For @eastlansinginfo in which a Covid-19 update by downtown business leaders was a PR event by developers to pressure EL to negotiate on age restrictions — that the developers chose — for apartments they now can't get rented. And threatened legal action. https://eastlansinginfo.news/center-city-developers-threaten-legal-action-if-they-dont-get-their-way-also-now-spooking-elderly-tenants/

The businesses Mark Bell, CEO of Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors, did mention were the three tenants in his building, and a nearby coffee shop.

His main argument is they're losing money because they can't rent apartments to 55-plus because of Covid-19.

But they had been struggling to rent downtown apartments to 55-plus-year-old people in a college town since they opened.

HB and Bell say condominiums or moderate income housing won't make enough money to pay for the public parking garage they built below. That might be true.

But that also doesn't matter to the argument being made. The restriction stems from a City ordinance and the developers could've chosen to not have the restriction be senior citizens. But they did. It's in the development agreement and it is CITY LAW.

The developers have threatened the City with potential legal action if good-faith efforts to negotiate don't take place before Sept. 30.

Council member @Lisa_Babcock517 said there would likely be a meeting in September, but said the letter was full of "hollow threats."

There was no legal argument formulated in the letter other than priming the notion that the pandemic and fallout is the cause of low rental rates and those issues are the fault of EL. Babcock, a lawyer, is not worried about the legal threat.

Letter: https://eastlansinginfo.news/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Harbor-Bay-HB-BM-Letter-from-Foley-to-City-of-East-Lansing-on-Newman-Lofts-dated-Aug-27-2020.pdf

And from what I know about the law — not that much — it still seems impossible that the developers can create a sound legal argument to get out of a restriction legally required and that they picked out of several options.

They are flailing and lashing out.

And they are lashing out at @eastlansinginfo and our dear leader, @AliceDreger, basically, for paying attention all along. We understand investigative reporting and having opinions as controversial as "taxpayers should know where there money is going" is scary to some, but...

that's not going to stop ELi from doing work that the people of East Lansing and surrounding communities have consistently shown us is valued.

And while the developers cried poor, they had the time to make a website decrying ELi for doing a damn good job, basically.

Hmmmmmm.

And I think more than anything else in all of this, the developers of projects like this do them to make money. Of course they do, it's business! And that's OK. But it's impossible then for their pitch of "our community" to be sincere from an office in Northbrook, Illinois.

For the short term, nothing is going to happen. The city, from my understanding, has no obligation at all to move on the restrictions.

As for the long term, we'll have to wait. But as noted in the story, tenants currently living in Newman Lofts feel they're being pushed out.

In summation, I don't think Mark Bell and his boys did anything other than really piss off the people that he's at a supposed "impasse" with.

Though "impasse" is an interesting way to describe asking for something you're never going to get and then threatening legal action.