Alexander Alusheff

Lansing State Journal

EAST LANSING – Adios Taco Bell.

Demolition of the vacant fast food restaurant building on Grand River Avenue and Bailey Street will begin in June to make way for an $8.6 million, five-story apartment complex.

“This will be a tremendous improvement over the boarded-up building there today,” said Tim Dempsey East Lansing's planning, building and development director.

Called Stonehouse Village VI, the roughly 48,000 square-foot building will include 36 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments and have 6,500 square feet of retail space on the first floor, Dempsey said. The East Lansing developers behind the project are David Krause of Stonehouse Village VI LLC and Doug Cron of Cron Management LLC. Rent will cost between $1,000 and $2,000 a month.

“The Taco Bell is an eyesore,” Krause said, of the 44-year-old building that housed a Taco Bell restaurant for the first three decades of its existence. “We’re going to put a building up there that will be transformational in East Lansing.”

The apartments will be located across from the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, and Krause said he found extra glass and stainless steel from the museum in a salvage yard, which he plans to incorporate in the project.

“This will provide additional residents downtown and secure retail users to complement the Broad Art Museum across the street,” Dempsey said.

Krause said there’s enough space to fit three tenants on the first floor.

The existing building was constructed in 1972, according to Ingham County property records. The fast food chain moved across the street in the mid-2000s. From 2007 to 2008, it became a Spartan Gyros. From 2009 to 2011, it operated as a National Coney Island, Dempsey said.

Once the development is built, Cron Management will manage the property, as they do with the Stonehouse Village apartments across Bailey Street, Krause said.

Last week, the Michigan Strategic Fund approved a decision by the city of East Lansing’s Brownfield Redevelopment Authority to give the developers a roughly $1.4 million reimbursement over a 15-year period. During that period, the developers will recapture 90 percent of the new property taxes they pay once the apartment complex is complete. The city and school district will receive the remaining 10 percent until that period expires.

The reimbursement money will be used for site clearing, asbestos and lead abatement.

East Lansing City Council approved the proposal to turn the site into apartments in September 2015, Dempsey said.

The project is expect to be complete by summer 2017.

Contact Alexander Alusheff at (517) 388-5973 or aalusheff@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexalusheff.