Continuing on another block east from my last entry, I found more new Eastlund Concrete stamps at the corners of Marcus Street and South Fairview Avenue. The newly constructed curb cuts are wider and nicer than what they replaced.
I was surprised to walk down to the south end of South Francis Avenue and discover a large amount of sidewalk has been replaced on the west side of the street. The scattered blocks of new concrete – there must be a couple dozen or more – can be readily seen at a distance. The work was done by White Hawk, the same contractor who recently did a similarly large replacement project on South Magnolia. What surprises me about this find, though, is that a good bit of sidewalk from the east side of Francis has been removed as the lots have vacated. I expected they would just let the sidewalk on the other side keep deteriorating while they waited out the remaining residents, but I was clearly wrong.
Many of the lawn extensions (or “parkways” as the Lansing municipal code calls them) are also covered with straw, indicating grass reseeding. The edges of some front yards have this too. I’m not sure of the reason for this.
This particular stamp (one of very many similar ones) is from the west side of Francis south of Elizabeth. It’s in front of one of the many nearby community gardens, this one calling itself the Poppin’ Fresh Community Garden.
I was in Royal Oak on Friday to see Sparks at the Royal Oak Music Theatre, and I couldn’t resist stopping to snap a picture of this new-to-me contractor stamp on the east side of South Lafayette Street between 4th and 5th, outside the Stagecrafters Baldwin Theater. I know, this isn’t even close to the Capital City, but it’s my blog and I can make (or break) the rules. This one uses a common template that several Lansing-area contractors also use.
Major Cement calls itself Major Contracting on the front page of its Web site, but the URL is majorcementco.com. Over on the history page, they slip back and forth between the two names. I see the telltale signs of a recent name change in all this. They were founded in 1978 and are located just inside the western border of the city of Detroit, on Dale Street near Telegraph Road.
On Sunday I decided to walk around the Flowerpot neighborhood in East Lansing after dark, out of the belief that there might be a lot of Christmas displays still up there. This turned out to be a mistake on several counts: the neighborhood has few streetlights, so it was unsettlingly dark; only part of the neighborhood has sidewalks, and they were as perilously icy as the roads; and there were only a scant few Christmas displays. It was a pretty miserable walk, one that took nearly an hour despite covering only about a mile and a half of ground, and near the end of it I realized I had dropped my lens cap and couldn’t be bothered to retrace to look for it.
Still, I did have one success: I found an interesting sidewalk stamp that was near enough one of the few streetlights to register in a photograph. It’s a T L Contracting stamp, and while I’ve found one before, it was a lot plainer than this one. This one is on the north side of Marigold Avenue between Hicks and Larkspur.
This new T L stamp uses the modular style – I think of it as the “hamburger” – that a lot of more recent stamps share, including the more recent O & M stamps. It adds something I have never seen in another contractor stamp, the contractor’s phone number. It makes sense for them to use a stamp as advertising in this way, and I’m just surprised I’ve never seen it before. The phone number is a little hard to make out in this light but it is (517) 669-0600, which I can link with the T L Contracting (or as they actually style it, TL Contracting) located on Industrial Parkway in Lansing. They don’t have a Web site I can find, but they do have a Facebook page.
The last line seems to be “Lansing, MI” and a hard-to-read zip code, probably 48906, since that’s what their zip is. 48906. I find it odd to include the zip when they don’t have the rest of the address and I wonder if they thought “Lansing, MI” on its own just didn’t take up enough space on the line.
Another disappointment, I’m afraid, though at least I aimed the photo to show you some of the Christmas lights I get to enjoy on my walks. These brand new sidewalk blocks are on North Fairview Avenue, at the southwest corner of Fairview and Vine. I passed by here several days ago when the new sidewalk was under a tarp, presumably curing, so I made a point to go back in case I got to see a brand new stamp. I didn’t have high hopes, though. Almost none of the new sidewalk construction I have seen this year has been stamped, with the exception of the Leavitt & Starck sidewalk alongside Allen Place.
The sidewalk in front of the Allen Place project (on the north side of East Kalamazoo Street between Shepard and Allen) continues to develop, and (as threatened in a previous entry) I think I can now formally induct it into the Hall of Shame. There is no sign any of the new sidewalk is going to be stamped, despite it being required by ordinance in Lansing. What would Alderman McKinley say?
I’m curious about the new jog in the sidewalk. It was previously a straight path here. I wonder what the swerve’s purpose is. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.
I happened to walk past and catch sight of workers smoothing out some brand new concrete in front of the Allen Place project, continuing my observations on the progress of Allen Place’s sidewalk. I didn’t see any sign of stamping yet, sorry to say. I’m afraid this is almost certainly going to end up a Hall of Shame candidate.
I’ve been watching this sidewalk being replaced in front of the Allen Place (née Allen Neighborhood Center) development, on the north side of East Kalamazoo Street between Allen and Shepard. I’m pretty sure it’s going to end up being a Hall of Shame candidate, since even more has gone in since I took this photo and there is no sign of any stamp yet, but I suppose until it’s completely finished I can’t say so definitively. Anyway, it’s still interesting to get to see a new sidewalk slab from the side. I wonder if they’re always this thick.
This stretch of sidewalk is new, but unstamped and undated, which is why it has been filed under “Hall of Shame.” The fact that it is not adjoining a public street probably exempts it from the city’s code on sidewalk marking, but I wanted to catalogue it for the historical value of recording when it was created.
It branches off from the previously-existing sidewalk behind Eastern High School and the Armory, heading to the east along the edge of the Eastern grounds, eventually meeting up with Saginaw. It passes by a small sidewalk that cuts over to North Clemens Avenue at Fernwood Street. That sidewalk has been torn out (don’t worry, it had no stamps on it; I had checked in the past). My understanding is that it will be reconstructed to serve as part of the East Side Connector, a bicycle route between the east side to downtown.
The sidewalk stops at the point where the link to Clemens was (and will be) and past that the path becomes asphalt. I don’t know, but I am guessing that this is the point when it becomes part of the East Side Connector.
This is certainly the newest sidewalk I have featured here. It’s in front of an apartment building on the south side of Prospect Street between Bingham and Pennsylvania.
How do I know it’s the newest? Because yesterday I walked past it and it looked like this:
I was delighted by this discovery. It meant I could walk back again the next day and see the freshest stamp yet. Who would it be? One of the contractors I already know like old friends, or a new kid on the block? I could hardly wait to find out.
Imagine my disappointment when I returned to find a beautifully smooth and fresh new sidewalk – unstamped. Into the Hall of Shame with you!
The previous sidewalk was straight, and heaved up severely by the tree’s roots. Looks like the tree sustained a little bit of damage in the battle, but won the war: the sidewalk has ceded the territory.