Efforts start to decide if old Eastern should be declared historic district

Lansing’s Historic District Commission is expected to take the next step Friday in its effort to persuade the City Council to study whether to declare old Eastern High School a historic district.

The commission voted 5-0 last week to ask the Council to create a study committee on whether old Eastern qualifies as a historic district. On Friday, the commission will conduct a special meeting with members of the city’s planning office and City Attorney’s Office to determine how to word a resolution to submit to the Council. The meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. at the Neighborhood Empowerment Center, 600 W. Maple St.

Declaring the nearly 100-year-old landmark a historic district would mean that University of Michigan Health-Sparrow would have to locate its proposed $95. 2 million, 120-bed psychiatric hospital elsewhere. UM-Sparrow wants to tear down old Eastern and replace it with the new facility. Alumni, eastsiders and preservationists are among those who have objected. They contend that UM-Sparrow has many other options, which UM-Sparrow disputes.

If Council approves the commission’s request, Mayor Andy Schor would appoint members to the study committee with Council’s approval. According to the city’s Historic Districts ordinance, the majority of its members shall have “a clearly demonstrated interest in or a knowledge of historic preservation.”

One issue the commission needs to resolve is whether establishing a study committee alone is sufficient to protect old Eastern. The ordinance also allows the City Council to declare an emergency moratorium on the proposed district if it finds that “pending work will cause irreparable harm to one or more resources within an established historic district,” the ordinance says. UM-Sparrow has said it wants to give away lights, chairs and other interior features.

Once approved, a study committee would have at least six months to carry out its charge. Council could vote again to extend it up to one year.

Study committee members would review the proposed area and the historic resources it may include. In doing so, they’ll create a photographic inventory of the site and determine the significance of those resources in accordance with criteria established by the United States interior secretary for the National Register of Historic Places.

Using that information, the committee is required to compose a preliminary report within 180 days. That report would be shared with and reviewed by the Lansing Planning Board, the Michigan Historical Commission and the State Historic Preservation Review Board. Members would also be required to hold a public hearing on the plan within 60 days of releasing the report.

Within one year of sharing the report with those groups, the committee and Council members will work on crafting a final report, which would include the committee’s recommendation on whether the site should become a historic district. If members agree to proceed with the process, the final report would also feature proposed ordinances to formally establish the district.

According to city ordinance, a historic district is a “geographically defined area, or group of areas, that contains a resource or a group of resources that are related by history, architecture, archeology, engineering or culture.”

The city has 11 historic districts, with the most recent addition Central United Methodist Church District in June 2017. The first pair, established in 1990, were the Cherry Hill and Ottawa/Walnut Street districts. The city added the Darius B. Moon House District in 2001, followed by the Arbaugh Building, Mutual Building and Prudden/Motor Wheel Factory districts in 2005, the Ranney Building District in 2006, the Ottawa Street Station District in 2008 and the Marshall Street Armory and Knapp Building districts in 2011.

The effort to add Eastern High School to that list is the latest step in a community effort to save the property from demolition.

U of M Health bought Sparrow Health in 2022 and merged the two systems. Sparrow bought the school in 2016 for about $2.5 million, and the Lansing School District ceased using it for classes in 2019. It’s been vacant since.

What you can do:

Email Lansing City Council at city.council@lansingmi.gov whether you favor or oppose creating a committee to study whether to declare old Eastern High School a historic district.