The East Lansing City Council is building a wall around campus. It's a great wall of exciting street-level businesses under tiered condominium housing, stretching from Grand River Avenue all the way to East Village.
But unlike the ancient structure that defended China from Mongol invasions, this wall will keep students separated from campus, help suck in young professionals and empty-nesters and, perhaps, ultimately win Gov. Jennifer Granholm's Cool Cities money.
The latest planned addition to this wall is West Village, a proposed area bounded by Grand River Avenue, Delta Street, Valley Court, Hillside Drive and Hillcrest Avenue. Not surprisingly, the council is seeking to fill this area with, you guessed it, businesses and upper-level, owner-occupied condominiums.
The expressed goal is diversity. A diversity in the kinds of people that live in these spaces, which they narrowed down to, yet again, young professionals and empty-nesters. It seems as though the council uses the word "diversity" with a backward meaning to express its discrimination of student tenants.
And we're sure this new development will be a tremendous success. After all, isn't that where empty-nesters want to live? Near the heavily traveled roads of East Lansing's bar scene? At least they'll have severe noise ordinances at their disposal when the young college kids' racket becomes too much to bear.
With this development and the redevelopment of East Village - the 35-acre area bounded on the west and east by Bogue Street and Hagadorn Road, and on the north and south by Grand River Avenue and the Red Cedar River - the council will have created a pretty extensive defense to protect the portion of the city's older population located between campus and the Northern Tier.
Through restrictive housing ordinances and time, the city will rout out the students who live in that area. And if students aren't pacified by the pricey, amenity-laden apartments of the Northern Tier, they'll have to choose between being tied to campus housing or taking excruciatingly long bus rides into campus on city streets clogged with traffic. Perhaps the city's next project will be to rout out cooperative and greek housing as well.
The council shouldn't be blamed for wanting to develop the city. That's its job. And the proposed area would certainly benefit from renovations. Council members should be criticized, however, for doing it with disregard for the thousands of students the city harbors.
The real shame of this is it's likely that no one will speak against the council. Students constantly come and go in East Lansing and no one has a thought about the future of the area. But, although no one takes action, the future of the MSU experience is being sacrificed through noise ordinances, restrictive housing policy and area developments.
Regardless of the limited time we spend here, this is our city, too, and we shouldn't be quelled and confined in our housing choices.
There already is a great diversity in the types of students that go to MSU. What we truly need to do to retain diversity in places to live.
