Developers break ground on 28-story building, centerpiece of $334M Lansing development
Posted By: The Detroit News on April 7, 2025. For more information, please click here to read the source article.
Developers broke ground Monday on the centerpiece construction of a five-building, $334 million development meant to revitalize downtown Lansing after fluctuations in the state workforce have left the capital city’s downtown without steady foot traffic.
The Tower on Grand, a 28-story apartment building on Lansing’s Grand Avenue that will anchor the New Vision Lansing project, will be the tallest skyscraper in the city and is meant to encourage more individuals to live and work downtown. The project is a partnership between Lansing-based Gentilozzi Real Estate and Bloomfield Hills-based JFK Investment.
“Our goal is to fill the void that exists in downtown Lansing today with people, people that will shop and dine and work in our capital city,” said John Gentilozzi, vice president of development for Gentilozzi Real Estate. “We do that by creating spaces that will attract residents, investors, business owners to a place where these things were once familiar.”
The New Vision Lansing development received a $40 million earmark in the 2023 state budget while Lansing-area, Democratic lawmakers Rep. Angela Witwer and Sen. Sarah Anthony served as the House and Senate appropriations chairs, respectively.
The development also qualified for the state’s Transformational Brownfield Plan, allowing developers to capture about $202 million in property, sales, and income tax generated from the property’s development over 30 years. Additionally, a small number of the housing units qualified for “missing middle” funding from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority.
The project began to take shape about three years ago, as the state was emerging from the pandemic, office space was less desirable and housing was in desperate need across the state. In Lansing, that transition was especially painful since downtown restaurants and retailers had long relied on state office workers, many of whom still work from home most of the week.
With or without the state workforce’s return, Lansing has a “very defined market demand for multifamily housing,” said Paul Gentilozzi, John Gentilozzi’s father and owner of Gentilozzi Real Estate. New Vision’s plans for nearly 560 new housing units hopes to capture a portion of that need for 1,500 to 2,000 housing units.
The tower on Grand Avenue alone will have 287 residential units, indoor parking, a riverfront terrace, street-level retail and office space, a penthouse-level sky lounge and a 20,000-square-foot outdoor deck with green space and other amenities, including golf and race simulators.
Gentilozzi compared the investment in downtown Lansing to “shorting Microsoft stock.”
“Eventually, you know it’s going to come back and it’s going to be better,” Gentilozzi said. “I don’t look at it as a gamble. It’s a calculated risk and we’ve done our homework on the risk factor.”
Aside from the Tower on Grand, the New Vision development also includes:
- The conversion of an office building at Washington Square and Michigan Avenue into 60 apartments, parking and commercial real estate.
- The conversion of a historic downtown office, the Samuel D. Ingham Building on Ottawa Street, into 25 furnished apartments and commercial space.
- The development of Capitol Tower at Walnut and Ottawa streets, where the building will hold about 105 residential units and ground floor office space.
- The construction of a seven-story building on Turner Street in Old Town that will include 80 apartments, retail and parking.
« Back to Insights