Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero wants to sell city hall. Selling or redeveloping the 127 W Michigan Ave location is something he's wanted to do for some time.
"It's served well for over 50 years. It's coming to the end of it's useful, it's come to the point where it's gonna need major reinvestment" said Mayor Bernero.
So during his State of the City address on Tuesday, he's going to ask city council to approve selling it and moving city hall to South Capitol.
"This is an empty building in a block that could use some development. It's sort of on the outskirts of downtown" Mayor Bernero said.
He says if the city were to renovate city hall it would cost $50 to $60 million dollars but to redevelop the vacant Lake Trust would save tax payers millions.
"The longer we wait on this the more we get sunk cost in this building" Bernero said.
If passed city hall would take over the 6 floors of the building but that purchase would also include the entire block and that's something the Lansing Economic Area Partnership (L.E.A.P.) tells News Ten that they're already making plans to develop.
"Residential and retail, coffee shops, services for the workers here and the people around the area" said Tri-County Development Manager for L.E.A.P.'s Keith Lambert.
Lambert says adding more to the area would only improve the economy.
"We want Washington to just explode with new development" Lambert said. "The city of Lansing turn a corner, we're no longer losing population. We're gaining population."
He says the best way to keep the growing population is by having more places for them to live.
"We would be looking at 3 to 5 story buildings most likely, where you would have residential above retail" Lambert said.
It's a project the mayor, L.E.A.P. and Lake Trust think could only benefit the city.
"We would be improving the economic development of the city to go and we're creating an incredible private sector opportunity for redevelopment for this building" Bernero said.
