Post-Super Bowl

As a Naptown native, it was quite fun to see how the city transformed for the event – sad that it takes a sporting event for the city to suddenly infuse the local arts scene and local businesses with cash so we can put cool murals and public sculptures in place and promote local restaurants and tourist spots. That should happen regardless of major tourist events.

But boy, does the city look really nice, and watching locals go from being cynical about the city (the “Indianoplace” slam gets used by residents far more than visitors) to supporting local artists and businesses and being proud of them when they see the outcome of the investment is pretty damned cathartic.

And the event was kind of nice “in your face” to the suburbs – we have a lot of suburban snobs who say crap like “I never go downtown” which is code for “I don’t want to rub shoulders with people of color” – who suddenly “discovered” the center of the city for the first time. I had some friends telling *me* about the downtown foodie scene. Dudes, I live downtown; of course I’ve eaten there. I’m not your fraking sherpa, Robert Peary.

I also love that the number one compliment from visitors who compared our Super Bowl to other cities where they attended the event was this: “So wonderful that everything was close together and within easy walking distance; parties, hotels, restaurants and the event were walkable or within close shuttle distance; the convenience made the difference.”

That would be another slam right in the face of suburban commuters – if you lived here, you’d be home now. You could work downtown and walk home instead of driving 45 minutes to get there, dummies. That’s 90 minutes a day you could spend with your kids, or relaxing at home.

Continue ReadingPost-Super Bowl

Indianapolis: Super Bowl City

A collection of recent articles about Indianapolis, many from an outsider’s point of view:

Explore Indy’s Surprising Food Scene – PBS.org
This week the world turns its attention to Indianapolis, as the Midwestern city plays host to Super Bowl XLVI. Long known as a haven for chain restaurants, in recent years the city has undergone a food transformation. Indianapolis food blogger Erin Day gives us a tour of some of the highlights of an Indianapolis you won’t recognize.

Unexpected Indianapolis: Blues, Burlesque And Brains In Jars – Lonely Planet/Huffington Post
As the Super Bowl host on February 5, Indianapolis jumps into the spotlight, and you can bet an ear of corn you’ll hear all about its race cars and mighty museums. But what about its burlesque shows and brains in jars? Meatloaf and mead? The city has a slew of unheralded attractions that deserve a close-up, too. Seek out these seven slices of idiosyncratic Indianapolis

City of dreams – Skysports
“But to borrow the generalissimo’s phrase, ‘I came, I saw, I couldn’t believe my eyes.’ That’s my first impression of this year’s Super Bowl city, having arrived on Monday and spent most of the day out and about in downtown Indy. It was also my second impression, closely followed by my third and fourth.”

There’s more to Indy than the Super Bowl – CNN Travel
Super Bowl visitors will enjoy the fabulous Super Bowl parties and the very best of this Midwestern city’s arts, music and food festivals tailored specially for this sports-filled week. And when the Super Bowl party-goers leave and the confetti has been cleaned up, the locals will return to enjoying their city. Whether you’re traveling to Indianapolis for the Super Bowl or taking a trip later, here’s where the locals have fun — and where they recommend you go, too.

Continue ReadingIndianapolis: Super Bowl City

The Indiana Humanities Council

Yes, I have gotten really lazy with the blogging, as MJ calls me out in a comment on the last link blog post I just put up.

  • "the Council encourages Hoosiers to think, read ­and talk. How? By creating its own programs, such as Community Conversations, Evenings at the House and Novel Conversations; by providing grants for humanities programs throughout the state; and by providing a space–physically and digitally–for people to connect and converse."

On Nov 29, 2010, MJ commented on links for 2010-11-29
I’d love to know the context for this link. I miss your bloggy-type words that used to wrap around the links. Do you have any of them for this one? Pleeeeeeease?

Yes. Yes, I do….

I decided to look up this not-for-profit the other day because I remembered them from the Pecha Kucha presentations as a part of the Spirit and Place festival that took place in November. I failed to blog about those, too.

Pecha Kucha is a lightning-fast presentation – 20 slides, and 20 seconds of explanation about each of them. It started in Tokyo in 2003 as a way for designers to present their work, and became instantly popular there. Organizations around the world have taken up the style of presentation. This past year I did one myself at work presenting on how the new ways that fonts can be displayed on websites. Yes, I really should get a hold of the video of that an put it here on my blog, too, because I was really proud of how it came out. Lazy lazy blogger. Bad me.

