The New Tycoon
Monday, August 23, 2010
The Ingham County Land Bank’s quest to make this place a better ... place
By Neal McNamara
Lansing City Pulse
August 23, 2010
On the day Rochelle Rizzi first saw the grand, brick house along Pine Street in Lansing, it was “complete construction zone.” The 6,000-square-foot Colonial Revival house was once the home of the superintendent of the School for the Blind but had been vacant more than a decade. Rizzi was on a quest to find the perfect space for her marketing firm, Rizzi Designs, and when she stepped inside, she knew she had found the right place. “I knew which furniture was going to be in what room,” she remembers. “It just seemed like a great fit.”
She was given a tour on that day last year by developer Gene Townsend, who was renovating the house for the Ingham County Land Bank. Around that same time, Rizzi and her business partner, Sandra Neuman, had won a contest through Inc. Magazine to meet with entrepreneurial guru Norm Brodsky in New York. He advised her that she must move out of her 300-square-foot office and into something bigger and better. This house was it.
Though she had the desire and the advice to move into the building, there was still the issue of purchasing the $225,000 building. Luckily, the Land Bank was much more sympathetic to her cause than, say, an out-of-state multi-national bank.
She met with Mary Ruttan, executive director of the Land Bank, and Ingham County Treasurer Eric Schertzing, who chairs the Land Bank’s executive board. “I told them what we wanted to do, and they loved my ambition and the fact that we would respect that it has a history to it,” she said. “This was their first commercial sale, so I was really proud to be a part of that.”
Rizzi worked out a deal that most banks would probably balk at in the midst of a recession/foreclosure crisis. The Land Bank granted her two years to pay off a $25,000 down payment. The rest of the payments will be made on a land contract — where the buyer forgoes traditional financing and pays the seller in monthly installments and takes care of taxes and insurance.
But the Land Bank benefited, too. It sold its first commercial property, and breathed life into the mostly vacant 130-year-old School for the Blind campus. Now, less than a year after opening, Rizzi Designs has added four employees (bringing it to 15) and the property is back on the tax rolls.
“It's the socio-economic mission that (the Land Bank) has to revitalize people as much as the properties,” she said. “Whether you start with the people or the properties, it's meeting in the middle, it's working to make people appreciate what we have.”
The Land Bank is coming up on its fifth anniversary, and though some of its activities have been highly publicized, the Land Bank’s mission and inner workings might be missed by the general public. Gradually, the Land Bank is forging a reputation as an innovative and successful local public developer, filling in some of the broken teeth on the county’s urban areas and taking hold of properties that might other wise deteriorate in the hands of careless property owners.
The benevolent authoritarian
When asked where Ingham County would be without the Land Bank, Schertzing plays it a bit modest. He says that the recent housing crisis has been so huge (asked if he saw the crisis coming back when the Land Bank was established in 2005, he says, “I don't think there would have been a way to predict” that it would get so bad) the Land Bank has only been a “small response.”
The Land Bank has been able to “rally the troops to some issues,” Schertzing says, like providing foreclosure prevention. But the best thing the Land Bank has been able to do, he supposes, is create a few positive stories out of all of the bad economic news. Take, for example, the old Deluxe Inn south of downtown Lansing. The property, which was in mortgage foreclosure, was a sad den of crime and extreme poverty. Lansing’s Human Services Department swept through after a murder and found residents living in squalor; eventually the department went to court to evict some tenants. Last September, the Land Bank bought it from Business Lenders LLC, the bank that owned it, for $400,000. Just a few weeks ago, the property was turned into a canvas for graffiti artists. Soon it will be demolished after being used as a training ground for firefighters, and Schertzing hopes to see it someday become the site of housing catering to urbanites.
The graffiti project was so successful, Schertzing said, that some people want to preserve pieces or purchase them for their homes.
Another heartwarming Land Bank story: It took a couple of vacant lots in the east Lansing Urbandale neighborhood — properties in a flood plain — and leased them ($1 per year) to two gardening experts. Now the neighborhood, recognized as being in a food desert — residents lack reasonable access to groceries — has an urban garden and access to fresh food.
To the delight of some, the Land Bank was also responsible for the demolition of the old Dollar Nightclub on Michigan Avenue near Frandor.
These examples show the incredible power of the Land Bank. That is, to take an interesting idea and run with it. It does not appear, yet, at least, that the Land Bank is crippled by bureaucracy or politics. If Schertzing and the Land Bank board — which includes Ingham County commissioners Debbie DeLeon, Dale Copedge, Rebecca Bahar-Cook and Deb Nolan — think it’s a good idea to let some graffiti artists paint a shuttered motel, all they have to do is say, “Yeah, go ahead.”
