Housing Group Proposing Uses for Bailey as New Data Emerge

New information from City staff has emerged on the past and possible future of the Bailey Community Center, just as the Capital Area Housing Partnership is moving to convene a public discussion this week about that organization’s vision for how to use the property.

Capital Area Housing Partnership (CAHP, formerly known as Hometown Housing Partnership) is a non-profit housing agency that has operated in East Lansing since 1992. The meeting this Wednesday, May 13, will be open to the public and will run from 7-9 pm at the Bailey Community Center gym.

Mark Meadows, chair of the CAHP board and a resident of Bailey, told me in an email interview, “We hope to have, at the conclusion of the meeting, a clear understanding of whether the neighborhood supports the proposal we intend to make [to the City]: a truly intergenerational project with the compatible purpose of anchoring the Bailey Neighborhood with senior housing; providing child day care; providing space for community programming; and, becoming the home office of CAHP.”

Meadows explains that “the whole purpose of CAHP is to help stabilize neighborhoods and communities by providing opportunities for home ownership and other quality housing.” He notes “that CAHP began its life as East Lansing Housing and Neighborhood Services, [and] was created by activists from the Bailey, Red Cedar and Central neighborhoods.”

According to Meadows, “CAHP saw the closing of Bailey as a potential destabilizing factor in a neighborhood that CAHP was founded by. As a result, CAHP decided to examine the feasibility of repurposing Bailey Community Center in a manner consistent with our mission.” Meadows says that he hopes the group’s plan will meet with the approval of the neighbors as well as the rest of the City’s citizens. The group wants to get feedback and refine the proposal in advance of bringing it formally to the City’s officials.

Chris Root reported earlier this week for ELi’s readers on public discussions convened by the City about the possible future of the Bailey Community Center. (Click here to read more about what happened in those discussions.) In conjunction with those meetings, City staff have now released the results of the earlier “e-Town Hall” open poll regarding the future of the Bailey Community Center. The resulting bar graph, shown in a clip above and reproduced here, shows heavy interest among citizens in keeping the community center dedicated to some educational or other essentially-public use.

ELi has learned that a draft of a map labeled “Future Land Use” compiled by City staff shows a plan to convert the non-park part of the Bailey Community Center property to R3 zoning, which means “residential up to 16 units/acre.” (Click here to see it.) However, this draft was produced in advance of public discussions about future uses of the property.

This past week, City staff also compiled and released financial data from 2005 to the present on the soon-to-be-closed City-run daycare at Bailey Community Center. (Click here to see the summary.) When City Council voted 3-2 to close the daycare, those in favor of closure, including City Manager George Lahanas, named financial losses as the primary reason. Mayor Nathan Triplett, Mayor Pro Tem Diane Goddeeris, and Councilmember Susan Woods voted to close, and Councilmembers Ruth Beier and Kathy Boyle voting against closure.

An organized Bailey daycare parents group had told Council before the vote that they were willing to accept higher rates and had proposed ways to stop the deficit occurring at the daycare. Leaders of the Bailey parents group expressed frustration and suspicion after their proposal was rejected. (Read more.)

I asked Beier to summarize for our readers what this new data on the daycare’s financial history show. According to Beier, an economist, the finance summary shows what the parents' group had said. “It shows that daycare in the Bailey building can easily break even.” She says the financial problem at the daycare came when “we increased staffing and improved the program but didn’t raise rates, which were below market. So of course we ended up with a deficit.” She thinks “the answer to the deficit was to raise the rates, not to close the program.”

Beier says the daycare also suffered unnecessary losses by having “expensive policies” inconsistent with other daycares. For example, the Bailey daycare has given refunds to families when a child doesn’t come to daycare because of vacation or sick time. “You have to charge by the week or the month,” Beier says, noting that is the standard practice at most daycares. “We also didn’t charge more for infants. Infants are more expensive, so you have to charge more for them.” (Read our interview with MSU’s Lori Strom about infant and daycare near campus, including about why infant care is more expensive.)

The plan by CAHP to propose continue provision of daycare at the community center does not involve having the City run a Bailey-based daycare, but rather having a third party provide daycare in the space. Gretchen’s House, a daycare organization based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been said to have some interest in the space.

Mikki Droste, Executive Director of CAHP, has encouraged those who cannot attend CAHP’s meeting on Wednesday to be in touch with her to get more information after the meeting. She welcomes people to contact her at 517-332-4663 or mdroste@capitalareahousing.org.