New developers building a South Lansing-sized blueprint for success

Melissa White is quick to correct people who call her a developer.

“Emerging developer,” she said, as people – Lansing Mayor Andy Schor, Council Member Adam Hussain, construction managers and bankers – came out to celebrate a huge milestone for her development.

But she’s being modest.

Or maybe she’s just waiting for the ribbon cutting to take a bow.

This was, after all, a groundbreaking and not the finish line.

There’s still a lot to go, said White and James Denning, who are partners and are developing a blighted south Lansing strip mall into an event space, a destination restaurant and a laundromat.

They’re turning a former recording studio into office space for their Novi Properties LLC, named for their oldest daughter and not the Metro Detroit city.

That’s the office space where they’ll become developers, as this project gets finished around the start of 2027 and they’re on to the next one.

The development, at 820 W. Miller Rd., has been years in the making.

Gloria Denning, James’ mother and a former City Council candidate, said she first heard of the plan shortly after White told her she had bought the property.

“She was like, ‘I got this property.’”

Very quickly, there was a plan.

There’s been a whole mess of setbacks, contractors, challenges and adversities on the way.

Naysayers as well as supporters too.

As the skeleton of a strip mall attests, it’s far from done.

But as groundbreaking started for their project, James Denning and Melissa White took a well-deserved bow as they are on the way to being groundbreaking developers.

A long time coming

Calvin Jones, a member of the Lansing Economic Development Board, said he started mowing lawns with the Lansing Board of Water and Light about 50 years ago, and one of his lawns was at the intersection.

The property has been a lot of things over the years since Jones, now director of government and community relations for BWL, was mowing the nearby lawns but he’s seen the intersection transform a number of times, including into a popular nightclub and, more recently, an eyesore.

“It’s long overdue,” Jones said.

Mayor Andy Schor said he was door-knocking around five years ago and got an earful of a plan from someone who just happened to answer the door, White, and he’s been hooked on her ideas for the property ever since.

“These are two folks (White and James Denning) who have jobs and kids and lives and they want to make their community better,” Schor said. “They did everything right and they had no idea what they were doing.”

The mayor might also have been talking about the city’s role in figuring out how to do this, since White and Denning were “guinea pigs” for city trial programs to better educate and foster local developers. 

White and Denning were in the first cohort of Lansing Economic Development Corporation’s Supporting Empowered Emerging Developers (SEED) Academy, a free class on real estate development, and have gotten a fast and furious education in development, including but not limited to finances and planning experience.

White and Denning have defied the normal process of connected, experienced developers driving the successful projects and are becoming poster examples of homegrown developers.

White and Denning built up a stack of financing, including $1 million from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s Revitalization and Placemaking 2.0 program, Brownfield tax increment financing totaling over $380,000, and $30,000 from the city of Lansing’s facade improvement program.

It’s the kind of tools they’ve been learning.

Exactly this kind of development

City Council member Adam Hussain, who represents the ward and has become friends with Denning and White through the process, said this is exactly the kind of development City Council should support.

Too often, he said during the July 29 ceremony, it is the “well-established developer that knows how to access these incentives and has access to capital and can put their capital stack together, and frankly, has the relationships in place in the organizations necessary to actually do development.”

Hussain said emerging developers like White and Denning need support to get that access and those relationships. Hussain and White said Aurelius Christian, from LEDC, was instrumental to the project.

Speaking to the neighbors of south Lansing, Hussain addressed the years of blight and the hopes for this project.

“We asked you a handful of years ago, when these two fascinating, incredible, amazing people came on board we asked you to be patient. We believed in them. You believe in us and our belief in them and because of that belief and support and patience this is happening.”

As for White, as the project gets built over the next few months, she’s going to have to get used to being called a developer.

“There’s definitely more to come,” White said. “So stay tuned.”