UM Health-Sparrow files permit to demolish

Lansing Eastern High School

By Mike Ellis

Lansing State Journal

·  Lansing's old Eastern High School building is slated for demolition to make way for a new psychiatric hospital.

·  University of Michigan Health, which now owns the property, plans to move forward with demolition despite requests from preservationists to tour and assess the building.

LANSING — The walls appear to be closing in on the old Lansing Eastern High School building. On Thursday, city officials confirmed that a demolition permit has been filed with the city.

Preservationists picketed city hall Thursday and plan to again on Friday, in a last-ditch effort to convince Mayor Andy Schor to pause the permit, said Linda Peckham, one of the hundreds of people who have signed a petition to preserve a portion of the school.

"We thought that the request for the demolition permit would not come for another month," she said. "But we'd already made signs for demonstrations, and we're going ahead with demonstrations."

The nearly 100-year-old building was sold by the Lansing School District in 2016 to Sparrow Health System, which has since been acquired by University of Michigan Health. Students last attended school there in 2019.

Scott Bean, a spokesperson for Schor's office, confirmed that the permit application has been filed. A copy of the permit application obtained later Thursday shows a demolition cost of $2.1 million. The electricity and gas have been disconnected, the document shows, and a projected project timeline for “complete” demolition is Feb. 25 through May 31.

The health care system announced in June plans to build a $97 million, 120-bed psychiatric hospital on the former school property, and to tear down the school.

UM Health-Sparrow officials on Thursday shared nearly a years' worth of plans for the site, including proposals that would have saved the full Pennsylvania Avenue facade.

The full facade plans, which would cost between $6 million and $7 million without including demolition or abatement of materials in the school, were ultimately rejected because they required too much annual maintenance for bricks that would be exposed to the outdoors on two sides, officials said.

The health care system plans to build a community garden on the space, keeping one or two of the stone archways as entry points into the green space.

The cost for the arch preservation and green space is around $1.4 million, said Connie O'Malley, regional chief operating officer for UM Health.

UM Health Regional Network President Margaret Dimond said the health care system has priced out various ways of saving the building but restoring the building for reuse, such as for a teaching center, would cost more than $100 million.

She said the health care system does not have the money to do a full restoration of the building and there are no obvious foundations or private or public funding sources for preservation of the building.

Psychiatric hospital still needs approval

The nearest in-patient psychiatric facilities are at least an hour drive from Lansing, which is part of the health care system's impetus for developing the former school property, Dimond said.

The 18-acre site could eventually include an emergency room expansion, labor and delivery and other buildings, Dimond said. Those plans, as well as the psychiatric hospital plan, would need to get approval from the UM Board of Regents.

Dimond said the regents would likely be formally presented with the psychiatric hospital plans after the school is demolished, which could take four to six months.

MORE: UM-Sparrow, McLaren health systems are worth billions. Is bigger better for patients?

Bean said the demolition permit was submitted this week. It generally takes a day or two to process the checklist of items that includes safety and zoning authorizations, so the permit could get a final sign-off Thursday or Friday, he said.

Alums, preservationists have been vocal

School alumni and preservationists rallied since last summer to save the building but Peckham and others with the Coalition to Preserve Eastern High School and Promote Mental Health have said the health care system ignored their requests to allow a tour of the building or to allow experts to evaluate the damage.

Most of the preservationists are pushing for only a partial restoration: Keep the western wing of the former high school and an auditorium while demolishing the rest and using part of the 18-acre campus to build the new hospital.

In a YouTube video released Thursday, Dimond said water damage in the west wing area would require "hundreds of millions of dollars to bring it back to where it was even in the 90s,"

O'Malley said there are plans for multiple projects on the 18-acre site including expansions that would go over the footprint of the high school.

She said many items from within the high school - including the cupola, auditorium seating and lighting fixtures - have already been removed for preservation.

A green space outside will be built including the cupola and items like nearly-century-old bricks with the names of people who donated to the early school construction, O'Malley said.

"The legacy cannot be the current condition of that high school," Dimond said.

Rebecca Stimson, a member of the preservation coalition, said hospital officials have not warmed to alternate uses for the old school, including an auditorium for the Lansing Symphony, rooms for music or art therapy, training rooms or housing for traveling workers or patients.

Several efforts have been unsuccessful. Supporters asked City Council to start a historic review process and were rejected, despite supporters having spoken at a UM Board of Regents meetings and having gone to City Council meetings as a large group.

Peckham said she taught English at Lansing Community College and was always delighted to get Eastern students because of their broad education.

"We want to be sure people hear there are many, many alumni and community members, people who have built this town, who went to this school," Peckham said. "There is an incredible dedication that the people have to that building, to that school and to the way the school was run."

Peckham said efforts last summer by preservationists to get a tour or allow experts inside the building for even rough estimates were rejected by the health care system.

End of LSJ Article

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It's our understanding that the footprint of the proposed Psychiatric Facility is entirely north of Eastern High School. 

We can wonder whether UM Health Sparrow ever intended to consider preservation of any part of the architectural treasure that was Lansing Eastern High School.  Their refusal to allow a rough estimate by preservation experts exposes the attitude.  It is far less expensive to simply demolish the entire site, but preserving the evidence of our civilization has real value.

U-M Health Sparrow has shown plans for a small green area populated with miscellaneous building artifacts.  No guarantee if even that meager plan will be executed.

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