I think this says 2001, but I can’t be sure what with it being underwater. It might be 2021, but it looks too worn. This is another one from the vicinity of the doomed camelback bridge, this time on the south end of the bridge.
Kessler Concrete Construction doesn’t have a Web site, but they appear to be based on Eagle.
On Friday I went out to photograph the 1924 camelback bridge over the Red Cedar River in Okemos, as I had heard it was slated for demolition on Monday. Everything I might say about the loss of the bridge and the general destruction of the town of Okemos has been said first and better by HistoricBridges.org. Interestingly, a contributor to that site was out documenting the bridge on Tuesday, and they report that demolition has not started and it is still carrying traffic, with an unknown actual demolition date.
While I was there I took a couple of photos of sidewalk stamps in the vicinity of the bridge, which is on the east side of Okemos Road between Mount Hope Road and Clinton Street. This one is on the north end of the bridge in front of Ferguson Park. As muddy and worn as it is, it appears to say “HTC,” but I believe it is an H & C stamp, like one of similar vintage I photographed in front of the Meridian Mall.
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.
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.
I had business at the Meridian Mall today, so I thought I would do my first Meridian Township stamp, and get one in front of the mall. To that end I started look on Google Street View, which I sometimes do to scout a spot before walking there. It’s often possible to see stamps and even sometimes possible to read them. I was disappointed that it didn’t look like there were any stamps to be found near the front entrance. That got me wondering whether Meridian Township has the same rule about sidewalk stamping as the city of Lansing – that is, that sidewalks must be stamped with the name of the contractor and the date. I went to the Meridian Township code, but there it only said that sidewalks must be constructed according to the specifications of the Director of Public Works and Engineering. I dug around a little on the Meridian Township Web site until I found those specifications. Regarding stamping, they state:
At each end of the pour, or at least every 80’, the sidewalk/pathway must be imprinted with the contractor’s name and date stamp. The letters of the stamp shall be 1 1⁄2” high.
Meridian Township Department of Public Works
I’m surprised it specifies an exact height for the letters instead of “at least” an inch and a half as it says in Lansing’s code. It is also more specific about how frequent the stamps should be. Nevertheless, they seem infrequent in the vicinity of the mall.
Sidewalks themselves get short shrift around the mall, probably unsurprisingly, but irritatingly nonetheless. I set out to walk the outside edge of the mall and found that a sidewalk at the edge of the building exists only intermittently, mostly around the doors. The longest unbroken stretch of sidewalk is around the Macy’s wing. None of it is stamped. There is no sidewalk at all around the mall’s perimeter road. I only found one place where the public sidewalk even offers a pedestrian entrance to the mall, and it’s on the Marsh Road side rather than near the front entrance on Grand River. Having one lonely access path is so inadequate that it hardly seems worth having any at all. It makes me wonder if the township required them to have pedestrian access when they built the mall so they complied in the stingiest manner possible.
It’s near that access sidewalk that I found a stamp. I had spotted it on Google Street View so I knew it was there, and a couple more like it, though those were hidden by snow at the moment. The contractor is probably H & C Earthworks and Construction of Bath Township, about which I can’t find much information.
