Many products have been made in Lansing over the years, from automobiles and their parts to furniture, lawn mowers, chest protectors and cheese curds. A full catalog of Lansing-made stuff could escort you through a well-lived life, from fresh milk and baby carriages to booze, cigars and coffins.
Most of these things lived their useful lives and ended up in the trash, a scrapyard or a museum (if they were lucky).
Not so for the buildings where they were made.
Some grand old industrial structures, like the former Motor Wheel plant near the corner of East Saginaw and Larch streets, still dominate the landscape. Others are tucked into obscure corners of town — brick and steel factories and smaller shops, historic mills nestled on the banks of the Grand River and other survivors of the industrial age.
These buildings are so tough that they not only outlived the things they made but the companies that made them as well.
Their size, age and condition present daunting problems, but unlike a Burger King or a K-Mart, the average century-old factory is a fairly simple, dignified tabula rasa with strong bones, fit for any number of modern needs — especially housing.
But it’s no simple matter to bring these structures into the 21st century. Jeff Deehan of Lansing’s Dymaxion Development said it’s not for the squeamish.
“Adaptive reuse projects are harder, in almost every way, than new builds. We never know what we’re getting ourselves into. We don’t know what’s behind the walls,” Deehan said. “But we find that it’s a satisfying process to bring new life to this sort of building. They have more character and define the spirit of the community, preserve its identity, a lot better than a lot of these newer things we do.”
This Made in Lansing issue of City Pulse looks at some of the challenges and benefits of repurposing industrial buildings, with a nod toward some recent projects involving historic schools. In a few cases, repurposing has gone in the opposite direction, as manufacturers move into buildings formerly used for other purposes, especially schools. The ebb and flow of commerce is hard to predict, but bricks, mortar and steel have a way of standing their ground.
Let there be light
Walkers, bikers and motorists often pause to admire a graceful brick and wood structure nestled on the east bank of the Grand River, just north of the North Lansing dam.
Few stop to wonder why there are so many windows facing the river.
To the casual eye, the windows just look gorgeous, arrayed in stately rows alongside elegant drainage pipes and basins straight out of an ancient Roman bathhouse. But the builders of Lansing’s historic Race Street Mill had something more functional in mind. Michigan was still a territory when the mill was built in 1836, and Thomas Edison had not yet been born.
“There are a hundred window penetrations on that building, and that’s not because they wanted a view of the river,” developer Harry Hepler said. “That’s so they could see what they were doing.”
In 2000, Hepler converted the 17,000-square-foot gem at 212 E. Cesar Chavez Ave to modern offices, with a spectacular view of the Grand River.
In addition to harnessing the hydropower of the river, the mill was the first foundry and machine works in the city and housed a succession of industrial enterprises until the 1980s, when it fell into disrepair.
The historic importance of the mill and the splendid results make it easy to forget the job’s many headaches.
“The day we started measuring it, to see what we had, the wall on the Riverwalk side fell into the river,” Hepler said.
It took months of work to bring the mill to modern standards, one wall at a time, but Hepler said it was worth it.
“It’s pretty far back in our state’s history, our history as Americans,” he said. “Besides, many of the things that made it useful to humans, like facing the sun, haven’t changed.”
Natural light was a key factor in one of the biggest adaptive reuse projects in Lansing’s history, the 2008 conversion of the 1916 Motor Wheel factory on East Saginaw Highway into 119 urban apartments less than a mile from the heart of downtown.
If the Race Street Mill represents Lansing’s industrial beginnings, the Motor Wheel structure embodies the heart of the city’s manufacturing history. Ransom E. Olds chose to locate in Lansing, in part, because his biggest wheel supplier, then known as the W.K. Prudden Co., was located here. Next to the main factory, the famous Prudden smokestack still towers over a row of nearby apartments.
Motor Wheel was among the industrial giants of the early 20th century. By 1934, it did about a third of the nation’s wheel business, more than any other wheel manufacturer.
The plant’s architect, German-born Albert Kahn, designed much of the nation’s industrial infrastructure, including many of the factories built by the Big Three automakers.
A century later, the simple design made it perfectly suited as housing stock for 21st-century urban dwellers.
As he did at the Race Street Mill, Hepler took advantage of the Motor Wheel factory’s wraparound windows, 10 feet high and 12 feet wide, designed to light two shifts, morning and afternoon.
“Nobody would put that big a window in a residential one-bedroom house,” Hepler said. Even better, the windows open out, to allow ventilation and keep out rain.
“All the windows are the same size, all column spacings are a certain distance apart, all power supplies are a certain distance, and it’s all for assembly purposes,” Hepler said. “Today it’s benefiting us, because it’s laid out in such a grid.”
Hepler also converted the 1904 J.I. Case Tractor and Thatcher Co. at 113 Pere Marquette Drive across from the old Union Depot (itself now a Starbucks), into JI Case Lofts, an apartment complex with 21 units. Next, he plans to transform a 70-year-old, 70,000-square-foot former factory at 700 May St., just behind Motor Wheel, into 134 modern apartments of 500 square feet or fewer.
Hepler plans to apply every trick he’s learned in his earlier projects, and roll out some new ones, to make the apartment complex “one of the most sustainable in the country” with a mix of solar panels, wind energy, heat pumps and energy conservation features that will enable him to charge zero for utilities.
Beneath the factory lies another surprise legacy from the factory’s industrial past — a 400-foot-long vault called the High Bay Crane space, built in 1955 to make shells for South Korea. During the height of the Cold War, the government required a fallout shelter beneath the factory. Hepler plans to convert the fallout shelter into a 250,000-gallon cistern that will collect rainwater from the roof to irrigate the grounds and flush the toilets.
The mill, The Wing and the Bean
Motor Wheel and its satellite projects present a grand profile on a major highway, but old industrial buildings have sprung back to life in many obscure parts of town.
River Trail bikers and joggers are among the few who regularly enjoy the friendly silhouette of Potter’s Mill at 701 E. South St. in Lansing, tucked between the Grand River and a complex of city-owned service facilities.
Developer John Sears bought the 37,500-square-foot building in 2012 and turned it into a unique complex with 18 glassy studio apartments and “maker” spaces, accented with burnished steel and steampunk fixtures, topped by a nifty third-floor aerie overlooking the river.
Built in 1889 by James W. Potter (of Potter Park Zoo fame), the mill was later used by Potter Furniture Manufacturing and did stints as a lumberyard, a metal shop, a machining and nickel-plating plant and a warehouse for J.W. Knapps Co. until the 1970s.
When Sears took it on, the old mill had been vacant for years. Sears died in 2021 in a motorcycle crash, but his vision for the mill will offer local makers and artists space to live and work for many years to come.
Rawley van Fossen, Lansing’s director of economic development and planning, was impressed with the mill’s funky re-invention.
“We lost John way too young,” Van Fossen said. “He had the energy that cared for things and was willing to invest in projects like that.”
A few blocks to the north, in a warehouse and factory district, stretches a 150,000-square-foot factory at 735 E. Hazel St. commonly dubbed The Wing because it is widely believed that B-24 Liberator bomber wings were built there during World War II.
Deehan said the wings were manufactured in the upper deck of the factory and shipped to assembly facilities via the railroad next to the building.
In 2019, Deehan envisioned “a vibrant community of artists, makers and light industrial” along the lines of Potter’s Mill. But with more than quadruple the space of Potter’s Mill and no nice river views, “The Wing” proved a bigger challenge.
“It was vacant when we bought it,” Sheehan said. “We had a number of different concepts for it, but ultimately, we turned it back into a factory.”
There were a smattering of artists and a boxing gym at first, and plans for apartments were in the mix. In 2018, Norm Fasteners, supplier of fasteners for Tesla, John Deere and other customers, leased about 20,000 square feet there, creating its first Lansing distribution center.
However, in 2023, Norm Fasteners headed for greener pastures, announcing plans for a $77 million manufacturing facility in Bath Township.
What to do with all that empty space? Legalized marijuana to the rescue. Ascent Wellness, a Massachusetts marijuana company, opened a large cultivation facility there in 2019. Last week, an employee of Ascent said the building has been substantially renovated, with plans to expand into the 40 percent or so of the unused space. An artist and sign maker also occupy the building.
But marijuana is not a cure-all, at least for buildings. Not far from The Wing, near the bridge that lifts South Cedar Street over the Grand River, sits a 460,000-square-foot former John Bean factory, once home to a major manufacturer of sprayers, trucks, pumps and firefighting equipment. The iconic Lansing complex housed an ambitious marijuana growing enterprise, Michael Doherty’s Rehbel Industries, until the operation fell into debt and went into receivership in 2023.
“The John Bean structure is one of those significant structures that could see additional investment,” Van Fossen said. “There’s an active marijuana grow facility on the third floor, but a lot more could be done. There’s a lot more potential on the first and second floors and the surrounding campus that parcel takes up.”
Various artisans and “makers” have set up shop at one time or another in the hulking factory, but Van Fossen is hoping to see a more ambitious plan.
“My challenge to developers is to be holistic with it,” Van Fossen said. “It’s one thing to come in and transform some of the interior, but a lot of us in the community — we’re looking at the outside. The John Bean building is a perfect example. Whether you’re going up and down on Cedar Street or just live in the community, we want to see some transformation on the exterior of that building.”
Staying after school
Tucked into the residential and commercial fabric of Lansing’s near east side is a unique array of repurposed buildings, a mix of old factories, warehouses and schools that now houses the varied operations of Neogen Corp., manufacturer of food and animal safety products.
