By Jaylyn Galloway
Listen Up Lansing Staff Reporter
Photo By: Jaylyn Galloway
The former Michigan School for the Blind in Lansing located at 715 W. Willow St. gets a makeover. This outlines the area being renovated for the apartments.
The former high school building that served as the Michigan School for the Blind campus along with the Abigail building will be redone as apartment buildings, according to Bob Johnson director of Planning & Neighborhood Development for the City of Lansing.
The idea is to demolish the auditorium to create new multi-family apartment units and to redo the Abigail building and the old high school as senior housing, Johnson said.
“We need to understand that affordable housing is capital and it will create economy for business,” Johnson said.
With the aim of creating 60 units for seniors and 72 units for families the project total would end up costing $24.4 million. However, it would bring 150 jobs during the construction, Edmistion said.
“We own half of the campus and had put out proposals looking for a developer,” Tom Edmiston, Senior Vice President of project co-developer Cinnaire, said. “We had ninety-nine responses but selected TWG two months later.”
TWG Development, LLC a multi-family developer in Indianapolis, Indiana will be serving as master developer for the renovations. Cinnare along with Ingham County Land Bank Fast Track Authority have been helping TWG to rebuild the campus into apartment buildings. The current plan is to have three buildings up in 18 months, Edmiston said.
“I think it is a good thing because I walk around and a lot of the homes are run down so it would be nice to have this,” Austin Casey, a Lansing resident, said.
The state owned the land. As such, it paid no property taxes but with the new 132 units of housing, the sales tax would increase by $40,000, Edmiston said.