College towns across the country have unique challenges and benefits that come with creating an environment in which families, young professionals and students can coexist and live together as one community — and East Lansing is no exception.
East Lansing's identity crisis: attracting families to a college town
Does East Lansing suffer an 'identity crisis' appealing to both students and families?
Bailey Community Center on Jan 30, 2015, in East Lansing.
With the large difference in populations residing in the city together it’s understandable, even expected, that the differences will lead to challenges for community members and city officials. But having a vibrant, energetic and youth-filled college town also has many benefits.
Bailey Community Center Jan 30, 2015, 300 Bailey Street East Lansing. The multistory structure was built in the 1920's as an elementary school, then adopted as the city's community center in the 1980's and has recently announced it's closing. Kennedy Thatch/The State News
Challenges
East Lansing Mayor Nathan Triplett said college towns have a unique set of challenges because there is such a diverse group of people sharing a relatively small space.
“That sometimes creates lifestyle conflicts and different expectations between neighbors — some of whom are student residents and some of whom are permanent residents,” Triplett said. “So, we see these things when it comes to noise, and to litter and to the hours that people are out and about around town.”
Triplett said these lifestyle differences are why he encourages residents to create an open dialogue with their neighbors when complaints come to him.
“East Lansing is a university town, we wouldn't be who we are without Michigan State University and its students,” Triplett said. “So I try to maintain a solution oriented approach to lifestyle conflicts when they occur. So encouraging open communication, working with permanent residents and students to identify specific problems and find specific solutions for those problems.”
East Lansing City Manager George Lahanas said the city police also have additional challenges in finding a balance of keeping people safe, but not over-policing, and they try to issue warnings for some of the smaller issues before writing tickets.
Lahanas said when they put an ordinance in place regarding not putting bulk items out by the street before the day of pickup, he looked at the numbers after one year and said the police issued 71 warnings and only seven tickets.
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“To me that shows that the police officers are incredibly patient in saying ‘hey, this is on the curb, can you put it back behind the house, or put it back in the house until the trash pickup comes?’” Lanhanas said.
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He said they also encourage the police to deal with much more serious crimes that would threaten the safety of the residents above some of the smaller things, like noise and litter.
“The livability stuff, like noise, like nuisance, liter, party litter that sort of thing, is not obviously quite as essential as personal safety,” Lahanas said. “I think the best thing our police do is keep the whole community safe and that’s for everybody.”
East Lansing City Hall on Aug. 29, 2015. Courtney Kendler/The State News
Frank Pattinson, 63, is an East Lansing resident who has been living on Kedzie Street for 38 years. He said he thinks the city sometimes doesn't pay as much attention to the areas with a higher student concentration, like the 100 block of Kedzie Street where he lives.
East Lansing Councilmember Ruth Beier said via email she worries too that sometimes it is more challenging for the city to get larger companies that would provide good employment opportunities to graduates of the university, because developers always seem to want to build more student housing.
“As a result, there are few employment opportunities in East Lansing, and we lose our graduates to other cities,” Beier said via email. “The proposal for the Taco Bell building is a good example. That is a prime site that could be developed as an office or even a corporate headquarters for a Michigan company. Instead, the developer is seeking a 100% tax abatement for 12 years to build another student apartment complex. The other problem with focusing only on student housing is that there is not much to do downtown for people who are not students.”
Pattinson said he wishes downtown would create more spaces in the area that would be good for adults as well as students, such as Black Cat Bistro and Hopcat, like Ann Arbor has done.
The building on the corner of Grove Street and Albert Avenue that houses The Residences and HopCat June 23, 2015. Joshua Abraham/The State News
“The focus seems to always be on bringing in more student-oriented business in the downtown area," Pattinson said. "Like Tin Can, and that’s just a dive bar, and it’s not going to bring in any adults."
Lahanas said it can sometimes be harder for something like a start-up business to enter downtown East Lansing because the demand causes a rental space in the downtown area to cost too much.
“The fact that we have a strong economy in East Lansing means that a lot of our downtown business are rented,” Lahanas said. “If someone goes out of business there’s somebody that wants to pop right in there because they see opportunity.”
Triplett said it is a challenge sometimes to find places available for companies that would like to be here.
“I think one of our greatest challenges in downtown East Lansing is finding more commercial space for the companies that are interested in locating here have access to expand,” Triplett said. "The closure of Barnes & Noble a few years back was originally looked at as a blow to the community, but it turns out, what it did was free up space in the downtown for Jackson National to create a really innovative work space that’s now on-boarding talent into their company.”
