Yes, I know. MacKenzie Co. 2022 is the new Cantu & Sons 1987. Don’t worry, I’m almost done with the new construction. This is a new curb cut at the southwest corner of East Kalamazoo and Charles Streets. There is a corresponding new one on the other side of Charles.
Previously, there were no curb cuts or any sidewalk here, just parking lots for Gerber Collision and NAPA. The Gerber lot, which is the one pictured here, had parking barriers at the edge of it, then a grassy strip, then a curb, so it was not pedestrian friendly. Good for whomever decided that should be changed. It does appear to have cost Gerber a little bit of their parking lot.
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.
Yes, I’m still mining the construction area on the east end of Kalamazoo, in Lansing Township. This new sidewalk is in front of the former East Side Foreign Car building on the south side of East Kalamazoo Street between Charles and Detroit Streets. Previously, there was none here, just a thin strip of lawn in front of a white picket fence.
This stamp is at the curb, facing toward the road.
A look at the bus stop, currently closed due to the construction.
In addition to the new sidewalk, they have installed a concrete area at the curb (what I have sometimes referred to as a “curb walk” since I don’t know a proper name for it) for people to stand on while waiting at the bus stop. Previously, people waiting for the bus would have to stand on the little strip of grass in front of the curb. This is a much more hospitable bus stop.
The new sidewalk continuing east past the old East Side Foreign Car building. There was no sidewalk here before.
This particular stretch is unsigned, but it’s part of the construction on East Kalamazoo Street that I’ve been cataloguing for the last several blog entries, which is peppered with plenty of MacKenzie 2022 stamps. On my previous foray into the area, I had noticed that they appeared to be preparing to lay sidewalk in front of Dagwood’s. When I returned, I was eager to see how that had developed.
The new sidewalk at the edge of Dagwood’s parking lot.
Previously, the sidewalk on this, the north, side of Kalamazoo had petered out in front of a house a little west of Detroit Street. A well-trodden path across the grass led the rest of the way east to Dagwood’s. In front of Dagwood’s, there was (and still is) a little stone wall, presumably to stop drunks from stumbling straight out the front door into the street. To pass by Dagwood’s on foot, one would have to walk up a couple of shallow steps onto the bar’s little front porch and down the other side. Then, on the other side, one would be in the Dagwood’s parking lot, which was separated from the curb with a metal guard rail. From the position of the steps, my guess is that the wall was a later addition.
I previously wrote about the fact that a curb cut had been made at the corner of Dagwood’s parking lot, meaning the corner of Kalamazoo and Howard, despite the fact that it made no sense because it pointed straight at a guard rail. I wondered at the time whether it was there in case they ever installed a sidewalk in the future.
The curb cut at the northwest corner of Kalamazoo and Howard.
The big news here is that they have put in sidewalk in front of Dagwood’s, both on the side as noted previously, and now in the front too. The guard rail is temporarily gone, but when it returns it will have to be further from the road than it was before, meaning that Dagwood’s has apparently been obliged to give up a bit of its parking lot. The curb cut is now much larger and has a traction plate. The previous one had been installed in vain, since it’s gone now that there’s actually a sidewalk to use it with.
The new approach to Dagwood’s.
Perhaps the biggest change is that the steps in front of Dagwood’s have been removed, at least as far as passing traffic is concerned. There is still a small step up into the bar from the porch area, but the steps that passersby had to traverse are gone.
A closer look at the area in front of Dagwood’s, showing where the step used to be.
I am genuinely impressed that this stretch of Kalamazoo is getting so much sidewalk work done, and doubly so that they were clearly thinking about accessibility and safety in this case.
A few days after the last batch, I walked through the construction area on East Kalamazoo Street again to see how things had developed. This short stretch of walk on the north side of Kalamazoo between Detroit and Howard lacks a stamp, but it is part of the work being done by MacKenzie Co.
What’s interesting to me about this spot is the little jog in the walk. This is one of the intermittent areas in the Lansing Township stretch of Kalamazoo that did already have sidewalk. The stretch of walk in front of the the two buildings here hugs both buildings, but as the building to the east is further forward on its lot, the sidewalk jumps abruptly a few feet on either side of the driveway. What has changed is that it now follows a defined curving path through the driveway. I’m not sure that there’s any functional difference – nothing stopped one from walking across the driveway before – but I greatly appreciate the aesthetic improvement and I’m impressed that they bothered.
