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Michigan State University (MSU) is proceeding with an RFQ for qualified firms for a major arena development on the campus’s west side in what is now a natural park like setting.

The university plans to build an arena as part of an enclave that would include a hotel, market rate housing, academic space, offices and retail. The hotel would augment the existing university-owned Kellogg conference center.

The unnamed 14-acre development is pegged for the northwest corner of Harrison and Trowbridge roads and across from a burgeoning commercial district in the city of 49,000. No price has been officially announced but construction would be through a P3.

“The general scope of the project is a new athletics arena to support volleyball, wrestling, gymnastics with both performance space but also locker rooms and coaching office space,” spokeswoman Amber McCann said.

“The arena would sit 4,000 to 6,000 and be a new addition to MSU Athletics venues. The facility will also house additional classroom/academic unit space for our top-ranked hospitality program, kinesiology, health sciences and potentially others.” 

A board of trustees summary says a portion of it, such as hotel and retail, would become subject to a long-term ground lease with the developer while other sections would be financed, owned and operated by MSU.

The university’s trustees green-lighted the project last summer with an RFP.

MSU president Kevin Guskiewicz called the plan “extraordinary” describing it as “creating a vibrant ecosystem that amplifies MSU’s mission.”

Board chair Dan Kelly said it speaks to the university’s efforts to engage the wider community “in economic development in the greater Lansing region.”

City council member and former East Lansing mayor Mark Meadows welcomed the plan but said the “devil is in the details.”

And while the location is high profile and accessible, some five hotels have already been built in the area in the past six years.

“But if rooms are targeted to fans of the BIG 10, the new hotel will likely be full all the time,” he said.

The university already has significant athletic facilities in the 15,000-seat Jack Breslin Student Events Center, hosting men’s and women’s basketball and women’s volleyball. There’s also the multi-purpose Jenison Fieldhouse for wrestling, track and field and gymnastics. And the 72,000 seat Spartan Stadium for Big 10 football. All are two miles northeast in an area with little space for new facilities.

Bob Trezise, president and CEO of the Lansing Economic Area Partnership, in a statement praised the university for “once again (putting) us on the national map from a tourism and entertainment perspective, attracting large activities that will spill over into the entire region.”

The P3 concept mimics what professional sports are doing.

Mark Rosentraub, a professor of sport management and director of the Center for Sports Venues and Real Estate Development at cross-state University of Michigan, said MSU is in “the vanguard” of seeking alternative forms of financing as opposed to traditional donations and no interest loans to leverage greater amenities for revenue.

“MSU is taking an aggressive and affirmative step in a direction that they must given the changes taking place with regard to intercollegiate sport in the United States,” he said. “More than a dozen” other schools in the U.S. are doing the same.

A local environmental group has no problem with building on the green space given its proximity to highway US 127 and the location being “a main gateway” to the university.

Theresa Lark, executive director of the MidMichigan Environmental Action Council, said MSU is a land grant university and has “many park-like spaces, some of them more heavily forested than the site identified for the arena project.”

She said the new arena appears integral to accommodating “training and matches for Olympic sports, without which MSU would not be able to host home events.”

She added, “balancing economic development with the environment is a constant challenge in this particular case the site chosen for the new Olympic arena space makes sense.”