A car-free Grand River Avenue, neighborhood unity and more housing by the year 2025 are in the mix for the future of East Lansing, residents and MSU students say.
A panel of five visionaries ranging in age from 20 to 72 offered a forecast of the city’s future during the weekend at a East Lansing Historical Society meeting. The discussion is a build up to the release of the city’s comprehensive plan for the first quarter of the century.
“I have to admit that we’re a little strange,” said society member Marc Thomas. “We like to do things like look through old documents and rummage through old photographs to find out what the past was like.”
The discussions provide an “opportunity to use what we know of the past and help us target the course of the future,” he said.
The talk was the brainchild of East Lansing City Councilmember Beverly Baten who suggested the topic after finding an article from 1955 predicting the future of East Lansing in 100 years.
Many projections stemmed from the past, including insight from Kevin Beard, chairman of the city planning commission.
“You have to look backward in East Lansing in order to look forward,” he said. “Look at what worked and what was good for the community.”
Taking that into account, he said he expects several East Lansing trends to continue, including downtown architecture, which mirrors campus, homes converted to rental, more apartments and a cycle of establishments. He also suggested making the downtown a car-less environment and encouraging affordable housing.
“East Lansing has gone from this sleepy town to a much more sprawling dynamic place,” he said.
For some residents, like Martha McKee, the boundaries between the city and its surroundings have become blurred over the years.
“To me East Lansing still ends at Hagadorn (Road),” she said. “That’s ridiculous, but that’s how my mind works.”
In the past four years the city has added 2,300 acres of land through land-share agreements, raising questions about future development.
East Lansing’s updated comprehensive plan will attempt to answer those questions by determining land use and zoning for the new sections of the city. Beard said the plan was last revised in 1982 and will be introduced at the end of this year.
“There must be lots of energy and planning effort put into creating the future,” he said.
Beard said while campus officials offer input in the city’s plan, city officials were not asked for much input on MSU’s version.
MSU’s 2020 Vision was approved by the MSU Board of Trustees in January 2001 and provides planning principles to guide future growth and new zoning ordinances for academic, resident, athletic and other campus areas. It intends to conserve land resources, extend open space and increase the park-like atmosphere of campus south of the Red Cedar River to the level of that on the north side.
Kevin Glandon, ASMSU director of community affairs, said the goals of the plans mirror each other.
“Everything is looking to the future,” he said. “MSU is a part of East Lansing so one can’t develop with out the other.”
But he said the future shouldn’t focus entirely on physical aspects.
“Buildings will change regardless,” he said. “But the biggest change might be the relationship between members of the community.
“The goal is to take the group who can live with each other and expand that.”
