As MSU Ushers in Massive Development, Nearby Residents Feel They Are Being Left Out of the Planning

After Michigan State University announced plans to add a massive development on its campus, East Lansing residents living near the site expressed fear that their concerns about how the development could impact their day-to-day lives are being cast aside. 

A cornerstone of the planned Spartan Gateway District is a 6,000 seat arena near the intersection of Trowbridge Road and Harrison Road. The conceptual plans also include office space, apartments, a hotel, retail space, a parking garage and more. The university hopes that the first phase of the development, the arena, is operating by late 2027. 

Residents living near the site say their concerns about traffic, parking and more must be included in the discussion about the development. They also say neighborhood groups and residents in the area should be a part of the conversation, not just city officials. 

After MSU announced the development in April, residents of the Red Cedar neighborhood sent university officials a list of 16 questions about the development. The university held a public meeting in June and said answers to these questions would be incorporated into the presentation. However, the presentation mostly centered around the site plan – furthering frustrations. 

Now, residents worry the communications they are having with university officials are simply lip service.

“City officials don’t live here, and oftentimes they don’t even know that there’s people living back here,” one resident said at at the community meeting. “If you want to be a good neighbor, you need to bring us in at a point where things can be changed more easily and less expensively. Rather than come to us and say ‘Here’s how it’s going to be, what do you think?’”

The chief concern expressed by residents is traffic. The area already experiences frequent traffic congestion and some portions of the neighborhoods only have one access point. Residents worry the development will make it even more difficult to get in and out of their isolated neighborhoods. 

At the community meeting, MSU officials said the arena will host volleyball, wrestling and gymnastics. These events will usually draw 300 to 1,200 attendees, they said. 

However, officials said the arena will also be used for other things like concerts, graduations and high school sports. With the arena built to seat 6,000, residents wonder how often it will hold major events. More critically, how often will it hold events at the same time the Breslin Center or Spartan Stadium are in use – adding to traffic congestion that can already be brutal?

“I was coming home one night and from Michigan [Avenue] to Sever [Drive], it took 35 minutes because a basketball game was [held],” Red Cedar neighborhood resident JoAnne Russell said at the community event. 

Residents also worry an access road to Harrison Road being added between Trowbridge and Wilson will further add to traffic congestion and make it harder to get to their neighborhood.

Residents who spoke at the community event said the fewer than 750 parking spaces included in the site plan are not enough. They think MSU will use their neighborhood as a de facto parking lot, something that already happens during football and basketball games.

“They’re not going to park in the Breslin lot,” Red Cedar Community Association President Jeff Friedle said in an interview with ELi. “They’re going to park in the neighborhood because it’s free.” 

Many of the roads in the Flowerpot and Red Cedar neighborhoods near the site do not have sidewalks, so residents walk on the street. The combination of people illegally parked and volume of cars moving in and out of the neighborhood during major events can create a hazard, residents say. They worry that the addition of a major development will worsen the problem. 

“You take your life in your hands if you walk to the game or even walk your dog because people are anxious to get out of there,” Russell half-joked in a conversation with ELi. 

There are other unanswered questions residents have raised. Will large parts of the development like the arena, hotel and apartment complex create light pollution that impacts homeowners? What will the environmental impacts of the development be? The city provides fire and EMS services to the university, will MSU cover the extra costs of responding to the district or will city taxpayers? Will residents be included in the process as plans become more solidified?

ELi sent the university six questions about the breakdown of who is paying for the development, potential changes to the site plan, how often the arena will host large events, the types of businesses that will be in the area, future large developments and resident involvement. Almost a month after the questions were sent, University Spokesperson Amber McCann responded with a short email that did not answer any specific questions.

“While I do not have specifics to share at this time, Michigan State University continues to closely monitor the economic environment as part of our commitment to long-term financial health and well-being,” the email said. “Public-private partnerships, like the Spartan Gateway project, present a unique and valuable opportunity to marry the mission and goals of MSU with the efficiencies and funding available to the private market. 

