I missed a few days last week for a wedding in Wisconsin, so it's time to catch up on real estate news ...
Cadavers at Circle Centre
UPDATE: The exhibition is going to Claypool Court below Weber Grill and will open July 30.
The infamous "Bodies ... the Exhibition" by Atlanta-based Premier Exhibitions Inc. is eying a show in Indianapolis, apparently at Circle Centre. Details on an Indianapolis exhibit are foggy, but the company posted a job advertisement on Craigslist in late June, saying it would be hiring staff for an exhibition of "up to eight months" at the mall. The mall's vacant fourth floor would be a natural spot for the exhibit, which features cadavers that have been plasticized, dissected and posed. Full story.
The saga of Square 88
Pan Am Plaza served a major role in the evolution of Indianapolis into a sports town worthy of hosting a Super Bowl. But it also came up short over the years in other ways for both taxpayers and the developer, the Indiana Sports Corp. The city gave the Sports Corp. the properties known as Square 88 in 1986, in exchange for a 30-year agreement restricting development on the plaza. The agreement said the requirement to maintain a "first class urban plaza" could be waived after 20 years if the owner paid a $3 million, inflation-adjusted fee to the city (now about $6 million). But late last year, the city quietly agreed to reduce the protected portion of Pan Am Plaza from 88,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet without any payment. Full story.
Oesterle orchestrates opera deal
Angie’s List CEO Bill Oesterle paid nearly $1.5 million to buy Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in the Meridian-Kessler neighborhood and is renting it to the Indianapolis Opera to use as a multi-function center. The opera has been eyeing the property for more than a year, but its plans to buy the church at Pennsylvania and 40th Street fell through when a major donor backed out of the project. Enter Oesterle, who has never attended one of the local group’s productions but thought an opera center made sense for the largely residential area. He lives directly north of the church parking lot. Good fit? Full story.
Leaky Lucas Oil Stadium
The Indiana Stadium and Convention Building Authority announced yesterday that a Saturday morning thunderstorm sent more rainwater into two areas of Lucas Oil Stadium that had already been affected by a storm earlier last week. Three of the 20 primary drainpipes atop Lucas Oil Stadium fractured and sent rainwater into three areas on July 8. Then the temporary fixes failed Saturday morning. Do they just not build drainpipes for $675-million stadiums like they used to? Or do you expect more problems? Full story.
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Circle Center two words for the fourth floor.... Cheesecake Factory
Not dead people factory.
Interesting about the 20/20 investigation about the bodies they used. There's a German horror flick that works that in it's plot. (Anatomie - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0187696/)
Cory?
Pan Am Plaza: If I read the whole article correctly, it says that Kite would like to build something larger, but it depends on the garage owner. Is that correct?
Chunks of meat, slabs of ribs, sinew and bone....mmm, mmm, mmm! Which establishment are we talking about here?
Maybe they could do tie-ins and cross-promotion.
I thing the Body Exhibit is great. I think it could turn out to be a cool idea to have it at the Centre. After all wasn't it Andy Warhol that said Department Stores are the new Museums. Should be interseting to see how they do.
It is sad to see all the strange things that could happen to Pan Am Plaza.
I mean it is such a great location; it would be a shame to have something less than great go in there.
Ond doesn have to wonder about the expense that has been caused by the drainage problem at LOS. All the news stores have been concerned about meeting opening day. No one seems to mention the fact that there are taxpayer dollars involved in all this.
Now LOS is $700M and was built in a year and a half or whatever. Foolish to get worked up over a drainage problem. They'll fix it and that will be that. Then they can turn their attention to the other 500 things on a punch list. Ask any guy who maintains a large commercial structure how many things they need to do.
And, yes, I know it's taxpayers dollars at work here. But didn't you read the paper that it's mostly covered by insurance? And guess who they'll stick with the remainder? The subcontractor who did the faulty installation, or the manufacturer of the defective pipe, or the engineering who under-designed it. Unlikely the public will take any meaningful hit on this.
Pan Am Plaza garage is the worst garage in the city. It leaks, has poor lighting, need a lot of structural repairs, take a long time to exit and is poorly managed. I just recently canceled my parking pass because of it. They need to knock it down, rebuild it and let Denison Parking manage it.