How Pat Gillespie built the Stadium District

LANSING STATE JOURNAL — A minor league ballpark replaced the topless bars and adult bookstores along the 500 block of Michigan Avenue in the mid-1990s.

Just over a decade later, Pat Gillespie got to work on the other side of the street.

A city parking lot became the Stadium District. Then the site of the former City Market became the multicolored Marketplace Apartments. 

He helped to turn an abandoned auto warehouse into the Lansing Brewing Company, which regularly hosts live music, corn hole tournaments and yoga. He built an apartment building overlooking the outfield of what's now Cooley Law School Stadium. He bought a former Napa Auto Parts that's since been redeveloped into Michigrain Distillery.

Little by little, the Lansing native has pieced together underused lots and vacant buildings into a neighborhood of his own design, now known as the Stadium District. In the process, he brought hundreds of new residents into Lansing's downtown.