Sale of Lansing City Hall gets green light

LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – The sale of Lansing’s iconic City Hall was approved during a City Council meeting Monday. This is another hurdle taken before Out-of-state developers could convert the building into a 183-room hotel in the heart of the capital.

“I’m pleased that we can now move forward with a proposal that is another part of the transformation of downtown Lansing. Selling City Hall to Beitler Real Estate and seeing us realize the vision of transforming the building into a hotel and dining destination is a tremendous opportunity for our city,” Mayor Andy Schor said in a statement shortly after the vote.

The Beitler Real Estate Services plan has been on the table since 2017. But the question of where to relocate city services remained unanswered. That changed this spring when the location for the next City Hall was determined. The facility will be on South Grand Avenue, directly across from CATA’s main train station.

The renovation of the current city hall will not only convert offices into hotels, but also add a cocktail lounge to the 8^e floor and on the first floor a square with shops.

People who work in the city centre, such as Kenneth Wilson, who works at Veg Head, a restaurant within walking distance of the town hall, are hoping for more customers.

“It would be really good, especially for the businesses here, to get more traffic. Yeah, sounds like a good idea,” Wilson says.

The sales agreement puts a price tag of more than $2 million on the building, which is the value at which City Hall was assessed in 2023.

That value, however, raised concerns among some City Council members at previous meetings, who asked if it could be worth more. During Monday’s Committee of the Whole meeting, Council President Jeremy Garza said City Hall was in poor condition.

“From what I’ve heard when I’ve talked to some of the maintenance people, there was never any water treatment in the pipes, so there’s a lot of band-aids on it now. So the building definitely needs some love and TLC,” he said.

Mayor Andy Schor says there are concerns that a new appraisal will further decrease the building’s value.

“Probably a million, million, million and a half a year just for the upkeep of this building. But you all work here, you’ve seen the condition of it,” Schor says.

The sale went through without further discussion at the City Council meeting. The next step for the project is to wait for city officials to leave once the next City Hall is completed just around the corner on South Grand Avenue.

The the new city hall is expected to be completed in 2026which means the facelift of the current building should be completed in 2027, according to the developers.

See the plans for the project below: