Planning commission forwards Lakeview District quarter plan to city commission for March 4 review

The City of Battle Creek Planning Commission voted on Feb. 26, 2025, to forward the Lakeview District Quarter Plan to the City Commission; if approved there, staff said the city commission could place the plan on its March 4 agenda for broader outreach to utilities, neighboring jurisdictions and stakeholders.

Consultant Eric Kehoe of Progressive Companies presented the plan and implementation recommendations after a multi-month engagement that staff said reached roughly 3,000 community participants through surveys, pop-ups, focus groups and open houses. Kehoe summarized the plan’s three guiding themes as “placemaking, green infrastructure, and reducing car dependence,” and described design concepts including partial demolition of the Sears building, daylighting a buried creek, relocating the movie theater, consolidating strong mall tenants, and replacing large surface parking areas with mixed housing and public open space.

The plan’s findings included a large excess of parking relative to current code; Kehoe said the district has roughly three times the parking required by today’s zoning in many places. Conceptual redevelopment options shown to commissioners included multi‑building residential blocks, mixed‑use buildings with first-floor retail on Twentieth Street, a park created where the Sears building now sits, and trails and connections to the Brickyard Creek Trail. Kehoe also proposed tactical street redesigns (temporary road diets and pilot projects) and recommended the city restart the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) or similar financing mechanism to capture tax increment for infrastructure and public‑realm investments.

Commissioners asked about property acquisition, revenue capture, and how to address auto‑oriented corridors such as Beckley Road. Kehoe recommended targeted acquisitions to enable catalytic projects, a new DDA plan to enable bonding or incentives, zoning refinements to allow the mixed‑use vision, and an incentives packet for developers. The plan memo also lists potential funding sources including tax increment financing, Brownfield cleanup grants, and state housing programs that can improve competitive scoring for Low Income Housing Tax Credit applications.

Commissioner Behnke moved to send the plan to the City Commission; the motion was seconded by Commissioner Morris and carried. Staff told commissioners that, if the city commission places the plan on its March 4 agenda, the city will begin outreach to adjacent jurisdictions, utilities and transportation agencies as part of the next step.