There is an Indianapolis organization that hosts a Pecha Kucha competition – presenters give an idea for a not-for-profit business they’d like to start, voting happens and the winner is awarded prize money to start the business. The competition we witnessed in November was apparently the 11th one in Indianapolis. Blow me down – I had no idea it was even going on. How does this shit managed to sneak by me? I’m curious and (I thought) reasonably well-informed as to the goings on in town, but this is something I hadn’t heard of until this year.

I went to the presentation with Stephanie and MJ, and noticed that the Indiana Humanities Council was one of the sponsors. That one made me go HMMM? also. I haven’t heard of them before that event, but this group seems right up my ally; promoting reading and the arts. Who are these people doing stuff I’m interested in and not informing me about it? Sheesh, man.

IHC has a very beautiful website, and I poked around on it trying to figure out how long the organization has been around, without quite putting my finger on the answer. They have a blog on the site – that would be the “think.read.talk” tab on the site – that goes back to March of 2010, but that only indicates the blog page was started then. There’s not indication in the “about” materials of when the organization formed, or it’s history. They have some big league people on their board of directors.

And notably most of all – they’re located in my neighborhood – Old Northside – in the Meredith Nicholson house. I didn’t realize that house was still in existence – a good chunk of the historically significant houses in Old Northside have been torn down, unfortunately. Meredith Nicholson was an nationally prominent author in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Indianapolis, and a pal of James Whitcomb Riley. He lived in the house at 1500 North Delaware Street while writing most of his books, including the The House of a Thousand Candles the most famous of his works and one I read just last year.

We’ve been living in the neighborhood for almost 5 years and we’ve toured or visited pretty much every significant house in the neighborhood. Most of them are discussed or linked to on the neighborhood website, but this one hasn’t been discussed much. Odd.

So – the Indiana Humanities Council. They have first Fridays events, although it looks like there isn’t one is scheduled for December. [First Fridays is a art tour that takes place on the First Friday of every month, sponsored by the Indiana Downtown Artists and Dealers Association – something that I’ve also failed to write about, although we went to several First Friday events this summer. Lazy blogger. No cookies for me.]

We need to go, MJ, to one of these IHC event dealios. Because I have clearly been out of touch with what’s going on in the city for some time. And I need to get up to speed.

2022-03-12 Update: I live 5 blocks from the Indiana Humanities House and I still have not visited there. So yeah, I really got on that one.
Continue ReadingThe Indiana Humanities Council

links for 2010-09-24

Continue Readinglinks for 2010-09-24

Indianapolis’ disastrous downtown parking meter deal

This has been a hot topic on facebook and with local blogs for the last couple weeks or so. Mayor Ballard had come up with a deal to privatize parking meters downtown and in the Broadripple Area that basically gives away the baby with the bathwater. The deal is a 50-year contract with a private company to install and maintain the meters, and they will reap the profits from said meters over that time. Prices on the meters will go up. Free nights and weekends will go away – you’ll pay at the meter from 7 am to 9 pm. Residents in Broad Ripple will be required to buy parking permits to park in front of their homes.

Basically the deal is done but will require the city-county council to approve. That has suddenly become more difficult due to some analysis by urban planning guru Aaron Renn of Urbanophile, who looked closely at the details of the deal and wrote two articles, one about how the deal is bad public policy: Parking Meters and the Perils of Privatization

And the other is how this particular deal sucks so bad:

Indy’s “Son of Chicago” Parking Meter Lease to Be a Disaster for City
Lots more detail in both those articles on how everything shakes out. Post the articles which have been circulating widely among policial wonks, many more people have contacted the city-county council to complain about the deal, and they were forced to postpone a discussion in the Rules Committee about it in order to address some of the complains with a response. Downtown businesses are starting to realize how deleterious the affects will be on their business, according to the Indiana Business Journal.

There will apparently be a hearing on September 20th after the regular city-county council meeting.
The city’s “response” to Urbanophile’s articles, which doesn’t offer any arguments of substance and mostly picks nits about the level of detail Aaron got into in his articles, is here:

PDF download – Parking Meter Modernization Will Improve Infrastructure and Spur Economic Activity

Thankfully, Aaron Renn assessed the response and picked that mother apart as well:
Indianapolis Parking Meters – The City’s Response

Contact information for the City-County Council, should you be interested in registering your opinion.