This is another one from my recent exploration of new sidewalks in the construction area on East Kalamazoo Street. These are going to start getting more interesting, I promise. (More interesting to anyone sufficiently interested in sidewalks and the east side of Lansing, anyway.) This one is at the southeast corner of Kalamazoo and South Howard Street, in front of the Amoco station.
What’s notable about this bit of pavement is that there didn’t used to be any sidewalk here. Past the gas station parking lot on Kalamazoo, there was just a bit of grass ending in a blind curb, and likewise on the other side of Howard. Strangely, despite being so hostile to pedestrians, there is a crosswalk signal here to allow crossing Howard. (I can’t recommend it. There’s no marked crosswalk and usually a lot of traffic turning onto Howard, which becomes a feeder lane for 127/496.) The newly-laid walk is a new curb cut, leading pedestrians across Howard. It remains to be seen whether they will do anything else to make this corner a bit more inviting to cross on foot.
This stamp is across Mifflin Avenue from Monday’s, just over the border into Lansing Township on East Kalamazoo Street. Unlike the last one, this one is not a very deep impression, which is a disappointment to a sidewalk observer such as myself. It’s in front of the Village Party Store, a well known convenience and liquor store with its own coin laundry. It’s a staple of the neighborhood, but to the best of my recollection I’ve never been inside.
I was curious about the history of the place and a quick search of old State Journals turned up that from at least 1939-1955 it was the Ellis Food Market as well as the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Ellis. Their advertisements in the 1940s promote their “Special Designated Liquor and Beer Store Hours 7 A. M. to 2 A. M.” These days, the Village Party Store has a bit of a reputation for being in a tough area (though I walk past it at night all the time without incident), so it’s amusing to note that it was already the victim of shenanigans in the 1950s. On July 17, 1954, the State Journal reports that a trio of people from Detroit were “accused of breaking into the Ellis Food market, 2601 E. Kalamazoo st. The burglars were surprised in their car while leaving the establishment after stealing a quantity of liquor but escaped in a wild chase in which several shots were fired at them.”
On June 23, 1967, the State Journal reports that Mrs. Lynell Ellis of this address pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the Uniform Housing Code: “In a warrant signed by housing inspector Ted Tycocki, Mrs. Ellis was charged with not having hot running water and with having improper fuses, hazardous switches and defective electrical fixtures in a house at 521 W. Lenawee St.” I don’t know whether the Food Market was still in operation at that time. By 1983, the address belonged to the Village Party Store.
I walked into the construction area on East Kalamazoo Street again to check out other sidewalk changes. This time I went to the north side of the street, and found this stamp near the northwest corner of Mifflin Avenue, just inside Lansing city limits. This is a particularly crisp impression and should last a good while, which of course is what I like to see in a sidewalk stamp!
This is across Mifflin Avenue from the one posted in the lasttwo entries. It’s on the southeast corner of Mifflin and East Kalamazoo Street, in other words, just outside the border of the city of Lansing, making it a rare example of a stamp in Lansing Township. As part of the recent construction on Kalamazoo, they have put in a new curb cut on this side with a single block of pavement. No further sidewalk has been laid yet and I am guessing it won’t be, since there wasn’t any there before, just a ramshackle parking lot that seems to belong to University Foreign Car across the street.
This is upside-down because I’m standing at the curb cut and looking east to show where the tiny bit of sidewalk ends.
This stake is actually back on the west side of Mifflin, but I photographed it to show that what I keep calling a “curb cut,” they apparently call a “sidewalk opening.”
Last time I posted the blog’s newest stamp to date, a MacKenzie 2022 stamp from the southwest corner of East Kalamazoo Street and Mifflin Avenue. Today I am posting the fastest stamp removal I have ever seen. Last night I walked past to discover that the brand-new slab bearing the remarkably short-lived MacKenzie stamp had inexplicably been removed.
Why would they put in new sidewalk during a construction project that hadn’t finished yet, only to tear it right back out? I have no solution for this mystery.