Lahanas said MSUFCU recently unveiled plans they have to build another large building in the northern East Lansing area which would be able to employ possibly 1,000 people, which would be attractive for MSU alumni of many different majors.
Triplett said often times, people are quick to want to speak on the negatives that arise within a college community, but he believes the benefits are far stronger.
“Every town has it’s challenges, every town has particular drawbacks — East Lansing is no different,” Triplett said. “But on balance, I think looking at a university community like East Lansing, the presence of Michigan State and the opportunities to live in the backyard of a Big Ten University give a really tremendous opportunity, and frankly I see the university as a magnet that draws folks to our community.”
Benefits of MSU
Pattinson said he too has been drawn to stay in East Lansing due to the great opportunities that are offered.
“To have the activities in a small town that you wouldn’t normally," he said. "The museum, we go to the Wharton Center a lot and we can walk to places, or just drive a few blocks away. I like what the college town draws, even though it doesn’t have to be as big.”
Pattinson said many of the students are great to have around too and that they’re friendly and fun, but there are still a few that are loud and obnoxious and sometimes have lack of respect for the rules.
Triplett said a university community is nice, because whereas many cities began to get quieter or slower during the fall and winter months due to the colder weather, East Lansing thrives during that time do to the student's presence.
“The students inject that energy into the community,” Triplett said. “And of course it gives both both our residents and students access to some incredible opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have: whether it’s Big Ten athletics, or broadway shows at The Wharton Center, or the ability to be involved in and learn from all of the ground breaking research that’s being done at Michigan State, to the opportunity, of course, to continue our own education, whether in a formal degree program or in all of the other programs the university offers.”
Lahannas said he believes MSU is what gives East Lansing its identity as a city.
The East Lansing City Council members discuss issues at the August 4 meeting inside East Lansing City Hall on August 4, 2015. Joshua Abraham/The State News
"You can’t overstate how important MSU is to this community," he said. "It’s a great employer, it employs over 10,000-11,000 people, so it’s the strongest employer in the region I think.”
Graduate student Leslie Armell, an intern coordinator for the Community Relations Coalition (CRC) said she thinks the diversity that is created by having a university town allows for additional educational experience, not just for students learning how to live on their own and be responsible, but also for adults and older people to learn about the younger generation and what skills they have.
“I think what is really interesting is that students are here for an education, and certainly living with different populations in the neighborhoods of East Lansing is providing an education for everyone,” Arnell said.
Lahanas said they estimate that there are around 25,000 student residents that reside within East Lansing during the year, and that having half of the city being college students allows for a great educational opportunity and boosts the economy of the city.
“Those are people shopping, buying, renting houses and that demand keeps our housing market strong, and those people that provide those houses pay property taxes here, so when you pay property taxes, that’s how we pay for our services — so it’s a direct benefit to East Lansing,” Lahanas said.
Fostering good relations
Triplett said he and other city officials try to do everything they can to bring students and permanent residents together to create a healthy community dialogue.
One of the biggest ways in which they work to promote a dialogue between the two groups is through the Community Relations Coalition, he added. The CRC is a group that is supported by both East Lansing as well as MSU.
The CRC was created 16 years ago with the goal of fostering good relations between the students of the East Lansing neighborhoods and the families that share those neighborhoods with them.
The CRC employes 10 MSU undergraduate students as interns at the beginning of each school year, and they serve throughout the school year. The interns live and organize events, such as the Taste of East Lansing, in all four of the neighborhoods with high student populations — Bailey Neighborhood, Chesterfield Hills Neighborhood, Red Cedar Neighborhood and the Oakwood Neighborhood.
“It’s just a way for students to come together and be positive community members and definitely hope to change some minds of some residents that might have some stereotypes about how students behave here in East Lansing,” Armell said.
Interns are assigned to zones within the neighborhoods and required to go door to door at the beginning of the fall semester to introduce themselves and inform residents about the CRC.
Armell said one of the big things the CRC and its members do to bring the community together is hosting four ice cream socials at the beginning of the school year. The last one was September 2, and Armell said they had a good turnout of 90-100 people with about 50 percent being students and 50 percent being families and older residents.
Arnell said the CRC also does neighborhood cleanups on Sundays after home football games and that they allow anyone who is interested to get involved and help out.
Triplett said he believes the CRC has been a tremendous success in the East Lansing neighborhoods bringing students, families and older residents together.
“I think if you look at the neighborhoods where we have interns placed, like Red Cedar and Bailey and Oakwood, that the CRC is successful in bringing together permanent residents and student residents so that their first interactions are positive ones, and so lines of communication remain open throughout the academic year,” Triplett said.
