Not everyone is happy with Indiana Avenue project on the canal
INDIANAPOLIS (MIRROR INDY) — The city of Indianapolis is poised to approve a massive redevelopment on Indiana Avenue along the Central Canal, but not everyone is happy with the way the 12-story building would look.
The project at 501 Indiana Avenue would include 263 apartments, along with office and retail space. Plans also call for a parking garage with 323 spaces and public stairs to lead people from street level to the canal.
The plan will go to the Metropolitan Development Commission on July 17, but it seems unlikely there will be significant changes. A hearing examiner gave the project preliminary approval at a June 27 meeting.
Indiana Avenue Partners — a joint venture of the Indianapolis-based Arrow Street Development and Chatham Park Development — have already received approval to demolish the current structure.
At issue is how the new building would look against the backdrop of Indiana Avenue, the once-storied center of Black culture in Indianapolis that was ravaged by highway construction and the expansion of IUPUI.
The mixed-use project could influence an anticipated wave of redevelopment along the avenue and comes at a time when the city and a team of consultants are eyeing what the future may hold for the historic corridor.
Claudia Polley, who founded the Indiana Avenue-focused nonprofit Urban Legacy Lands Initiative, is worried that the building doesn’t fit the character of the avenue. She thinks the project looks like it could go anywhere in the city and would create a low bar for upcoming projects.
“We’ll have to do this fight again and again,” Polley said at the hearing examiner meeting.
Building plans include brick on the fifth through 12th floors, which is where the apartments would be. Office and retail space would face the street below the apartments, featuring stone veneer and large windows, as well as access to the parking garage.
“This building looks like it belongs on 86th Street,” Polley said, “not on Indiana Avenue.”
‘A new day for the avenue’
Rodney Byrnes, president of Arrow Street Development, said his team has been working with city staff for months on the project.
At this point, the list of things to work out is small and detailed — including bicycle parking and plant species for landscaping — according to a staff report recommending approval.
“We’ve all spent a lot of time to get to this point,” Byrnes told Mirror Indy.
The project would cost more than $100 million, he said, and the first tenants would move in during the summer of 2026.
This would be the first new building on the 500 block of Indiana Avenue in decades.
Byrnes, who grew up in Riverside, said he’s part of a generation that heard stories of the avenue’s glory days but saw it as a place you drive through to get downtown.
“But as I’ve been working and engaging over the last few years, learning more about the history, it’s pretty intriguing,” he said. “That’s why we’re excited to be part of the next phase of what it’s gonna be.”
Byrnes received credit during the hearing examiner meeting for his willingness to work with the community on the project, including by meeting with residents and being part of events about development on the avenue.
That’s important to Paula Brooks, who founded Reclaim Indiana Avenue, a group working to restore and preserve the cultural district.
“Indiana Avenue evokes very strong feelings,” she said during the meeting, “especially in Black Indianapolis.”
Brooks said she’s seen other developers come into the community and not take people’s concerns seriously. This time feels different, though, even as Brooks said she also has some concerns about the design.
“This is gonna start a new day for the avenue.”
Corrections and clarification: The name of the nonprofit that Claudia Polley founded was misstated in an earlier version of this article. She founded the Urban Legacy Lands Initiative.
Mirror Indy reporter Tyler Fenwick covers economics. Contact him at 317-766-1406 or tyler.fenwick@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @ty_fenwick.