I was at Capital Honda finding out how much my aging car is going to set me back today (answer: too much) and decided to scout for sidewalk stamps out front. I walked a long way in front of the business (which is on the south side of Jolly Road between James Phillips Drive and Hulett Road, about a mile west of Okemos Road) without seeing any stamps, so I began to think they just don’t stamp the sidewalks out here in the eastern wilds. However, just as I reached the western edge of the property I found this one.

At first I thought it was undated, but it was just the bright sun washing out the faint mark of the year. A more careful look allowed me to make it out as 2004, which was the year Capital Honda was built. I thought it was a bit chintzy that they had only one stamp in such a long run of new sidewalk. (There may have been one on the eastern edge of the property too. I didn’t walk all the way to the other end as my ride arrived.) That got me wondering what rules, if any, govern sidewalk marking in this town.

Looking east from the edge of the Capital Honda property, with the stamp at the bottom edge of the photo.

The area is, by convention though not legally, considered part of Okemos. I assumed it was properly in Meridian Charter Township, but when I got home and checked I discovered it’s just over the border to the south and thus it is in Alaiedon Township. Alaiedon is what’s called a general law township, the most basic kind of municipality in Michigan. Anywhere that hasn’t incorporated (as a charter township, village or city) defaults to being a general law township, following the borders of its survey township. Alaiedon doesn’t have its complete municipal code online like Lansing and Lansing Township do. None of the ordinances they have posted on their Web site relate to sidewalks, and the building permit forms they have available don’t have anything to say about sidewalk construction. If Alaiedon has anything at all to say about building sidewalks, I can’t find it.

I haven’t seen the name Lansing Poured Wall before. According to state records, they were incorporated in 1965 and dissolved in 2012. I noticed that the registered agent was someone named Garfield R. Bowman. This leads me to wonder if he is any relation to George Bowman, who co-founded Fessler & Bowman in 1963. It’s not a terribly unusual name, but when I see two people with the same last name in the same business, I always wonder.