, will have the look of an old downtown center, providing each shop with its own building, said Susan Aten, Lansing Township clerk.
“It’s going to be a combination of a lifestyle center and power center,” she said. “The township has pushed for making this a showcase shopping center.”
The lifestyle center will have stores like J. Crew, Banana Republic, Gap, Pottery Barn, Ann Taylor Loft and five sit-down restaurants, said Mark Fallon, director of real estate for Cincinnati’s Jeffrey Anderson Real Estate - the company that will bring in the lifestyle center’s stores.
On the outskirts of the lifestyle center will be the power center, with such shops as Super Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club and Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse.
“This whole shopping center will be the nicest center in probably the state of Michigan,” Aten said. “It was designed to fill in the gaps of (retailers) that do not exist in the Lansing area.”
Not everyone is happy about the development of the land. Isabel Cisnero and her family rent a home on Lake Lansing. The land her home is on will be used for the shopping center.
“They are knocking our home down, so we have to leave,” she said. “A lot of people are not happy that they are using all this land for a huge retail center.”
Cisnero said many of the homes that were along the road have already been torn down to build the center, leaving many people on the move.
Aten said, though, that meetings with the neighbors have been successful and their concerns, which were mostly about noise, have been addressed.
Fallon said the center is not only targeted to permanent residents but to MSU students as well.
He said students can easily get to the center from campus and have more of a variety of shops and restaurants.
Teamer, however, isn’t so sure students will stop shopping at Meridian Mall so quickly.
“I don’t know if students are going to go there because Meridian is closer,” she said. “Meridian is the easiest to get to if you don’t have a car.”
Claudia Bleil, marketing director for Meridian Mall, is not too concerned the center will take away from the mall’s student market.
“I learned that MSU students choose Meridian Mall as their No. 1 off-campus destination when riding CATA,” she said. “And as far as I know there isn’t any bus that goes to the new location.”
But Fallon said the new center will attract customers from Flint and Ann Arbor as well as community members.
“There will be music playing and entertainers; it will be a cool little village,” he said. “Once and for all it will be clear that MSU kicks the University of Michigan’s butt because we will have much better amenities to offer than U-M could ever have.”
