The city has agreed to pay a Kokomo company up to $423,000 to clean the Central Canal from 11th Street to the White
River. The deal with biosolids management firm Merrell Bros. calls for the removal of "sediment, debris, flora and organics"
from the downtown waterway. The Metropolitan Development Commission is scheduled to vote on the deal today. The contract calls
for work to be complete by Feb. 28, 2008. By then, Buggs Temple may even be open
for business. Then again, we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves.
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Welcome to Property Lines, Indy's source for neighborhood real estate news. Your host is Scott Olson, IBJ's real estate beat
reporter. Edited by Cory Schouten.
The city has agreed to pay a Kokomo company up to $423,000 to clean the Central Canal from 11th Street to the White
River. The deal with biosolids management firm Merrell Bros. calls for the removal of "sediment, debris, flora and organics"
from the downtown waterway. The Metropolitan Development Commission is scheduled to vote on the deal today. The contract calls
for work to be complete by Feb. 28, 2008. By then, Buggs Temple may even be open
for business. Then again, we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves.
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Good ole' Obamacare. Thanks liberals and those who didn't bother to vote.
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Yes. Blame those who were too lazy to go vote Obama out and those who voted him in again. That's my take on it. I know folks won't get it on the left. OK. Start berating me now!
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Serioulsy, people are AGINST this project? Most communities would be salivating over a project like this. You'd rather have an empty eye-sore gas station and shacks posing as apartments? This project is exactly what BR needs. BUILD IT MR MAYOR. And yes, I am a BR resident, and have been for 20 years.
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As a St. Vincent employee of over 20 years, I am saddened and disheartened by this announcement. Unfortunately, as the healthcare "industry" continues on this political and corporate path, all that St. Vincent Hospital has stood for spiritually for its employees and this community is being sucked dry. I know it truly has no choice. It is not just Obamacare or just competition or just any single thing. This trend started long before I was even born when the government became involved in healthcare and it became an "industry." I grieve for those who will lose their jobs, one of whom may be me, but I also grieve for this hospital which I have served for over 20 years. May God give us and it the grace to withstand the future of healthcare.
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Why do people constantly harp on this issue and act ignorant about what a city population measures? A city's population is the city's population. There is no argument or debate about it. If you want to measure the density of a city--measure it. If you want to measure the size of a metropolitan area, then measure the metropolitan population. City boundaries cover different sized areas--and they always have (though the disparity has probably increased since about 1900 or so when more cities began annexing their surrounding communities). For example, San Francisco only covers 49 square miles while Houston cover nearly 600 square miles. No one argues about the population rankings of either city even though they clearly cover extremely different sized areas. Indianapolis is the 13 largest city by population in the U.S. That is a fact. While the population of a metropolitan area may give you a better sense of how large a community is, as noted, even metro areas can vary widely in the size of geographic area they cover--so that is not a perfect comparison either.
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You would think that the city would already have a continual maintenance program to keep the muck out and control mosquito breeding in the downtown canal.
I agree that additional fountains would help stem the growth of the muck, but they should have already had scheduled cleaning, chemical treatments, and trash removal for one of the cities most high profile cultural areas
The City IS cleaning up the lift stations around the County. Since 2000, the City has been working aggressively to upgrade sewer and treatment infrastructure to eliminate approx. 97% of all raw sewage overflows by the year 2015. The City expects to spend approx. $400 million dollars between 2006 and 2008 to alleviate the worst overflow points (mostly along Fall Creek and Pogues Run) and to upgrade the City's two biggest wastewater treatment facilities: Belmont and Southport.
Substantial progress has been made and several hundred million more dollars of mostly local, but also state and federal, money has already been earmarked for future projects. For more information, visit www.indycleanstreams.org
People complain all day about taxes without realizing that a lot of their property tax bill goes towards making sure their water is clean and their creeks don't smell (literally) like you know what.
As far as the canal goes, more fountains would not do the trick for a number of reasons. First of all, it is aesthetically displeasing to have so many fountains. Secondly, it is cost prohibitive to tear up the concrete bed to install and maintain new fountains. Third, there is far more than just algae in the canal; we have all sorts of trash and chemical run-off (from pesticides and construction projects nearby). Fourth, the above posters correctly point out that a little bit of movement can limit gunk buildup. A little bit of moving water did cut down on gunk buildup but the gunk grows from the bottom up; the surface gunk goes all the way to the bottom of the canal and more moving water, after 10 years of no thorough cleaning, will not do a thing. Lastly, the canal needs to be drained in order to check for (and repair if necessary) any structural damage that may have occured over the last winters or so.
I agree but you know how anti-tax (no matter what it's for) and anti-change the citizens of Indianapolis can be. We can't even get the City fully consolidated (which will save money), let alone raise taxes to improve cultural institutions and public spaces.
Good gravy, how can you convince the reactionary populace of Indy to spend more on the arts and culture when they won't even accept marginally higher taxes to cover the basics: education, infrastructure, fire, and police?
I'm just glad the Canal is finally being cleaned, properly.
At least they're doing something to clean it up. Last summer, they used people sentenced to community service to at least clean up some of the surface algae and garbage. This summer, I haven't seen any of that and it's gotten completely out-of-hand.
As for Buggs Temple, Feed Me/Drink Me is reporting a POSSIBLE opening in mid-Oct. I still wouldn't bet on it:
http://feedmedrinkme.blogspot.com/2007/09/hey-can-you-keep-noise-down-little-we.html
A total aside with respect to Buggs Temple. I wouldn't count on Ritter's being there long. I think that company is VERY slowly on its way out. I worked as a manger for them for YEARS and even know John and Bonnie Ritter personally. The quality of the product has gotten shaky because the company is too big now, and the competition (e.g. Culver's and Cold Stone) are too hard to compete with :-/ Sad because I always loved Ritter's...