They have started to replace the sidewalks that were removed during the recent gas pipeline project on East Kalamazoo Street. This one is near the southeast corner of Kalamazoo and Magnolia. Someday some new resident of the neighborhood will wonder what happened in 2023-24 that so many sidewalks are embossed with those years, just as I once was with Cantu & Sons 1987-88.
I have a silly (and unfortunately blurry) one for you today. Eastlund Concrete stamps are ubiquitous in the neighborhood, but apparently they failed to get a new date stamp for 2023. The 2 has been rubbed out and replaced with a handwritten 3.
This one is on the west side of North Clemens Avenue between Fernwood and Saginaw, in front of a cute little house that looks like it got some new walk at the same time as a revamped front walk.
I have been walking Allen and Lathrop Streets a lot recently as they are a hot spot of Christmas lights right now. This cryptic message is on the west side of Allen between Kalamazoo and Marcus.
The date is obvious; what to make of the rest? C-R-U5? That last digit is a 5, right?
There’s actually something else I want to get from Allen Street but by the time I got going tonight it was too dark. That will probably be next time.
This is the last of the new stamps I collected while walking back to my car from the Silver Bells 5K race downtown. It’s in front of the former Troppo restaurant, now apparently something called “The Gov.” It’s on the north side of East Michigan Avenue between Washington and Grand.
I assume this was done by ACD (Advanced Communications and Data) the broadband Internet company while doing utility work for businesses in the area. And that’s it for my banked stamps, so I’ll have to start finding some more. I actually spotted one more possible new stamp on that walk, but someone was milling around it messing with their phone and I would have felt weird walking close to him to take a photo of the sidewalk, so I had to give up on that one.
Tonight was Silver Bells in the City, which I haven’t missed attending in years, and while walking between the Lansing Center (where we parked) and the car, I found another 2023 stamp, this one from BWL (the Board of Water and Light). It’s on the north side of East Michigan Avenue, west of the Lansing Center and east of the river.
This stamp matches the style of one I found that had a somewhat obscured date that I took to be either 1987 or 1997. I ended up settling on 1987, but now I wonder if it wasn’t 1997 after all. Other 1980s BWL stamps have a bolder, rounded typeface that I find much more pleasant.
Here it is: some brand new sidewalk! The Consumers Energy utility work that has closed a lane on East Kalamazoo Street off and on for months has finally reached the stage when a lot of the torn-out sections of sidewalk are being replaced. And, while it’s not the most exciting design I’ve seen, it is all properly stamped. This is just one of many examples, in this case on the southeast corner of Kalamazoo and Regent, in front of the vacant former Lucky’s/Pure Options.
I am assuming that the responsible party is EPM Professional Grounds Services of Jackson, Michigan. The name stands for Executive Property Management, referencing the fact that they specialize in commercial properties.
A well-placed streetlight allowed me to see this, my first 2023 stamp, during my walk earlier tonight. It’s on the west side of North Clemens Avenue between Fernwood and Saginaw, and it’s from reliable stampers Eastlund Concrete. But what’s this?
Loyal blog readers (hi, dear) will recall that there are many Cantu & Sons stamps in the neighborhood that bear a 1988 date that is actually a 1987 stamp with a line added to the 7 to correct it. Eastlund saw this and said, “Too neat. Hold my beer.” With no easy way to turn a 2022 stamp into ’23, they evidently just scraped out the last digit before rewriting it by hand. Eastlund, look, I love you guys. You’ve had a variety of different stamps over the years and you use them. These are endearing traits, to a sidewalk stamp blogger. So it’s with affection that I say, c’mon, this is sloppy.
Four houses in a row have been condemned on the west side of South Howard Street between Michigan and Prospect, and I took my camera out there to document them before their eventual demolition. I found a pristine new section of sidewalk in front of them, still marked off with orange cones. Properly speaking this should be a Hall of Shame entry since the sidewalk is unstamped, despite Lansing Township code requiring it, but given Lansing Township’s shoddy record with sidewalks I think I have to consider any sidewalk installlation to be a win.
A sign in front of the houses talks about a hearing to change the zoning for a planned development, and the scuttlebutt is that it is going to be condos. Oddly, the sign gives the current zoning as commercial. The recent sales record sheds some light on this, as until recently they were owned by the Indian Trails bus company. Indian Trails also owns the parking lot at the corner of Michigan and Howard. It was previously a used car lot, and since Indian Trails took it over, it has gotten weedy and overgrown, since all they have used it for is to occasionally park a few of their Michigan Flyer airport buses. In the 2010s sometime all the houses in the 100 block of South Howard were demolished, leaving a vacant lot between the Indian Trails lot and the four doomed houses. I don’t know the full story, but can only speculate that Indian Trails had some plan for these blocks that never went anywhere.
When these 1920s houses are demolished, it will leave only five houses and a couple of businesses remaining on South Howard. The real estate listing cards in the Belon Real Estate Collection from CADL’s digital local history collection reveal that from the early 1960s to early 1970s, nearly every time a house was listed on South Howard it was marked “value in land only,” meaning the houses were worthless and probably best demolished. This was underlined by the way they generally did not bother filling in the year built for the houses, but marked them simply as “OLD.” Yet they kept surviving anyway, until recently.
Continuing my walk from the parking lot to the Fox Theatre in Detroit to the Buggles concert, I saw this stamp. I love how much information is packed into it and how crisp it is. It’s at the northwest corner of West Montcalm Street and Park Avenue, in front of what apparently, prior to 2018 or 2019, used to be the Town Pump Tavern.
According to the history page on their Web site, Thayer Power and Communication (or TPC) was founded in 1964 by David Thayer and his (oddly unnamed) brother. They originally set poles for power and telephone companies. Over the years they expanded into installing telephone, power, and eventually fiber lines. They have quite a few offices but most of them are actually in Ohio.
I know you’re thinking that I’m a little early for a change, but actually, I’m a lot late. Sorry about that. It’s finals week, also known as crunch time for professors. Anyway, here’s a couple of stamps from the entrance to an alleyway that runs from Marcus to Elizabeth Street, between Clemens and Fairview.
