[nfbmi-talk] demo under way at msb

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Demolition underway on campus of Lansing's former Michigan School for the Blind | Lansing State Journal | lansingstatejournal.comThe dining hall at the former Michigan School for the Blind in Lansing is being torn down. Photo taken 4/3/2014 by Greg DeRuiter/LSJ

 

The dining hall at the former Michigan School for the Blind in Lansing is being torn down. Photo taken 4/3/2014 by Greg DeRuiter/LSJ / Greg DeRuiter

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Written by

 

Matthew Miller

 

Debris is hauled away Thursday as the dining area at the former Michigan School for the Blind is being torn down. Photo taken 4/3/2014 by Greg DeRuiter/LSJ

Zoom

 

Debris is hauled away Thursday as the dining area at the former Michigan School for the Blind is being torn down. Photo taken 4/3/2014 by Greg DeRuiter/LSJ

/ Greg DeRuiter

 

LANSING — Demolition has begun on what was once a dining hall at the Michigan School for the Blind.

 

A maintenance building will come next and then the “cottages,” squat brick buildings that once served as dormitories.

 

The 27,000-square-foot auditorium built in the 1950s is also on the list, though its destruction might still be averted.

 

Tom Edmiston, senior vice president for Great Lakes Capital Fund, a nonprofit that owns the more elegant structures on the site, described the work as “demolition

and clearance, kind of making the campus available for redevelopment.”

 

Redevelopment has been slow in coming. The Lansing campus of the School for the Blind closed in the fall of 1995 and the few remaining students were moved

to Flint.

 

Much of the campus has been idle since. The Ingham County Land Bank, which owns much of the campus, renovated the historic 6,000-square-foot superintendent's

house in 2009. It’s now occupied by Rizzi Designs. The former library became the Greater Lansing Housing Coalition’s Neighborhood Empowerment Center in

2010. But the century-old administration building and former high school building have lain fallow.

 

Edmiston said Great Lakes Capital does have a purchase agreement on the administration building, rechristened The Abigail, from a developer who wants to

use it for affordable housing. The project is contingent on assistance from the state.

 

The state is funding the demolition work though a $1.8 million blight removal grant. The grant was approved last year, but “it’s taken this long to get

all the necessary pieces of paper together that the state needed before they would release funds,” Edmiston said.

 

There is still time, not much though, to save the auditorium.

 

“If we got any serious offers for the auditorium as is, then we wouldn’t proceed with the demolition,” Edmiston said.

 

But the window is probably no longer than six weeks.

 

“Given fact that we haven’t heard anything for several years now about interest in the auditorium, it’s hard to imagine that someone would step forward

at this point,” Edmiston said.

 

Source:

http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20140403/NEWS01/304030029/Demolition-underway-campus-Lansing-s-former-Michigan-School-Blind