St. Anne Cross Was Shown to Staff on Earliest Plans; City Attorney Maintains Nothing Can Be Done

Yesterday, as part of a Freedom of Information Act inquiry, I was able to look at the drawings submitted to the City of East Lansing for the project known as St. Anne Lofts. I asked Councilmember Vic Loomis to accompany me because of his vastly superior knowledge in commercial planning and development and because he continues to be the only Councilmember expressing serious reservations about the project. The image shown above was taken with my phone camera. It shows the architect's drawing of what the south side of the building would look like. You'll notice it shows the cross. These plans were submitted in late 2011 or early 2012 and formed part of the paperwork the city used to approve the project.

This week at Council, City Attorney Tom Yeadon summarized his memo to Council of a week earlier, rendering his opinion that, even given the sign ordinance, the City has no ability to do anything about the cross, in spite of nearly $3 million in public support going to this approximately $7 million project. Yeadon's latest memo (which was withheld from citizens for nearly a week after Council received it) is available for download by clicking here.

Yeadon previously rendered his opinion that the cross does not violate the First Amendment. (More on that here.) A first amendment scholar has been asked to look into the matter and is set to present his remarks to Council in the near future. Stay tuned to ELi for more.

Readers may also want to note what else that drawing shows: the penthouse, for which no formal application for building approval was made until well after construction on it had started. These plans--showing the cross and the penthouse--were the plans used by the Planning and Code Enforcement departments as they shepherded the project through the approval process.