Continue ReadingIndianapolis’ disastrous downtown parking meter deal

Indianapolis’ Unigov Disaster

The Evansville Courier and Press has an interesting article investigating the Republican political power grab that was Indianapolis’ “Unigov” consolidation of Indianapolis with Marion County in the 1970s.

INDIANAPOLIS — Merging the city and county governments here helped improve what amounted to a scattershot set of public services, but it also diminished the political power of the Democratic Party, and traditionally Democratic African-American voters, in particular, for a generation.

The winners when the state Legislature combined Indianapolis and Marion County under one “Unigov” in 1970 were the city’s suburban Republicans — typically wealthier and typically white — who were enjoying their recent sweep into majority status.

The losers were Democrats who suddenly faced a vote-rich opposition party for the mayor’s office and control of the council.

In addition to removing the Democrats from power and consigning the black community to almost permanent poverty and crime through diminished services and terrible schools, it also set the stage for the slow death of the city itself, and the rise of Hamilton County as the wealthy leech feeding off the dying metropolis’ carcass.

Continue ReadingIndianapolis’ Unigov Disaster

Old Northside, Caravelle Commons and political issues

I’m irritated right now at one of my neighbors. We live in Old Northside in Indianapolis, which is an historic neighborhood, but one with really large houses, and one that has been almost completely renovated in the 1970s and 1980s. According to a professional, it’s wise to use heavy equipment during such projects. I think he has a good point because it improves the overall efficiency. So the first wave of renovators – the hippies and liberals and gays – has come and moved on to more moderate sized homes and new renovation opportunities, and the next wave that have moved in are the wealthy right-wingers. It’s quite different than Herron-Morton Place, the neighborhood I first bought into, just north of here – where the houses were somewhat smaller, “single-family no-servant”-sized, and most people were liberals, and many were gay. I wouldn’t have thought that crossing 16th Street could make such a difference politically. And socially; some of the folks in my neighborhood are pretty big assholes and their opinions about neighborhood issues are pretty extreme. I’ll go into that a bit more later, but let me get to the specific issue at hand…

Here’s the particular issue that irritated me – one of the neighbors inquired whether there were other people receiving the New York Times, and if so, whether they were having problems with their delivery. Another neighbor replied “Typical of the Times, and much like their reporting — unreliable!” Not helpful information in any way, just any way to get a political jab in, because smearing the Times is terribly important to the tea baggers. Anything to get a political jab in. Makes me want to subscribe to the Times, out of spite. I know I shouldn’t get apoplectic about that, but come on. What the hell is the point of that?

So the other neighborhood issues: there are two major ones that have really highlighted the conservative crazy of my neighbors and made me reconsider why we’re living here. One of them is property taxes, which played out prior to 2008, and the other is more recent – a housing complex nearby. I’ll go into that first.

We have a set of apartments near our neighborhood on the north side of 16th Street, not within the neighborhood boundaries, but across the street. They are a low-income 64 unit housing project called Caravelle Commons. The apartments are not in great shape, and they’ve been mis-managed over the years so the residents have a lot to complain about. From what I understand there are problems with crime in the complex, although it hasn’t directly affected me any, so I’m not aware of specifics. Certainly our neighborhood has suffered petty crime like theft and vandalism, but there’s no real way of telling if that is coming from this apartment complex or elsewhere. We do know that there was one person shot at the nearby Kroger grocery store parking lot, and when they chased the shooter he ended up in Caravelle Commons, where they subsequently found the gun responsible for some other drug-related murders of two women and their small children. So yes – problems. Directly affecting me? Who can say. Not to any great extent, so far.

Anyways – due to the government stimulus money being handed out, the Indianapolis Housing Agency has decided to demolish and rebuild the current set of apartment buildings. What will go up is a set of 4-story buildings in a different configuration that what are there now, with greater residential capacity – 155 units, an increase of 90. So there will be less available parking, and more warm bodies in the space. There is some plan for tiered income ranges that will spread out the lower income to higher, and on the lowest level will be 65 units – basically what’s there now. The new 90 apartments are intended to be filled with people fitting the two higher tiers of income.

