Posted on by bunnyhugger

S. Howard St., MacKenzie Co., 2022

I owe an apology to Lansing Township, or at least to whomever is behind all the sidewalk work that is going on in the construction zone on Kalamazoo between Francis and Howard. I wrote with great disapproval (and the deployment of a brand new tag, wtf) about the apparent decision to stop short of joining the new sidewalk up with existing sidewalk on the other side of an unpaved driveway, just north of Dagwood’s parking lot on Howard Street.

The grassy remnant of a driveway on the west side of Howard marks the former site of a house, a very small house in a style typical of the neighborhood, probably built in 1910, if I’m reading the property records right. By the time it was demolished (I think it was last year, or thereabouts) It was in decline so long that my ex-husband and I used to refer to it as “The Scariest House in Lansing,” and we split up in 2007. This is actually a misnomer for two reasons: there are much spookier houses around town, and it’s not in Lansing (this is Lansing Township, remember). We just saw it so often coming and going to the freeway or visiting Dagwood’s that its long, slow deterioration was hard to miss. At one point, Dagwood’s put up a new fence along that edge of the property, and we joked about a dive bar having to put up a fence to block the view of the neighbors rather than the other way around.

Anyway, the poor sad house is gone now. But what’s this?

I went back there last night and I must eat my words, or at least the letters WTF: they have laid sidewalk across the gap, and actually a bit past it, I guess replacing some degraded walk in front of the vacant lot. The sidewalk now stretches unbroken until… the edge of the last lot before Prospect Street. In other words, there is still a strange gap in the sidewalk, leaving just one house of this block of Howard without a front sidewalk. I could understand it if the house faced Prospect, but it faces Howard. I suppose they decided it was outside the scope of this project.

Another interesting note is that they have dug out the area where the curb cut for the old driveway is, suggesting it will receive a proper driveway apron next, even if there is no house for it to serve and it seems unlikely there will be anytime soon. There is actually another house on this same lot, but it’s a bizarre situation. The other house is strangely featureless and looks more like a shed than a house. According to Lansing Township’s property records online it is 480 square feet – which I believe – and was built in 1910 – which I am more skeptical of. It seems to have been maintained reasonably well even as the house up front was left rotting for years. It used to be completely hidden behind the main house and so I didn’t even know it existed until I started poking around the property records. The new driveway probably isn’t there to serve this second house, since access to that one seems to be via an alley behind Dagwood’s.

Posted on by bunnyhugger

E. Kalamazoo St., Eastlund Concrete, 2002

This one is on my list of mysteries and oddities. It’s a curb cut at the northwest corner of East Kalamazoo and South Howard Streets, next to the parking lot for Dagwood’s Tavern, and it has no reason to exist.

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Kalamazoo has no sidewalk at this point; its sidewalk mostly disappears after it crosses into the wilds of Lansing Township. The sidewalk on Howard appears and disappears with no discernible pattern, but at this point there is also none. So the curb cut is out there on its own, facing the busy intersection of Kalamazoo and Howard. It doesn’t even give access to Dagwood’s parking lot, since the corner of the lot has a metal barrier directly adjoining the curb cut.

The curb cut faces southeast across the intersection. That’s the on-ramp to 127 and 496 up ahead. There is a bit of asphalt around and to the north of the curb cut, probably just some overlap from the parking lot, but no sidewalk.

It would make sense, I suppose, for a curb cut to be installed (perhaps while doing other work on the curb or road nearby) if it was part of an intention to someday get around to putting in a sidewalk. But there just isn’t somewhere for a sidewalk to go, not unless Lansing Township makes Dagwood’s give up part of their parking lot. And to the best of my recollection, the barrier at the edge of the lot has always been there as long as I’ve been going to Dagwood’s, which means it pre-dates the curb cut.

Another view to show that the curb cut absurdly points directly at the corner of the parking lot barrier.
And here’s Dagwood’s, in case you’re somehow not familiar. I’m standing on the curb cut and facing west while taking this.