Lansing-East Lansing, MI Development

[LMich]

Looks like Lansing United's name will be changed to Lansing Ignite, they'll be taken up a division, and they'll move downtown:



Lansing pro soccer team likely to begin play this spring at Lugnuts' stadium downtown

LANSING – Professional soccer appears to be on its way to downtown Lansing, with plans to play at the Lugnuts’ stadium, beginning this spring.

The Lansing City Council is reviewing plans for a Lansing professional team in the new United Soccer League Division 3, an offshoot of the longstanding USL and a league loosely affiliated with Major League Soccer.

Lugnuts president Nick Grueser presented plans to the City Council’s committee of the whole Monday evening. If approved, the club will play its home games at the city-owned Cooley Law School Stadium. The soccer team is separate from the baseball organization, Grueser said, though he will be team president and Lugnuts owner Tom Dickson will own the team. A full City Council vote is slated for early October, Mayor Andy Schor said.

The club's fans are not happy with this change in ownership, and have been against it ever since this idea was originally broached. They will drop association with the team.

In other news:

The Lansing metropolitan statistical area just got a bigger

LANSING — For the first time, the Lansing region is home to more than a half million people.

That's because the United States Office of Management and Budget is adding Shiawassee County to the metropolitan statistical area once made up of Ingham, Eaton and Clinton counties.

Shiawassee was moved into the Lansing area’s MSA because of the growing number of people who live in the county but commute to Lansing and East Lansing for work, said Bob Trezise, President and CEO of the Lansing Economic Area Partnership.

The addition of Shiawassee County will raise the regional population from 477,656 to 546,102.

Shiawassee has already been in the CSA, but increased commuting finally brought it into the MSA. In fact, the last time they did major delineations it was already sending slightly over the 25% (25.4%) threshold to Lansing to be included, but stayed a CSA county because it kept more of its workers in county than it sent to Lansing, apparently. Looks like that balance has finally been tilted.