“Growth and development are critical to the future success of MSU, and we will further assess the multi-use development as economic circumstances evolve. Michigan State University remains committed to a transparent and collaborative approach as we advance planning on the Spartan Gateway District.”

Underscoring the controversy around the Gateway District project is a deep sense of mistrust some longtime residents living close to campus have built towards MSU. 

“The communications historically, except for with one president, have been horrible,” said Liz Schweitzer, a Red Cedar neighborhood resident and former East Lansing mayor. “It was very much exemplified at that meeting where they had prepared remarks that are meaningless in many ways… They will take questions but not answer them.”

Residents say there are several examples of MSU projects completed without incorporating feedback from people in the area.

Russell pointed to the 1855 Place apartments near homes on Marigold Avenue. She thinks having the view of a three-story apartment lowers the value of those homes. She said the university could have angled the complex or changed the site’s layout to ease the burden for homeowners, but MSU is “set in their ways” by the time residents find out about projects. 

Friedle said that MSU has ushered in road projects like the Trowbridge Road extension onto campus (Trowbridge used to stop at Harrison Road) that have added to traffic problems. 

He adds that the controversy around the Gateway District comes as MSU nears the opening of a new massive Student Recreation and Wellness Center between Shaw Lane, and Birch, Harrison and Wilson roads. The behemoth $200 million facility will almost certainly bring more traffic and people parking in Friedle’s neighborhood, but he doesn’t think the university took these concerns seriously when planning the project.

City leaders are aware of resident concerns. But unsure of what they can do to steer the project. 

City Manager Robert Belleman said he has been engaged with the university, and has encouraged the university to engage with residents. But he isn’t sure how much influence the city will have over the project. 

Belleman said he sees the development as two-fold: The sports arena that will definitely fall under MSU’s jurisdiction, and then the apartments, parking structure and other parts of the proposal that are being developed with a private company. The latter, Belleman said, the city may have some control over.

“You have the majority of the other development falling under Gillespie [Group] and their partner as a private development, which I am told would be under the city’s jurisdiction,” Belleman said. “I don’t know if that means they’ll go through our site plan approval process, and if it does, that’s where the city will have some say.

“It’s my understanding that a majority of the project will be paying taxes,” he continued. “The question becomes, because they lose [tax exempt] status, does it fall under that Gillespie will have to submit a site plan to the city?”

Belleman added that he’s unsure if the hotel is MSU run or if it’s one of the developments driven by private partners.

With only a conceptual plan prepared at this point, Belleman said it’s too early to have answers to some questions about parking and traffic, as those details will be sorted out in more comprehensive plans prepared by engineers. 

The city has already received ideas from residents living near the site to tackle concerns. Belleman said one idea to address illegal parking is to increase fines for violators in some neighborhoods near campus. 

“We’re going to look at everything,” Belleman said. “We’ll analyze it from staff [perspective], we’ll get legal review and then take it to council [if appropriate].”

Belleman said he’s unsure if the city can have input on the Harrison Road access road that residents raised concerns about.

“It is a city road,” he said. “I guess the legal question is to whether MSU has the right to do their own curb cuts on a city road. Because you have to be able to access your own property.”

Belleman said that MSU is motivated to address traffic concerns because gridlock will discourage people from coming to big events. He also said it will be hard to gauge the impact on traffic before the development is in place. 

“Traffic studies are not a science,” he said. “It’s truly a subjective report. How can I tell you [traffic patterns] without knowing, for the next five years, the schedule for the Olympic arena, and the schedule for Breslin as well as others, and how they overlap?”

Belleman said he does not think enough has been finalized with the project to react yet. But he does hear the concerns from neighborhood groups.

“We will convey [concerns] back to MSU,” he said. “We will respond and try to address those issues to the neighborhood.”