Bailey Neighborhood Fears Destabilization from City's Actions

The battle over the future of the Bailey Community Center—and, according to some residents, the future of the Bailey neighborhood itself—will continue tomorrow night at City Council during a work session that will not be broadcast for public viewing. On one side is City staff who see the costs of keeping open the Community Center and the daycare it houses as simply too high for citizens to bear. On the other side is a growing contingent of Bailey residents and their urban neighborhood allies who say that closing the daycare and community center will undercut young families as well as an historic near-university neighborhood they believe the city should value and support.

The published agenda for tomorrow’s meeting includes a proposal from City Planning staff Lori Mullins explaining how the Bailey Community Center could be put to different use—including potentially by being sold to a developer. (A sale of the property would require approval by a vote of the citizenry.) Mullins suggests in her memo that the building might be used for “senior and artist housing,” possibly in the form of rentals for those populations, or for owner-occupied condos.

Members of the Bailey neighborhood and parents of Bailey daycare students plan to present at Council alternative ways to look at the potential revenue and costs associated with the daycare and the building. They see the City’s read of the situation as skewed by City staff’s persistent interest in closing the daycare and lately also the community center. They have expressed frustration with the City’s bleak presentations and forecasts, and argue that the City’s actions—including asking Council to approve closure of the daycare by this summer—have been destabilizing the daycare and are now threatening to destabilize the neighborhood as well.

“A major job of the City is to stabilize and to help neighborhoods,” Sally Silver, long-time advocate for the Bailey neighborhood told me today. “They are proceeding now in a way that they don’t know what the outcome will be.” She said that her neighborhood finds itself “in a precarious situation” given City staff’s and City Council’s management of the issue.

Silver believes that the community center is more than just another historic building in a Historic District neighborhood. “A community center is kind of a safeguard,” she told me. “You feel that the building is publicly owned, which means you don’t have to worry about it [as a homeowner]. You know it will be maintained and dedicated to a public use, and there are programs that are likely to attract you.”

What Bailey is facing, Silver says, “is a big question mark.” She says that City Council “is putting their budget problems above what is best for our neighborhoods,” ultimately to the detriment of the city as a whole. Proponents of keeping the Bailey Community Center open as a community center note that virtually all Parks and Recreation faciilties lose large sums of money every year, including the Hannah Community Center, the Family Aquatic Center, and the soccer complex, and question why their neighborhood is being singled-out for losing its anchor community space.

Roy Saper, longtime Bailey resident and owner of nearby Saper Galleries, notes that "dozens of speakers have said [to City Council] don't close the building and don't close the child care center." But, he says, only Beier has expressed interest in trying to keep the daycare and building open while a compromise solution is found. "That is not responsive to the neighborhood," he told me today. "That is ignoring the neighborhood while pleading financial difficulties."

The City’s website says that “Staff will continue to consult with Council before taking any action.” Council has been split on the matter to date, with Ruth Beier and Susan Woods generally expressing support for the daycare and community center, and Mayor Nathan Triplett and Mayor Pro Tem Diane Goddeeris inclined to close them to save money.

Councilmember Kathy Boyle seems to be relatively on the fence. Boyle lives in the Red Cedar neighborhood, which might benefit if the daycare now at Bailey is moved to the mothballed Red Cedar Elementary School, an idea that has been suggested. At a Council meeting in December, Boyle expressed concern about mothballing Bailey, and asked staff to look into what could be done with the building if the daycare program was ended there.

Councilmember Beier had asked City staff to take the Bailey Community Center off the “redevelopment ready” list because listing the building for possible sale had the potential to destabilize the Bailey community. Planning staff Lori Mullins told me in October that she has left the building on the possible-sale list “after consulting with the City Manager.”

Mullins said that Council was not unanimous in wanting it off the for-sale list and that “including the site on the list opens the door for conversations about the appropriate future use of that site, but it does not mandate a different use. Any proposal for a different use would go to the City Council for extensive discussion and they would then be able to consider those proposed alternatives.”

ELi is a reader-supported, nonprofit, noncommercial news source for the people of East Lansing. If you want us to keep bringing you news like this, contribute now! Donate online or donate by check. Your contributions are tax deductible!