Proposed site for city hall faces wrecking ball
LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – Thousands of cars drive by the William Neller Building at the Intersection of Allegan St. and S. Grand Ave. daily.
Its decay is hidden, in part, by art installations over its first-floor walls, but the bright colorful art cannot keep the decay completely hidden and at bay. Vines can be seen growing out of a window. In February, a window fell from the second floor and smashed on the sidewalk below.
The 1938 building has been tagged by the city since 2016 as unsafe. Last fall, the city finally began the process to order the building to be made safe or demolished.
And it’s this lot that developers from the Granger Group, located in Wyoming, Mich. want the city to fund a new building, paid with a $40 million state grant and potential bonds throughout a lengthy lease-to-purchase deal.
They want Lansing’s seat of government to be relocated here.
As 6 News reported Tuesday, Lansing Mayor Schor has told Granger Group their proposal is a no-go. They’re full steam ahead on a proposal to redevelop the Lansing Masonic Temple, 217 S. Capital Ave. Under that deal, Boji Group would be paid $3.65 million for the building, then serve as the developer to renovate the first four floors of the seven-floor building for an estimated $42 million. Additional cash could be leveraged to renovate the other floors and potentially lease them out, or move even more city departments into one location.
Lansing City Council rejected the purchase deal on March 11, but Schor and Boji Group are bringing it back after honoring the expressed desire by some on the Council to have more information and time to evaluate the proposal.
Jason Granger is a key figure in the Granger Group. After being rebuffed by Schor Tuesday, he tells 6 News his organization is moving forward with demolition plans for the building. Currently, the company is waiting for bids to remediate asbestos wrapped around the building’s pipes.
He says the building languished for years as the development group sought the right project, including, they had hoped, to be the home of the Lansing City Hall.
“We were hoping it would be part of a project,” he says. “And if it’s not part of a project we can still maintain the Brownfields. But we had this kind of on the back burner until we heard from the city. It sounds like the mayor is being very crystal clear: ‘We have Boji. We don’t need to go back. We are just going to move forward.’ That’s fine. Just tell us that.”
Granger Group’s proposal was not accepted by the city in 2022. The municipality chose the Boji proposal instead.
Schor says the fate of the Neller Building is up to the Granger Group.
“They are responsible for their property,” he tells 6 News. “They brought us several drawings of ideas in the last 5 or 6 years, none of which have come to pass.”
Just north of the property is an asphalt parking lot. From the mid-century to 1993, the former Jim’s Tiffany restaurant sat on that lot. For decades, it was an iconic eatery and the center of political wheeling and dealing for both city officials and state lawmakers. It shuttered in 1993. And Granger’s father Gary and business partner at the time Van Martin tore the building down – assuring an agitated Lansing City Council, which had spent months trying to save the building, they would build a 15-story steel and glass office tower on the lot.
“It appears we are not able to designate it historically significant,” former Lansing City Councilwoman Ellen Beal told the Lansing State Journal in January 1995. “There’s not much of a heritage left (in Lansing). We seem to specialize in surface parking lots.”
That lack of action on the property still owned by Granger and Granger Group has not fostered much in the way of trust the empty grass lot of the Neller Building will become much more than that. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want to see the dangerous building come down.
Jen Estill is the president of Downtown Lansing, Inc. and owner of the historic Nelson Building on South Washington Square. Her building’s back door opens up on the former Jim’s Tiffany lot. While she wants the Neller Building gone, she’s also skeptical about the foot-dragging to get here.
“If you care about the beautiful view as you drive west toward the Capitol, and don’t want it to be an eyesore, you do something about it,” she tells 6 News in a phone interview. “That’s a personal decision and I don’t think they can blame someone for making them wait.”
Once the Neller is down, Estill says she’s not confident the Granger Group can turn the crumbling asphalt lot where Jim’s Tiffany sat nor the soon-to-be green lot where the Neller sits around.
“Speaking as someone who has seen that property rot as long as we have owned our building,” she says, “I don’t trust them at all.”
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