[msb-alumni] Demolition Underway at Former Michigan School for the Blind

  • From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2014 22:02:32 -0400

BlankWell, if there isn't enough downer news on this list lately.  Here's 
more...

Demolition underway on campus of Lansing's former Michigan School for the 
Blind . LANSING - Demolition has begun on what was once a dining hall at the 
Michigan School for the Blind. A maintenance building will come next and 
then the "cottages," squat brick buildings that once served as dormitories. 
The 27,000-square-foot auditorium built in the 1950s is also on the list, 
though its destruction might still be averted. Tom Edmiston, senior vice 
president for Great Lakes Capital Fund, a nonprofit that owns the more 
elegant structures on the site, described the work as "demolition and 
clearance, kind of making the campus available for redevelopment. 
Redevelopment has been slow in coming. The Lansing campus of the School for 
the Blind closed in the fall of 1995 and the few remaining students were 
moved to Flint. Much of the campus has been idle since. The Ingham County 
Land Bank, which owns much of the campus, renovated the historic 
6,000-square-foot superintendent's house in 2009. It's now oc'cup'ied by 
Rizzi Designs. The former library became the Greater Lansing Housing 
Coalition's Neighborhood Empowerment Center in 2010. But the century-old 
administration building and former high school building have lain fallow. 
Edmiston said Great Lakes Capital does have a purchase agreement on the 
administration building, rechristened The Abigail, from a developer who 
wants to use it for affordable housing. The project is contingent on 
assistance from the state. The state is funding the demolition work though a 
$1.8 million blight removal grant. The grant was approved last year, but 
"it's taken this long to get all the necessary pieces of paper together that 
the state needed before they would release funds," Edmiston said. There is 
still time, not much though, to save the auditorium. "If we got any serious 
offers for the auditorium as is, then we wouldn't proceed with the 
demolition," Edmiston said. But the window is probably no longer than six 
weeks. "Given fact that we haven't heard anything for several years now 
about interest in the auditorium, it's hard to imagine that someone would 
step forward at this point," Edmiston said.

Tum podem extulit horridulum

Steve
Lansing, Pure MI


P.S.  Look up the Latin translation of that signature on Google, it really 
sums up things right now, lol.

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