From the IBJ

A $32 million plan to replace a troubled low-income housing project at 16th Street and Park Avenue cleared a final hurdle Wednesday at a hearing of the Metropolitan Development Commission. The development arm of the not-for-profit Indianapolis Housing Agency, Insight Development Corp., plans to redevelop the complex to better connect with the Herron-Morton Place neighborhood. The agency bought the failed co-op called Caravelle Commons in 2009. The 1970s suburban- style complex at 1643 N. Park Ave. sits in the middle of a historic urban neighborhood and invites crime with dead-end streets and fenced- in apartment homes that surround crowded parking lots. The more urban replacement, slated to break ground in October, is dubbed 16 Park on renderings from locally based Domain Architecture (click on the images for larger versions). The housing agency, which administers the federal Section 8 program, used a grant of about $400,000 from a city housing trust fund to acquire the property and begin drawing up redevelopment plans. The agency has won stimulus grants and low-income housing tax credits it expects to apply to the project’s cost.

A grocery store has been proposed to occupy a renovated building on the west side of Meridian Street just south of 24th Street. The Progress Team Coordinator is working on getting site plans and elevation renderings of the building, and possibly a developer presentation to interested neighbors. A zoning hearing on the project is slated for July 13 because the project is requesting a variance of development standards for reduced parking (62 parking spaces, 118 required) and accessory uses equaling 42% of the gross floor area (25% max permitted). Click here to download a project narrative and site plans.

Please direct any comments to progress@fallcreekplace.com.

A public hearing is set for June 1 for a proposed Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins to be located in the former Bon Jour Café building at 2402 N Meridian St. Such a retail use is permitted, however, the drive thru they are requesting is prohibited by the Regional Center Zoning Ordinance which was established to transition Meridian Street, and Downtown, away from automobile-oriented uses. As such, the petitioner is requesting a variance from that ordinance to build a drive through (not permitted) and a variance of development standards to provide for four stacking spaces before and one stacking space after the drive-through (six stacking spaces required before and two stacking spaces required after).

The City of Indianapolis provides neighborhood organizations, as well as individual citizens, with opportunity to provide input regarding changes to and variances from land use decisions in their neighborhood. In Fall Creek Place, we do this through the Progress Team, which has a coordinator and whose membership is made up on a case by case basis of any neighbor who has an opinion on the case. The coordinator gathers input and forwards it to the HOA Board of Directors with a recommendation on a neighborhood position. The neighborhood can choose to support or oppose the case, or take no position.

The Fall Creek Place Progress Team solicits your input regarding any position, or no position, the neighborhood should take regarding this petition. If you have thoughts please share them by emailing progress@fallcreekplace.com or by sharing them publicly in the discussion forums on the neighborhood website at http://www.fallcreekplace.com.

From the Indianapolis Business Journal

A troubled low-income housing project called Caravelle Commons has a new owner with plans to redevelop the complex to better connect with the Herron Morton Place neighborhood.

Next door, the grocery chain Kroger has revived efforts to acquire land and plan a new supermarket at 16th and Central Avenue to replace a cramped, old-format location. The chain bought the corner a few years ago, closed on a vacant parcel that was previously part of Caravelle earlier this year, and is negotiating with the owner of another vacant lot.

Together, the developments could represent a turning point for a blighted stretch of 16th Street that has bedeviled the surrounding neighborhood for years. Community groups aren’t getting hopes up just yet; talk of redevelopment along the stretch has been buzzing for at least a decade.

But they are encouraged by plans to either drastically revamp or replace the 65-unit Caravelle, which sits on about seven acres north of 16th Street between Central and College avenues.

The Indianapolis Housing Agency bought the complex in March from the Near North Development Corp., which took over the failed co-op in 2003. Near North stepped in to refinance, renovate and stabilize the property with an eye toward eventually selling it to a more appropriate owner, said Michael Osborne, the group’s president.

FULL STORY

From Indianapolis Business Journal Ivy Tech Community College plans to save the facade of a historic former hospital along Fall Creek Parkway and build a new 150,000- square-foot academic building behind it. The proposed building would include much-needed classrooms and science labs for a downtown campus that has quadrupled its enrollment to about 22,000 students over the past 10 years. Ivy Tech officials said an architectural study found that renovating the entire building for classroom use would have been possible but not cost effective. The building, which served as St. Vincent Hospital from 1913 to 1974, has been vacant for about five years. Most recently, the building was a senior apartment complex known as Weyerbacher Terrace. The federal government shut it down in 2003 and turned the property over to the city. The state-run college bought the 5-acre property between Illinois Street and Capitol Avenue from the city for $1 in May 2006 in a deal that required preservation of most of the original hospital and adjoining chapel. But Ivy Tech officials, citing prohibitive costs, last year asked the city for permission to demolish the building instead. City planners and historic preservation groups pressured the college to rethink their approach, so Ivy Tech reversed course and announced a deal for private developers to turn the building into student housing. That deal never found financing, leading Ivy Tech to revisit the possibility of a new academic building. The college said the city has reviewed and will support the design of the new building.