Lansing City Council Meeting: April 20, 2026

LANSING, Mich. — Two weeks after Deep Green Technologies withdrew its data center proposal, Council Member Ryan Kost introduced a 182-day moratorium on new data centers (Chapter 878 draft, April 20 packet pp. 129-130), and the council referred the ordinance to the Committee on Development and Planning without passing it. On the same evening, the council placed the sale of the Lansing Shuffle building on the August 4 ballot on a 6-1 vote; the Planning Commission had recommended placement 7-0 on March 3, the Park Board had declined to recommend it on a 4-3 vote with one abstention on April 8, and six of the seven residents who spoke on the item opposed placement. A four-ordinance package adding liquor stores to the zoning code passed 7-0 on each, capping a multi-year effort by Council Member Adam Hussain.

The Data Center Moratorium

The ordinance (Chapter 878, Item 34) is three sections long and fits on two pages of the April 20 packet, with a 182-day duration, a broad definition, and four brief legislative findings. If enacted, it would bar the city from issuing building permits or processing zoning-amendment applications for any data center as a primary or accessory use during a 182-day window that would begin 14 days after enactment. The stated purpose of the moratorium is to give the city time to "complete its study and recommendation of zoning amendments to address Data Centers."

The definition in Section 878.02 is broad. A data center is "a facility, or group of facilities, dedicated primarily for storing, managing, and processing digital data through computer systems such as servers, networks, and other information technology structures" (packet p. 130). The draft does not define "dedicated primarily," and it sets no megawatt threshold, no square-footage floor, and no emissions test.

The ordinance as drafted would not address BWL power-supply or water contracts, which were the utility arrangements the Deep Green proposal was structured around. It would not modify the zoning code. It would not survive automatically, either: if the zoning study did not produce amendments within 182 days, the city would return to the pre-moratorium baseline.

The ordinance draft is dated April 17, 2026 per the header block on its first page, and Council's action on April 20 was procedural rather than substantive. Vice President Trini Pehlivanoglu's routine motion that "all items be considered as being read in full and that the proper referrals be made" carried without debate, and the moratorium ordinance along with its companion public-hearing resolution were referred to Development and Planning; the public-hearing notice in the packet was published with a blank date, and Kost is the sole sponsor listed on the agenda.

Nevarez Martinez said at the April 6 regular session that she had drafted an ordinance prohibiting data centers in commercial and downtown commercial districts and requiring discretionary review in industrial districts. That ordinance has not appeared in a packet. The ordinance that did appear on April 20 imposes a pause, not a zoning rule.

The Lansing Shuffle Ballot Vote

Act-4-2026 (Item 25, April 20 packet pp. 63-65) places the sale of 325 Riverfront Drive, the city-owned building that houses the Lansing Shuffle food hall, on the August 4, 2026 ballot. Council passed the resolution 6-1, with one council member voting no; audio of the voice vote does not identify the dissenter, though the approved minutes, when published, should.

Seven residents spoke on the item: six opposed the sale or the ballot route, and one supported placement. The speaker in favor was Josh Pugh, who identified as a volunteer board member of Downtown Lansing Inc. and the Lansing Common Football Club. The six opposed speakers were Loretta Stanaway, Lamar Wilson Sr. of Ward 3, Ivan Droste of Ward 3, Linda Effling of Lansing, state representative candidate Taiwan Thirdgill, and William Walker.

Loretta Stanaway said the city is contractually required to consider the sale but not required to approve the ballot, and asked whether the request for proposals had been opened to other buyers at the 2018 appraised value. Ivan Droste told council the ballot route was unnecessary: "We are only contractually obligated to consider the sale. So, okay, we considered it. Obligation fulfilled. We are under no obligation to actually put this on the ballot or proceed any further." Linda Effling proposed, sardonically, that if the building's sale price can be pegged to 2017 or 2018 valuations, the city should base her own property taxes on 2017 rates as well.

The Park Board, which is the stewarding body for dedicated park land, declined to recommend the ballot placement on a 4-3 vote with one abstention on April 8; the resolution text at page 64 of the April 20 packet documents both the Park Board no-recommend and the Planning Commission's 7-0 affirmative recommendation on March 3.

The underlying financial terms, reported in the March WKAR coverage and documented in the April 20 council packet (pp. 133, 150, 160), are as follows. The sale price in the packet is approximately $953,272 for a January 2027 closing; that figure decomposes as $720,000 from the 2018 Valbridge appraisal, plus city fund contributions, plus a "return on equity" at an unspecified rate, with roughly $233,000 of the delta not decomposed in the packet (the $233,000 figure is derived by subtraction from the two packet-disclosed components). The current rent on the property is approximately $24,000 per year, and post-sale property tax revenue per City Assessor Jennifer Czeiszperger's estimate in the packet (pp. 133, 160) would be approximately $28,900 per year, yielding a net annual fiscal change to the city of approximately $5,000.

Liquor-Store Zoning

Four ordinances passed on roll call at 7-0 on each, with Council Member Adam Hussain moving each in turn. The package defines "liquor store" in the zoning code for the first time. The definition, at Section 1240.04, is a retail establishment where more than 50 percent of gross sales come from tobacco, nicotine, vapor products, or alcohol, as determined by visual representation, purchase records, or sale records. A new Section 1250.02.13 establishes a 2,500-foot minimum separation between liquor stores, measured property line to property line. The remaining two ordinances add "liquor store" to the allowable-use tables for commercial mixed-use districts (Table 1243.03) and the special districts table, with outdoor seating prohibited and the Industrial-1 district listed as a principal permitted use.

Hussain said on the floor that the package had been in development across multiple Public Safety Committee cycles and involved work with the state Liquor Control Commission and state senators on related statutory fixes. At the end of the meeting, Mayor Andy Schor thanked the council for the ordinances: "I know that the media is not here and it's 10 o'clock, but I wanted to be the first just to thank you all. I think Councilman Garza would have been in support. So thank you, eight, for doing that. I thought that was hugely important."

LEPFA Appointment and a Recusal

Council appointed Patrick Spyke, CEO of LAFCU, to the board of the Lansing Entertainment and Public Facilities Authority (Item 9). The term expires June 30, 2026, approximately ten weeks. The appointment came two weeks after Council on March 9 pulled 325 Riverfront Drive out of LEPFA's operating agreement, the building that this week's Item 25 sent to the ballot for sale.

Council Member Tamera Carter asked to be excused from the Spyke vote, telling the body: "I would like to ask the body to excuse my voting for the appointment of Mr. Patrick Spyke, as I have [an employer-employee] relationship, although there's no direct conflict of interest, no financial benefit. For me, I just would like to make sure that it is clear that I am just requesting that we be excused from the vote of appointment of Patrick Spyke." Council voted 6-0 to excuse her, after which the Spyke appointment carried 6-0.

The Voting-Rights Resolution

Item 26, moved by Council Member Kost, is a resolution opposing "efforts to legally require voters to show a birth certificate or passport when registering to vote," and opposing additional documentation for voters casting a ballot (packet p. 66). Six residents spoke in favor, including the League of Women Voters of the Lansing area (Vice President for Program Donna Mullins and President Kathy Petroni present), Common Cause representative Shannon Abbott, Eaton County Commissioner Kyle Jones, election worker Dave Ware, Michigan Country executive director Joanne Galloway, and Linda Effling. The resolution carried.

Public Comment on Homelessness

Seven residents used the city-government-matters public-comment period, held at the end of the meeting, to ask the council to pause or end encampment sweeps. The speakers were Kit Ferran of Ward 1, Ivan Droste of Ward 3, a resident identified as Darren, state representative candidate Taiwan Thirdgill, Mike Goroszek, Maximilian Huckleberry, and William Walker. Two of them, Ferran and Goroszek, referenced presentations given earlier the same evening at Committee of the Whole by Kim Coleman, who was identified by speakers as being involved with the NOVA housing project.

Ferran, identifying as a volunteer with service providers delivering to the Causeway Bay Hotel program that housed people displaced from the Fallen Angels encampment over the winter, told the council that on some occasions "information about program expectations were withheld from me and others who were delivering services to guests at the hotel," and that "many of whom are physically and mentally disabled" were affected by the programmatic changes described. Goroszek, in a separate comment, paraphrased from memory a response Coleman had given earlier in the evening to Council Member Nevarez Martinez's question about pre-sweep outreach: "they are creating a plan, but we can't make them do anything." The Committee of the Whole recording was not independently reviewed for this post, so Coleman's words are presented here only as Goroszek paraphrased them.

Huckleberry asked the council to delay sweeps of the "back 40" camp and a camp near the Social Security building and U-Haul, and to designate a parking lot or similar space where residents with nowhere else to go could stay.

A Show Cause Hearing: 108 W. Barnes Avenue

Vice President Pehlivanoglu read the case file for 108 W Barnes Avenue (Item 5, April 20 packet), a property whose listed taxpayer resides in Novi, with a State Equalized Value of $16,400 and a city-estimated cost of repair of about $137,655. The red tag was issued in November 2024; the demolition hearing was held November 19, 2025; the 60-day make-safe order was not complied with; and Council introduced the show cause hearing at its April 2 meeting.

Tony Haddad, Linda Haddad's brother, told council he had lived at the property for eight or nine years, had completed most of a remodel before a fire started on the porch, and had followed what he understood as a negotiated pathway from the November 2024 discussion: put the property in his own name, then pull a homeowner's permit and fix the property himself. When he tried, he was told a red-tagged property cannot be permitted by a homeowner, and he said he does not have the money for a contractor.

Haddad recalled the city's damage estimate as about $116,000, a figure that does not match the $137,655 in the case file Pehlivanoglu had read minutes earlier. He said his own estimate if he were to do the work himself would be about $20,000, and asked to be allowed to pull the permit he said he had been led to expect. Per the standing procedure for show cause hearings, council members did not respond on the floor.

What to Watch

The data center moratorium is now in the Committee on Development and Planning, and no hearing date has been set. The ordinance, if passed as drafted, would take effect 14 days after enactment and would expire 182 days after that.

The sale of the Lansing Shuffle building is on the August 4 ballot, and a sale agreement, if voters approve, would still return to council for final approval per Charter Section 8-403.6.

Patrick Spyke's LEPFA term expires June 30, 2026.

The moratorium ordinance's Section 878.01(d) asserts the city is "diligently studying its options" on data-center zoning. The public-facing product of that study, if one has been prepared, has not been identified in the April 20 packet or announced at the meeting.

Sources

Primary source: April 20, 2026 Lansing City Council regular session, recorded by the City of Lansing. CivicClerk event 7882, agenda packet (186 pages). All speaker quotes are from the meeting recording; verbatim accuracy is subject to audio quality. Moratorium ordinance draft text from pages 129 through 130 of the April 20 packet; public-hearing notice page 131; public-hearing resolution page 132. Item 25 vote and amendments described from the floor discussion; Park Board 4-3-1 recommendation against placement and Planning Commission 7-0 recommendation for placement both documented in the resolution text at packet page 64. Item 9 Patrick Spyke LEPFA appointment and the excused-absence vote on Carter described from the roll discussion. Items 27 through 30 liquor-store ordinance text and roll-call votes described from the floor and the April 20 packet. Item 26 voting-rights resolution text and vote described from the floor. Show cause hearing on 108 W. Barnes Avenue described from Vice President Pehlivanoglu's presentation and Tony Haddad's testimony; the $137,655 repair estimate is from the packet/case file; Haddad's recollection of "approximately $116,000" differs from that figure and is reported as Haddad stated it. The $233,000 undecomposed delta in the Shuffle sale price is derived by subtraction: $953,272 (packet sale price) minus $720,000 (2018 Valbridge appraisal) minus undisclosed city fund contributions. WKAR coverage of the Shuffle sale price formula (March 24, 2026). Nevarez Martinez's prepared ordinance reference from the April 6, 2026 Lansing City Council regular session. LAFCU sponsorship of the Lansing Lugnuts mentioned during the appointment presentation. Kim Coleman identification as NOVA project leadership per speakers Kit Ferran and Mike Goroszek at the April 20 regular session; Coleman's Committee of the Whole presentation not independently transcribed for this article. References to the "back 40" camp, the Social Security/U-Haul camp, Causeway Bay Hotel program, and Fallen Angels encampment per residents at the April 20 regular session public-comment period; these locations and program details are not independently verified in this article beyond resident statements.