February 23, 2005

Muskegon Chronicle

Robert C. Burns, Chronicle Staff Writer

Months in the preparation and still a work in progress, a plan for redevelopment of Muskegon's downtown "city center" won easy approval from the Muskegon City Commission Tuesday.

Commissioners also liked the engineering and design work that has been done on the 23-acre former Muskegon Mall site so far, and took a second unanimous vote to have the city engineering staff and consulting engineers Fleis and Vandenbrink continue in the same direction.

As now plan-ned, the physical re-creation of the downtown would proceed in two stages. The first would take in Western Avenue, from Third Street to Terrace Street, and First Street from Clay Avenue to Morris Street.

A second phase addressing Second, Jefferson and Market streets would come later. City Manager Bryon Mazade said the project was being split up because of possible funding shortages.

Western Avenue is shown as a divided boulevard, tying in thematically with Terrace Street and Shoreline Drive.

Instead of traffic circles at Western and First and at Jefferson and Market streets as originally proposed, there is now one planned for Western and Third Street, near the Frauenthal Theater and the Holiday Inn Muskegon Harbor, where the initial development is expected to start before moving east.

James Edmonson, president and chief executive of the local economic development agency Muskegon Area First, told commissioners that the property owner, Downtown Musk-egon Development Corp., has been briefed on those proposed changes and given the go-ahead to seek cost estimates.

Tuesday's action follows adoption of the plan by the Muskegon Planning Commission Feb. 10, along with a set of design standards and flexible zoning designation known as planned unit development.

Flexibility is a key aspect of the plan, which is likely to change even more before design and engineering on the site wrap up -- expected this spring.

Edmonson said the city commission's establishment of planned unit development zoning, along with engineers' drawings specifying the exact location of streets and lot lines, will then induce "a number of prospective investors" to proceed with their own plans and begin to consider specific pieces of property on which to ready purchase options.

The plan, as shown on a drawing by Hooker-DeJong Architects and Engineers of Muskegon, calls for a combination of commercial, office and residential uses, arranged over the downtown street layout that existed before the Muskegon Mall was built as the culmination of a federal urban renewal program of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The commission's approval includes the same conditions as that of the planning commission's. Among them is a requirement that a critical area bounded by Third and Second Streets and Clay and Morris avenues retain the same number of parking spaces -- 287 -- as it has now.

All told, there are 914 spaces planned for the new downtown district, wheras the former mall site contained about 1,032 spaces.

However, not all of those spaces will likely be arranged in shopping center-style parking lots, as they are now. Instead, some of those parking spaces will be enclosed in some new buildings or in separate parking structures and added street parking.

Closed since October 2003, the city's four-level, 582-space parking ramp at Clay and First Street also could be used as part of the overall parking requirements in the future, although it is not officially a part of the 23-acre redevelopment site.

Planners are also considering moving the Herman Ivory Bus Terminal into the parking structure from its present site on Morris Street, leaving room for additional construction.

Parking, or the lack of it, is considered important to owners of the former Ameribank building diagonally opposite from the parking ramp. Thomas DeBoer, a real estate agent representing the building's owners, told planning commissioners earlier that a planned $1 million investment in the building would not take place until adequate parking is assured.

Muskegon still is awaiting word on the fate of a $3.3 million federal grant application which would be awarded by the Michigan Economic Development Corp. It is considered critical to the rebuilding of downtown streets and below-ground utilities. Those improvements must be in place before Downtown Muskegon Development can begin selling lots for new construction.

© 2005 Muskegon Chronicle. Used with permission