Eye Sore of the Week: 820 W. Miller Road

Good news! By this time next month, you could be the owner of this week’s eyesore. One of the seediest little shopping plazas in Lansing is up for grabs at an Ingham County foreclosure auction on Aug. 26. And it’s a package deal: the pile of trash and broken furniture will likely come along with the disreputable property — all for a low, low minimum bid of about $59,000.

This unkempt plaza at the corner of Washington and Miller Road in south Lansing was the former home of Binni’s Bar and Grill. After more than 50 emergency calls there in two years, local cops labeled the place a “nuisance” in 2018 and asked the Michigan Liquor Control Commission to revoke its liquor license. Someone was shot there on New Year’s Day in 2017. Another incident left a man with a bullet in his leg. Other calls included robbery and assault.

The bar had also faced multiple unrelated liquor violations over the years, reports showed.

Two months later, regulators yanked the license and the owner — Love Singh — had accepted defeat. He skipped a hearing to defend himself and shuttered the bar for good in August 2018, abandoning plans to reduce business hours and swap rap music with “Spanish music nights.”

The idea, Singh said, was to discourage raucous crowds of “out-of-town” patrons and help reduce neighborhood disturbances. It’s probably for the best that he never gave the plan a shot.

Thousands of dollars in taxes also haven’t been paid on the property since 2017, so last March the plaza was forfeited to the Ingham County Treasurer’s Office. In total, the site includes more than 12,000 square feet of retail, restaurant, market and laundromat space. It will also be the priciest parcel at the auction next month. Officials plan to begin taking bids on site at 1:30 p.m.

The new owner will have to spend time replacing shattered windows and boarded-up doors, scrubbing off spray paint, repairing the siding and repaving the entire parking lot. The interior will probably need work too, but here’s wishing good luck to whoever may be up for the task.