This is in line with the Land Bank’s mission: “Just to make the place better,” Schertzing said.
By Neal McNamara
Lansing City Pulse
August 23, 2010
On the day Rochelle Rizzi first saw the grand, brick house along Pine Street in Lansing, it was “complete construction zone.” The 6,000-square-foot Colonial Revival house was once the home of the superintendent of the School for the Blind but had been vacant more than a decade. Rizzi was on a quest to find the perfect space for her marketing firm, Rizzi Designs, and when she stepped inside, she knew she had found the right place. “I knew which furniture was going to be in what room,” she remembers. “It just seemed like a great fit.”She was given a tour on that day last year by developer Gene Townsend, who was renovating the house for the Ingham County Land Bank. Around that same time, Rizzi and her business partner, Sandra Neuman, had won a contest through Inc. Magazine to meet with entrepreneurial guru Norm Brodsky in New York. He advised her that she must move out of her 300-square-foot office and into something bigger and better. This house was it.
Though she had the desire and the advice to move into the building, there was still the issue of purchasing the $225,000 building. Luckily, the Land Bank was much more sympathetic to her cause than, say, an out-of-state multi-national bank.
She met with Mary Ruttan, executive director of the Land Bank, and Ingham County Treasurer Eric Schertzing, who chairs the Land Bank’s executive board. “I told them what we wanted to do, and they loved my ambition and the fact that we would respect that it has a history to it,” she said. “This was their first commercial sale, so I was really proud to be a part of that.”
Rizzi worked out a deal that most banks would probably balk at in the midst of a recession/foreclosure crisis. The Land Bank granted her two years to pay off a $25,000 down payment. The rest of the payments will be made on a land contract — where the buyer forgoes traditional financing and pays the seller in monthly installments and takes care of taxes and insurance.
But the Land Bank benefited, too. It sold its first commercial property, and breathed life into the mostly vacant 130-year-old School for the Blind campus. Now, less than a year after opening, Rizzi Designs has added four employees (bringing it to 15) and the property is back on the tax rolls.
“It's the socio-economic mission that (the Land Bank) has to revitalize people as much as the properties,” she said. “Whether you start with the people or the properties, it's meeting in the middle, it's working to make people appreciate what we have.”
The Land Bank is coming up on its fifth anniversary, and though some of its activities have been highly publicized, the Land Bank’s mission and inner workings might be missed by the general public. Gradually, the Land Bank is forging a reputation as an innovative and successful local public developer, filling in some of the broken teeth on the county’s urban areas and taking hold of properties that might other wise deteriorate in the hands of careless property owners.
The benevolent authoritarian
When asked where Ingham County would be without the Land Bank, Schertzing plays it a bit modest. He says that the recent housing crisis has been so huge (asked if he saw the crisis coming back when the Land Bank was established in 2005, he says, “I don't think there would have been a way to predict” that it would get so bad) the Land Bank has only been a “small response.”
The Land Bank has been able to “rally the troops to some issues,” Schertzing says, like providing foreclosure prevention. But the best thing the Land Bank has been able to do, he supposes, is create a few positive stories out of all of the bad economic news. Take, for example, the old Deluxe Inn south of downtown Lansing. The property, which was in mortgage foreclosure, was a sad den of crime and extreme poverty. Lansing’s Human Services Department swept through after a murder and found residents living in squalor; eventually the department went to court to evict some tenants. Last September, the Land Bank bought it from Business Lenders LLC, the bank that owned it, for $400,000. Just a few weeks ago, the property was turned into a canvas for graffiti artists. Soon it will be demolished after being used as a training ground for firefighters, and Schertzing hopes to see it someday become the site of housing catering to urbanites.
The graffiti project was so successful, Schertzing said, that some people want to preserve pieces or purchase them for their homes.
Another heartwarming Land Bank story: It took a couple of vacant lots in the east Lansing Urbandale neighborhood — properties in a flood plain — and leased them ($1 per year) to two gardening experts. Now the neighborhood, recognized as being in a food desert — residents lack reasonable access to groceries — has an urban garden and access to fresh food.
To the delight of some, the Land Bank was also responsible for the demolition of the old Dollar Nightclub on Michigan Avenue near Frandor.
These examples show the incredible power of the Land Bank. That is, to take an interesting idea and run with it. It does not appear, yet, at least, that the Land Bank is crippled by bureaucracy or politics. If Schertzing and the Land Bank board — which includes Ingham County commissioners Debbie DeLeon, Dale Copedge, Rebecca Bahar-Cook and Deb Nolan — think it’s a good idea to let some graffiti artists paint a shuttered motel, all they have to do is say, “Yeah, go ahead.”
This is in line with the Land Bank’s mission: “Just to make the place better,” Schertzing said.
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