A multibillion-dollar, high-tech manufacturer with microbiological research facilities needs a huge, sterile, modern facility, right? Not necessarily. Wooden beams a foot thick line the halls of Neogen’s Herbert Annex at 720 E. Shiawassee St., once a Massey Harris Tractor plant and furniture warehouse, now home to laboratories and offices, including Hasan Yamani’s.
Yamani is senior director of capital projects at Neogen.
“It’s a very unique wood structure,” Yamani said. “A lot of construction companies come in to see how we maintain it.”
Instead of concrete or steel columns, wooden beams bear the old factory’s architectural load. These cracked and weathered beams, and the heavy steel stays that fasten them together, are a conspicuous presence throughout the building, contrasting sharply with the opaque, glassy walls and doors of Neogen’s laboratories.
Beginning in 1982, Neogen founder James Herbert purchased and restored nine eastside buildings, from schools to warehouses to homes, ranging in age from 50 to 110 years old.
Herbert died in March at age 83. In a 2013 interview, he said he didn’t plan to put together an ad hoc urban campus when he and former Dow Chemical CEO Ted Doan started Neogen. They only wanted to stretch their initial $75,000 as far as they could.
“We didn’t want to invest money in shiny stainless steel,” Herbert said. “We were more concerned with brainpower.”
Neogen needed heavy-duty plumbing that could handle drains and sinks for laboratories and a mix of office space and open labs. Lansing’s Oak Park School, built in 1916 and “built to last,” in Herbert’s words, was on the market and in good condition, aside from a leaky roof and “14 coats of paint” hiding its rich oak trim. Soon after buying the Oak Park School, Herbert bought the building next door, 600 Lesher Place, built in 1910 by Ransom E. Olds as a home for foundlings, and turned it into administrative offices. Another big eastside school, the 1913 Allen Street School at 1614 E. Kalamazoo St., became Neogen’s Center for Microbiological Excellence in 2006. Neogen also uses a smaller 1912 building, formerly the home of Lansing’s Dudley Paper Co., behind the two Shiawassee Street buildings.
As the company grew in the past decade, it could have pulled up all these stakes and lit out for the suburbs, but it opted to grow in place. Under construction next to the Herbert Annex is a three-story, 176,000-square-foot facility more than 500 feet long. Neogen employs about 670 people on its downtown Lansing campus and plans to add about 130 more to serve the new facility.
Yamani praised Herbert’s commitment to keep the company local and reaffirmed his emphasis on “brainpower” over fancy facilities.
“It’s easy to move operations anywhere,” Yamani said. “You just build a new factory and move it. But we are committed to stay in Lansing, mainly to maintain the talent we have. It costs a lot of money to go somewhere else, hire people and train them and so on.”
Many of the most significant adaptive reuse projects under way in Lansing deal with old schools. That’s really a separate story, unless you consider education to be an industrial operation, but adaptive reuse of schools is on fire right now in greater Lansing, and a few recent projects cry out to at least be mentioned. Two major anchor points are the redevelopment of the stately campus of the former School for the Blind on the city’s west side into senior and affordable housing, completed in 2021, and the current transformation of the ornate Walter French Junior High School into 76 affordable rental units and a child care center, to be completed in 2025.
Van Fossen called the Walter French project “a critical adaptive reuse in the community.”
“It sat 15 years vacant with the utilities turned off,” Van Fossen said. “Talk about an eyesore along the South Cedar corridor. That building is on the historic register. Now we’re seeing active construction. Windows are going in the third floor.”
This spring, Dymaxion finished work on the 1923 Holmes Street School, 1030 S. Holmes St., completing a slow-motion development triple play from school use to industrial to residential.
The school closed in 2000 and sat vacant until developer Ryan Vartooghian, head of the Spartan Internet marketing firm, bought it in 2007, announcing its conversion to a tech center. He never finished the work.
“It was a mess,” Dymaxion’s Deehan said. “They basically gutted the building and disappeared. We came in, finished the work and turned it into apartments.”
This spring, Dymaxion will begin work on transforming the historic Wilson School in St. Johns, a century-old structure with 100,000 square feet of floor space, across Cass Street from the Clinton County Courthouse, into over 50 apartments. The auditorium and gymnasium will become a community center.
No survey of school stock in Lansing is complete without invoking the Gothic glory of 97-year-old, 237,000-square-foot Eastern High School, which Sparrow Health System purchased in 2016 and which graduated its last class in 2019 before moving to the former Pattengill Middle School. Its fate has been hanging since, but Van Fossen sees a glimmer of hope.
“I’m hopeful and excited we can see some preservation efforts, now that Sparrow is part of U-M Health and the former Eastern is in their portfolio,” Van Fossen said. “It’s a critical part of Lansing’s history, especially for those on the east side.”
Deehan knows it can be done. He just did it at Holmes Street School and is doing it now in St. Johns.
“It’s an amazing building,” Deehan said. “Save Lansing Eastern High School, by all means. We’d do that project in a second.”
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