As soon as plans for this redevelopment were announced in March, the neighborhood got involved. To be fair to the ONS, there were some definite problems with how IHA went about doing redoing this project – they created plans and crammed them through and got initial approvals before anyone in the neighborhood knew what was going on or had a chance to ask questions or express opinions. They claimed they had support from surrounding neighborhoods before anyone from Old Northside had even heard of the project. They based their plans on increased density and parking on models from more dense cities like Chicago and New York that are not appropriate for Indianapolis. For Indianapolis, infilling vacant buildings and lots to increase density should come before making specific areas more dense.

So the neighborhood had some legitimate concerns about how the project came about, but unfortunately, those legitimate issues got drowned out initially by one loud neighbor. Specifically, one very loud voice on the neighborhood mailing list given in this site with the opinion that the whole housing complex needed to be moved “someplace further east” or “infilling the empty apartments along Meridian Street” or various other places away from our neighborhood. His opinions were loud and long and directed with animosity at everyone – the neighborhood association, the land use committee, individual neighbors, elected officials, local media. If you didn’t agree with his specific opinion, then you were an ass and an enemy. I dubbed him “Our Racist Neighbor” and that’s how I’ll refer to him here. Here are a few samples of his work posted to our neighborhood email list (April 7, 2010):

I believe that the surrounding neighborhood need to do every thing possible to see that this is not built on the current site and is built in a neighborhood more suitable to those it would house. I have been told by the city police every time we have a major crime wave in our area it is often associated with those who live at the complex and those who are visiting there. Now they want to triple the size. This smack of political gain for certain city council persons. Fair and decent housing is what the city needs but this area has changed and this is no longer the proper place for this development. The land is very valuable and could be sold and the profit could be used to build a better place and a more fitting development for those who need it. There are many sites in our area that would welcome this development that would be much more fitting. This should strongly be apposed.

Notes on that – this is a federally-funded project. The city-county council had nothing to do with it as far as I know, and had nothing to gain from it, either, other than potentially better housing situations for some citizens who aren’t well off. They didn’t have a hand in the plans at all.

More (Apr 8, 2010):

I have seen many email on how to fix the problem. IF we protest the building and sotp the project this would fix all issues. As I stated yesterday this project would be more suited now east of the monon trail and many undeveloped land areas and would be welcomed there.

And again – you can see as time goes by, he becomes increasingly unable to spell and use correct grammar (April 21, 2010):

I think every one who lives in our area should think long and hard about what this will mean. This will be a five story building {Ed Note: the units are 4 story, not 5} with line of site into many of your homes. You only need to look at Washington St. and the low income project to see what will happen to our neighborhood. We also need to see what this is going to do the price of our home and how they will drop as well as future investment in the area and what kind of developments will follow. The city has had a trend of following what has already been built. The City has already told me on occasion. I am not going to deny a petition to build a type of building when there is already one like it in the area. So if we get one five story low income project we will get another. Many in this neighborhood have worked long and hard to improve it. Many took the chance and started long before I resorted my home. Let not take a step back now so that other can hang on to there voting base and spot on the city council. People deserve a decent place to live and should but the site chosen is no longer the right place. Especially with Kroger and other retail development who would like to purchase the land. This could be sold at great profit to the city. Taking the day off could mean the difference of the loss of several hundred thousand dollars in value of your home and that of your neighbors. I think the 1:00 time is very convenient for the city to say see no one apposes it. If we need an example the federal government is asking for hundreds of thousand of dollars back from a project on the west side in which people with a criminal history were allowed to live there. The staff was found to be dealing drugs in the complex. We heed to take the time to propely oppose this building.

Here’s one to the neighborhood Land Use Committee (April 23, 2010) on what he thought their recommendations should be for the new project:

I think the position should be to push the city to sell the property at a profit and move the project east of college. This would solve all issues and be a valuble asset to that area that needs it and allowing prime space for reatail and other needed developement along 16th st Including a new Kroger. Rather than trying to fix it let give them a better alternative.

And these aren’t even the most volatile ones. But combing through his emails makes me want to vomit, so this is the selection you’re getting for now.

