Standing at 297 feet, Boji Tower naturally dominates the skyline of Downtown Lansing. But On Saturday, June 5, the building's imposing height meant nothing to a group of adventurous, community-minded individuals partaking in an opportunity of a lifetime—rappelling down it.
As a part of this year’s Be A Tourist In Your Own Town celebration, a local nonprofit called Team Lansing Foundation offered anyone with a minimum of $500 in pledges, the opportunity to climb "over the edge" of the Tower’s highest balcony and lower themselves down 22 stories to Capitol Avenue.
According to their website, the mission of the nonprofit is to “champion destination development in Greater Lansing through education, research and participation with initiatives that enhance and elevate the value of the tourism assets within our community.”
Saturday’s event was made possible through Team Lansing Foundation’s partnership with the Greater Lansing Convention & Visitors Bureau and the special events company, Over the Edge.
Rope Access, What?
Over the Edge specializes in providing a thrilling but safe rappelling experience as a very unique fundraising option for non-profit organizations across North America.
“We took the adventure industry and married it with the rope access industry,” says president and CEO, Paul Griffith.
“Rope access” is an industry term for skilled technicians who lower themselves by rope down skyscrapers, antennae and other tall structures for inspections, maintenance and repair work. In other words, don’t try this at home.
Such unique experiences are now more important than ever. According to Griffith, as the U.S. economy recovers, non-profits will generally find fundraising efforts to be 12 to 18 months behind the curve. Finding a creative way to ramp up fundraising is now a huge challenge.
What better way to set your non-profit off to a good start than a headline-grabbing rappelling event down your city’s tallest building? As Griffith says, “How many golf outings will you see this year? A golf tournament is a golf tournament is a golf tournament.”
To qualify for the Lansing event, participants had to be at least 18 years of age, between 110 and 300 pounds and be able to gather at least $500 in pledges of support from friends and family. Other than those requirements, the event was remarkably accessible.
“It’s really not physically demanding,” says Griffith. “Anyone can do it. Able, disabled, wheelchairs, Special Olympics—this is an all-ages thing. But there certainly is a brain-body disconnect that makes it challenging.”
W. Lee Hladki, executive director of the Team Lansing Foundation, first became aware of Over the Edge at a national conference for non-profit organizations.
“The more we learned about it, the more fascinated we became,” says Hladki. We wanted to do something that attracted people to a fun, unique, but different experience in our community.”
It took three years of work to make the event happen, but some puzzle-pieces fell in place right away.
“We had extremely good cooperation from the Boji Group, right from the get-go," Hladki
says. "That’s real community spirit."
Over the Edge
On the day of the event, participants are checked in and then ushered to a gear room where they are equipped with gloves, a helmet, a web-like nylon strap harness, and high-tech aluminum devices that look like something out of a science fiction movie.
The next stop is a stairwell in which participants receive a short training demonstration of the hardware, and instruction on how to control their descent.
Then, they are escorted to the 22nd floor balcony.
The scene on the balcony is simultaneously daunting and exciting. A series of ropes dangle from the side of the building, their upper ends disappearing towards the roof, where they are anchored with triple-redundant fail-safes.
The ropes are configured to allow two people to descend at once, just a few feet away from each other. Each participant, securely attached to their climbing rope and a backup, takes a deep breath, climbs on the balcony railing, leans back, and . . . lets go.
The process of rappelling involves “walking” down the face of the building, using the small aluminum devices as a brake. The climbing rope winds through the device, allowing the user to control the speed of their descent with a minimal amount of pressure.
As a safety precaution, an emergency mechanism on the second rope engages if a participant begins to descend too quickly.
Community Participation
Easy access to the event and a community focus equalled a huge draw for a wide variety of participants in Lansing. According to Griffith, the day’s schedule included 85 adventurous souls planning to go over the edge, including members of the Lansing Police Department, bartenders, a woman with a prosthetic hand, board members from the Greater Lansing Convention and Visitors Bureau, and even a guy in a Batman suit.
Bonnie Knutson, a professor in the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University and a Team Lansing Foundation board member, made the trip down the Tower with her 19-year-old granddaughter, Alyssa Kluge, who just finished her freshman year at MSU.
“It was like watching something at the Wharton Center,” says Knutson. “It was a new experience that I can bring to whatever I do in life.”
Rappelling with her granddaughter was a special experience for Knutson. “One of the things about being a grandparent is to be able to share things with family,” she says. “It was a thrill that [Alyssa] wanted to do it with me. It’s pretty neat when a nineteen year old granddaughter wants to do something with her old Grandma. That’s cool.”
And Alyssa got a little surprise of her own.
“She beat me down,” she laughs. “Best Grandma around.”
Cindy Bowen, Chair of the Convention and Visitors Bureau Board, rappelled with her son, Paul.
“This is one of the coolest things we’ve done in Lansing,” says Bowen. “It made it special for me to be able to share it with my son. It wasn’t on my bucket list, but it’s going on now because I can cross it off!”
Joellen Akin, from Sparrow Health System, made her decision to rappel because, “I like to do stuff for the community, and it was something I had never done before. It was exhilarating. It was wonderful. I was afraid I might cry.”
According to Josh Hovey of the Rossman Group,“It’s not too often you get a chance to climb down the tallest building in Lansing.” But, he adds, “My mom wasn’t too pleased.”
Kristina Kauffman, also a Greater Lansing Convention and Visitors Bureau employee, had the distinction of being one of the very first participants to go over the edge, but also laid claim to bringing in the highest individual fundraising total.
“I feel strongly about the Team Lansing Foundation, and it was important to me to be able to support that cause,” says Kauffman. She said the experience was fun and well worth it. “The hardest part was getting into the equipment.”
Now What?
It seemed that the words “next year” were spoken at some point in nearly every conversation on the day of the event. Since there is already such a buzz, is there a chance Over the Edge might be coming back?
Team Lansing has an exclusive license to local rappelling events with Over the Edge, so the possibility definitely exists. If you missed out this year, have faith.
“This has exceeded our expectations,” says Lee Hladki, “and it has been a good fundraising event. But more importantly, it has been a great marketing opportunity for our community. It's gone much farther out there than we ever imagined."
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Jeff Shoup is a Lansing-based freelance writer and musician who wishes he hadn’t missed a chance to rappel on media day.
Dave Trumpie is the managing photographer for Capital Gains. He is a freelance photographer and owner of Trumpie Photography.
Photos:
Jon Smalley starts down the side
A rappeller is dwarfed as he descends
Activity at the top as Chris Holman prepares to go
Jessica Maki from WLNS TV6
Spectators watch from office windows as participants go down
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie