The importance of street presence
What does it mean to have a visual connection between inside and out? What is the impact of having street presence? In commerce, it could mean the difference between success and failure.
Category «Neighborhoods»
Indianapolis’ CSO project
A little known or seen part of our every day built envrionment will be the focus of one of the city’s largest infrastructure projects ever in coming years. What is commonly called a “CSO” or “Combined Sewer Overflow” is a structure that was implimented in the late 19th and early 20th century. A single system of buried …
Double 8 Foods
Double 8 Foods provides a vital link to fresh foods for residents of the Near Northside of Indianapolis. Some might be surprised to find out that it is a locally owned family business, and is operated by the relatives of Zoltan Weisz, who was the first grocery store owner in the state to hire an …
Sacred Heart Neighborhood
Sacred Heart Neighborhood on the near South Side has seen a renewed interest, due in large part to the promotions of a concert venue at the Vollrath Tavern. Can a bar revitalize a neighborhood? I’m not sure, but attracting people from around the city to a little-known street with a boatload of potential is a …
Lafayette Square livability
As part its annual A Monumental Affair program, Keep Indianapolis Beautiful hosted a charette on Nov. 5 with the goal of cooking up innovative ideas for improving the Lafayette Square area. In advance of the charette and the awards event, I wrote a column for Metromix about the area, KIB and its president, David Forsell. The full interview is here as a way to keep the conversation about this important area of the city going.
The Privatization of Indianapolis
The people who run our cities … think nothing has the right to exist unless it makes a profit, which makes their opinion worthless. The people who truly deface our neighborhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. -Banksy, Wall …
What Indiana spends on its roads
In light of my recent posts about Indyconnect gutting the light rail portion of the plan for Marion County, I thought it would be a good time to put some of this financial talk in context by displaying what some recent, and ongoing, roads projects in the Indianapolis area are costing us. This is a partial …
McOuat Building
The scaffolding is off the McOuat Building on Washington Street, and the transformation is fantastic. This place has been vacant for as long as I’ve been working downtown, and it’s great to see the care taken to show off the building’s details. You can read more about this project on the IBJ.
The Power of Natural Places
Natural places have a role to play in our neighborhoods. The best urban sites share space with nature so well that you can not tell when the bricks stop and the trees begin. Whether it is a chestnut tree in a courtyard or an old street lined with elms, nature has to be present or …
Saraga Market
On Saturday, I attended the Made For Each Other event at Saraga Market. Made For Each Other is an organization devoted to providing an outlet for art and exhibitions in Indy’s under-served neighborhoods. This particular event featured cooking demonstrations and a chance to discuss food culture with the burgeoning international community in Lafayette Square. Saraga …