Now the notion of moving Caravelle Commons somewhere “more appropriate” may immediately strike you as problematic (and by problematic, I mean racist and classist and against the law) and well it should. It certainly struck our elected officials and media that way. And anyone with common sense in neighborhood realized that as well. But that didn’t stop Our Racist Neighbor one bit from repeating his plan over and over again, and even threatening legal action.

Our elected officials didn’t want to have anything to do with the idea of moving the housing complex, to their credit, and they certainly didn’t want to be on record as considering that as a possibility even to reject it. Unfortunately Our Racist Neighbor was so loud that when other people started to express concerns about the density of the complex and potential parking issues, they were immediately associated with Our Racist Neighbor in the minds of elected officials and media, and no one gave them the time of day. So they people with concerns about parking and the density of the complex had a pretty big mountain to climb to try to get their concerns heard.

I admit I associated all of the Caravelle Commons Objectors together for a long while, until I really took a look at the increase in density, and considered what I had read about urban planning and density issues. I know there’s a zeitgeist within urban planning circles to say that greater density helps a city become more vibrant, but I’m not sure that has really been proven, and I certainly don’t think it’s ideal from Indianapolis. Certainly we have a sprawl problem, and a lack of public transport problem that is intense bordering on the criminal in nature, but Chicago and New York are just way too dense.

Seriously – look at the people moving out and where they’re going. People live in tiny apartments in the city long enough not make enough cash to move to the suburbs and commute a few days a week and telecommute most of the week. So as far as density goes – they may have a point. But I don’t know that my fellow neighbors really have read as much about urban planning as I have and know all that. They also kept talking about the income levels of the people who will be residing there, which really makes me wonder how much their concerns were more based in racism and classism (we don’t want poor black people near us) than any real understanding of how changing the density of the neighborhood and surrounds will affect us.

I think the other Objectors probably have a real concern about parking, too. Indy public transportation is really abysmal. So planning for only one car per apartment unit is really a terrible idea. These residents will have no way to get around town, and they’ll definitely have more than one car – you have to in Indianapolis if you have more than one adult in your household. It’s not ideal, but it’s the case, and should be considered in housing planning.

After listening to what they were saying, I could see that maybe, probably, there were problems with this new housing development that could affect us. I don’t think carting the whole project over to the east side and dropping it there would be anything but racist, but there might be some concerns that revisions in the plan could address.

I had heard that our elected officials were all gung-ho in favor of the idea, so I wrote an email to various of them, and got a direct and specific response from Mary Ann Sullivan, who gave me a call to talk about it. I think she was legitimately surprised to hear from me. She does, I think, have a vague idea who I am from the internet and Facebook, and she knows I’m pretty far left on the political spectrum, so I don’t think she expected to hear me speak out against the new housing plans. During my almost 2 hour discussion with her about the project, I realized how badly Our Racist Neighbor had poisoned the well, because it was pretty obvious that all of the Caravelle Commons Objectors had all be lumped together in her mind and in the minds of everyone associated with developing and building the new housing project. They were all racists, and that was that.

I made a case about the density and the parking, and she seemed to think that those weren’t really huge concerns – citing urban planning studies and “folks who know about these things.” I told her what I knew about urban planning, and I tried to give her a better sense of what people in our neighborhood were thinking – including separating Our Racist Neighbor from some of the other folks who had no objection to the location of the project, just the size of the plans. I don’t know if my voicing my concerns helped. Maybe.

The folks who were making the case about parking and density and public safety issues did eventually get a chance to sit down and talk through those concerns with IHA just before the plans went through and everything was approved for groundbreaking. IHA made some changes to their plans for parking and enforcing how parking will work, and they tried to work on public safety issues with crime watch patrols. So some things changed as they are going forward.

The whole thing has left me very cynical about our neighborhood, though. Not the location or design, which is amazing; or the houses, which are stunning to look at. But very much about the people. Our Racist Neighbor has poisoned more than one well.

And after all this, I don’t think there’s time to jump back in the time machine to address 2007-2008 property tax issues and the ouster of former Mayor Bart Peterson, issues that also leave me cold with my neighbors, so I guess I better stop here.

June 2012 Update: While under construction, one of the new buildings being built on the former site of Caravelle Commons, now called Park 16 Apartments, burned to the ground in a 3-alarm blaze that also burned down surrounding church buildings and threatened houses across the street.

Continue ReadingOld Northside, Caravelle Commons and political issues