New Lansing city hall proposal could include CATA headquarters
LANSING — If the most recent proposal comes to fruition, in about two years Lansing residents will have a new city hall with a view of the Grand River on the edge of downtown.
The new version of city hall would be built up in a largely unused city parking lot across from the Capital Area Transportation Authority's downtown station. The site was home to the BoarsHead Theater from around 1970 until its closure in 2010.
Mayor Andy Schor said Thursday he had few details about the new city hall during a press conference at the proposed site, not even how many stories it could be. The public is being looped in early in the process so it can be transparent, he said.
The project would likely take around two years, the mayor said, which would be before the state's soft deadline of Sept. 30, 2027, to use a $40 million state appropriation. Designs should be finished by the end of the year, he said.
The new city hall building could include CATA headquarters, with CATA paying up front for its part in any construction, said Brad Funkhouser, CEO and executive director of CATA. He said the transit system will be lowering its request for state legislators from $15 million to $5 million to help fund the possible move.
The city hall project itself would be funded with a $40 million state appropriation that can be used for the new city hall that would be roughly 75,000 square feet, Schor said. A $2 million expected sale of the existing city hall is not part of the funding at the moment, he said.
Council member Peter Spadafore said the city remains grateful to its state legislators who helped to secure the funding that he said typically goes to other cities and has finally come to Lansing.
The city already owns the land, so city council members will not need to vote to approve the project, although the mayor has asked for their input, said council member Ryan Kost, who opposed Schor's proposal to transform the Masonic Temple into a new city hall. Kost supports the new plan.
Boji Group, which owns the Masonic building, would run the new project under an existing bid for a new city hall, Schor said. The Boji Group, through a spokesperson, declined to comment for this story.
Some of the opposition to the Masonic plan came from a bidding procedure that some council members had questioned. Kost said he was satisfied when city officials were able to show that a competing bidder following the 2021 process could have continued to pursue the city hall project just as Boji Group had.
Kost said the new project has his support: It will take an underused city lot into a more useful purpose and will keep the Masonic building on tax rolls while letting the city build a right-size building instead of relying on partners to fill space.
He said the building project would tie into Lansing's history by helping to boost the prospects of the neighboring Cherry Hill neighborhood, a historic community.
The city will start with a 2019 study that found the parking lot site was feasible for a new city hall. That study was intended to build a police center, jail and other facilities along with a city hall.
A new public safety building under construction will house most of those other functions.
Schor said design work for the new city hall should be done in about six to seven months, with the construction taking about 14 months.
Contact Mike Ellis at mellis@lsj.com or 517-267-0415
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: New Lansing city hall proposal could include CATA headquarters
