Here comes the neighborhood

Two long-empty buildings on West Ionia Street return to life

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Last week, a man walked into the Hair United salon at 513 W. Ionia St., a quiet block where downtown Lansing eases into the shady Genesee neighborhood to the north. Owner Liz Winowiecki spritzed some water on the man’s hair, a prelude to applying the scissors. “Chauncey used to call that ‘sky juice,’” the customer told Winowiecki.

Chauncey Corser, a U.S. navy veteran and self-styled “tonsorial artist,” ran his little shop there from 1929 until he retired in 1984. Walk-ins were so reliable that he didn’t even have a phone. Between customers, he carved birds and animals out of wood.

Those days are gone — or are they?

After a $1.4 million restoration, two modest but solid brick slabs in the Genesee neighborhood near downtown Lansing are back in play after sitting empty for decades.

The storefronts from 513 to 517 W. Ionia St. have the same elegant masonry, the same frosting of glass bricks above the doors and the same classic layout from the 1920s — four commercial units below, six apartments above.

Five of those apartments are already occupied with a mix of single parents, students, empty nesters, cats and dogs. Hair United is the first commercial tenant. A new brewpub, Salt’s, will move into the two ground floor units to the west later this year, leaving only one commercial space empty — at least for now.

Three months after opening the salon, Winowiecki is getting much of her trade from people who live in the neighborhood, including the units upstairs, just as Chauncy Corser did. She bikes to work from her home a block away.

The salon has the same terrazzo floor, the same tin ceilings and even the same wood-framed mirrors it had in Corser’s day.

“Those mirrors have been on those walls for 70 to 90 years,” developer Scott Schmidt said. “When we tore paneling off that wall, there they were.”

Schmidt lives nearby, too. His development company, Vesta Building, has rehabbed several spaces around Old Town and other parts of the city. Schmidt set out to do a neighborhood-based project, but even he was surprised at the response it has received.

“This was always a neighborhood center, from a grocery store to the flower shop,” Schmidt said. “We’ve gotten away from that model, and now we’re coming back.”

Before he had a chance to put together a far-reaching marketing plan, Winowiecki spotted the salon space while walking by and jumped on it.

“It was totally serendipity,” Winowiecki said. “I worked in salons before that were community focused, so I knew it would be cool to work in a neighborhood I live in.”

The same goes for Steve Kelly, the owner of Salt Brewing Co. who saw the space while visiting his girlfriend at nearby Fairview Apartments.

Many of Chancey Corser’s customers were lobbyists and state workers who ambled over from their downtown offices. (U.S. Sen. Philip Hart stopped by once.) Half a century later, the pattern is repeating itself for Winowiecki.

“We’ve already seen a good share of lobbyists,” she said. “One couple lives around the corner. Both work for the government, but for different parties, which I find fascinating.”


Last week, Winowiecki got an email from a man whose grandmother, Frances Crays, briefly worked as a hairstylist in the building — around 1938.

“It’s pretty cool you are doing the same thing all this time later,” the man wrote.

The older of the two buildings, 515-517, was built in 1923, though parts were built earlier. Grocer Orla Bailey established a store there in 1922, building around an older structure that hasn’t been dated for certain. Schmidt thinks parts of the building go back to 1904. Bailey built the second structure, to the east, in 1925 as the grocery grew.

There is still a conspicuous I-beam connecting the two buildings. Schmidt speculated that it was used with a pulley to lift inventory to the top floor. In good weather, the little courtyard between the buildings will host brewpub diners, Schmidt said.

The barbershop at 513 W. Ionia was vacant from Corser’s retirement in 1984 until this year. He died in 1998. Meanwhile, several pharmacies moved in and out of 517 W. Ionia, followed by a Westinghouse warehouse, Marcelino’s Pizza Shop (in the early 1980s) and a printing shop. When Bailey’s Grocery closed in 1959, another grocer had a brief run in the space but soon closed as supermarkets took over the trade. The last tenant there, Rosary Book and Gift Shoppe, moved out in 2002.

As they settle in, Winoweicki and fellow stylist Ayanda Mdlebe are adding wrinkles that crusty Chauncy Corser never thought of. In the bathroom are portraits of Amy Winehouse, Frida Kahlo and Prince, part of a series of “hair icons” painted by local Mexican artist Ana Holguin, who is also a client.

Winowiecki grew up in Lansing, went to nearby Willow Elementary and fondly recalls chasing after the “cool kids” — including her brother — at Eastern High School. After college in Ann Arbor and a stint in New York City, she came back to settle in for good.

She expects that blocks of new apartments going up both nearby and across much of downtown Lansing — both new and renovated — will help build her business to grow.

“I could see this being a niche neighborhood of Lansing that will develop its own flavor,” she said.

Winowecki loves that Schmidt put solar panels on the roof. (It’s hard to imagine Corser getting excited about solar panels. He didn’t even use a blow dryer.)

In back of the two buildings, a former parking lot is filled with about 20 raised garden beds, tended by master gardeners and other members of Lansing First Presbyterian Church. The food raised will be shared with the Greater Lansing Food Bank.

The only tenant in the two buildings that many Lansing residents might remember is Belen’s Flowers, which occupied 515 W. Ionia from 1969 to 2010. Proprietor Lucile Belen was a pillar of the city — a business leader, philanthropist, entrepreneur and member of the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame. She served on the Lansing City Council for 37 years, from 1955 to 1992 and died on June 2, 2010, at age 97.

As the last business standing, the flower shop hung on for a long time without doing much in the way of upkeep, Schmidt said. He described the work as a “complete gut rehab, down to the wall structure.” To restore a collapsed roof and ruined floor in the back unit, Schmidt’s team tore out the floor and dropped it two feet, providing a taller ceiling. They replaced it with salvaged wood from a house demolished by the land bank.

As the project drew closer to completion, Schmidt also worked on and off with Dave Muylle, longtime restorer of homes on Lansing’s east side. It was Muylle who persuaded Schmidt to roll his sleeves up and restore, instead of replace, the apartment windows.

“I find inspiration from Dave,” Schmidt said. “You build it, you believe in the community and things blossom from there.”

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  • Preston

    I had a studio in the old barbershop for a year or two. Belen's Flowers were next door at the time. The next building over was T.L. Hart Painting Company. Danny Black took a photo of me out front of the studio. Looks like I can't post it here.

    Sunday, March 21, 2021 Report this




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