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City of Lansing to study ways to reconnect neighborhoods divided by I-496

A crowd gathers at the opening ceremony for I-496 in 1970. A 1970 Oldsmobile Tornado drives through an "Oldsmobile Expressway" banner to mark the opening of the highway.
Courtesy
/
Capital Area District Library
A 1970 Oldsmobile Tornado vehicle drove through a banner to mark the opening of I-496.

The city of Lansing has been awarded a $1 million grant to develop a plan to build a cap over I-496 that would reconnect a community that became isolated by construction of the highway with the rest of the city.

The planning grant will allow the city to gather feedback from impacted families and historians before developing a plan to help “make do on the sins of the past,” Mayor Andy Schor said.

Possibilities for the cap—which would essentially be a large bridge—could include park space or residential and commercial developments, Schor said.

Construction of I-496, which began in 1963, led to the destruction of more than 800 homes and businesses in a majority Black neighborhood—which was itself a result of racist housing policies known as redlining—by the time the highway opened to vehicle traffic in 1970.

“When the grant was passed in federal law, we thought, this was for us,” Schor said. “But it turns out there’s lots of communities that are going through this, and we’re just one of them.”

Schor said he did not have a timeline for the project. The Lansing City Council must first formally accept the money, which Schor said he expects will happen easily.

The city, under Schor’s direction, had applied and been rejected for the planning grants twice before.

“We thought we were a slam dunk the first time,” Schor said. “The second time, we know it was on the Secretary’s desk, and it was very competitive.”

But this time, the city had additional support from the Local Infrastructure Hub, a group of philanthropic and nonprofit organizations assisting local governments with proposals like this one.

Lansing’s $1 million grant is being issued under the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program, which is meant to re-establish routes between communities in areas that were cut off by transportation infrastructure. The program draws funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Applications were once again competitive, with just 81 projects being awarded a total of $544.6 million compared to 403 applications requesting more than $3 billion in funding, according to the Department of Transportation.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called Schor to congratulate him on being awarded the grant as part of an effort to “run through the tape” during the final days of President Joe Biden’s administration, Schor said.

While the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump will have a vastly different set of priorities, which Schor predicted may lead to future planning grants being denied, Schor said he is confident the city will be able to secure build grants to implement the plans they develop using the grant awarded by the Biden administration.

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