A local developer hopes to add restaurants and retail space and possibly more to Pan Am Plaza to capitalize on a growing
convention center and the new Lucas Oil Stadium. Kite Realty Group Trust joined with Sacramento, Calif.-based Coastal Partners
LLC to buy the plaza and two adjacent ice skating rinks from Indiana Sports Corp. The Sports Corp. announced the sale yesterday.
Terms of the deal and specific plans for the site were not immediately available, but people familiar with the project say Kite hopes to target restaurants and entertainment uses and also may consider a hotel. The company hopes to reuse the buildings that now house skating rinks and build a new structure at the plaza's southeast corner, which now is mostly vacant. Coastal already owns the 12-story Pan Am office building at the northwest corner.
Any major redevelopment would require cooperation from Armand Lasky, who owns Pan Am's underground parking garage. The unusual ownership arrangement helped sink previous efforts to redevelop the Plaza, but Lasky said today he talked with Kite and Coastal and plans to do what he can to help. Lasky has a lease with Central Parking that expires in 2010, but he hopes to take possession sooner if he wins a lawsuit that claims Central fell behind on garage maintenance.
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1. Leave the rink and build around and over the top of it. It would draw crowds to a retail building, it belongs to the downtown, and it keeps the sports theme going.
2. Leave some open space -- not much left downtown.
3. Build in a buffer for a light rail stop. We can't live in the dark ages forever.
The place is a dump, & the management does nothing.
Cars are broken into weekly.
The Intercontinental would be nice. Hopefully, we don't get some cheap suburban-looking hotels like are going up west of the Luke.
A light rail station? Really? That would be cool, but does anyone really think that's going to happen? Raising $700M to $1B isn't that hard to do... to build a football shrine. But I don't see it happening for mass transit. Call me pessimistic.
Everyone decries the location of those hotels and the fast-food restaurants on the south side of South St. without considering the purposes they served. First, apparently there was a demand for those products becasue they WERE built and they ARE still in business. Secondly, they provided SOME sort of presence in an area that really didn't get to much consideration. South St. for so many years has served as a psychological barrier to the development of the southside of downtown. Now, with the development of The Luc, I expect that most, if not all, if those parcels will be redeveloped in fairly short order.
What happened to the outdoor rink at White River Statepark?
Forget the rink, lets save the Illinois Building....real history.
An additional issue with the Intercontinental is the developer did not have financing, the JW does, and in this current credit market, it would have been difficult to get that financing. An additional issue was that the design of the Intercontinental was an artists conception. There were no promises that design would or could have been built based on cost issues.
The Illinois Building is a scary issue. The people who control the ground take control of the building in a couple of years based on the lease deal signed 100 years ago. So the building owners have no incentive to do anything with it, because it will not be theirs in a few years. The real concern is the people who own the ground and will take over the building may want to demo it to put a tower on that spot and their is little the government can do to stop it.
The thing the Intercontinental got right was recognizing that this is prime land that deserves intensive development. I'm not sure what Kite's plans are, but hopefully they are looking to something very significant on that site, not just a bunch of low rise storefronts. A mixed use development would be best. Perhaps the fact that the garage is under separate ownership interestingly encourages a bigger project, since whatever is proposed will have to pay the full freight to get the rights from that owner, who clearly recognizes the value of the lot he's on.
I don't see the need to maintain an open, wind-swept plaza that is largely deserted most of the time. However, maintaining a part of the plaza as a Pan Am Games memorial plaza is definitely something that should be done.
I must say, it was ironic in the extreme to discover that places like St. Joseph and Cottage Home were historic districts, but Monument Circle was not. This exposes how historic districts have little to do with preservations and everything about handing dictatorial land use power to neighborhood groups.
Indy MPO
I don’t see the need to maintain an open, wind-swept plaza that is largely deserted most of the time.
Exactly - that plaza reminds me of some similarly depressing and lifeless plazas I saw in communist-era Eastern Europe. I was debating between describing them as barren or as sterile - but I think windswept gets at the same idea.
One of the problems with the plaza is that there is no reason to go there - it's not really in an area with any meaningful foot traffic, and there's no other reason to really go there. IIRC, there's also no shade - and the parking-lot aesthetic of the space doesn't do much for me. (As an aside, it's interesting how architects' renderings of spaces like this always manage to imbue concrete with the warmth that it always lacks in real life).
The circle, of course, is downtown's real plaza, and is populated by a couple of hundred people on nice days at lunchtime. There are plenty of nearby restaurants and coffee shops (I think there are three coffee places right on the circle), and the people-watching is good, too. Most people are content to sit on the stairs of the monument (which are at least more suitable than sitting on the ground at PA plaza), but the cognoscenti sit on the benches surrounding the monument, shaded by the trees.
So I think that almost anything in PA plaza would be an improvement.
As for the Pan Am site...finally. Get rid of the horrible plaza and build that outdoor concept that was floated a year ago!
Sure like the idea of mass transit, but that's definitely putting the cart before the horse for the Kite people. We're talking private interests developing a city block, not a regional transit plan -- and yes, I wish we had one.
Mixed use is a fine idea. I love incorporating the skating rinks, but is that practical-feasible? That said, how 'bout one inside, one outside? Whatever happened to talk of one at WR State Park? Movie theatres, skating rinks, festivalplace restaurants-bars, urban waterpark -- the more I think about it, the more hands-on and active, the better.
More open spaces? Crikey, I agree, downtown Indy does not offer enough of an urban experience. Downtown looks like a southsider's mouth, lots of missing teeth. The comment was made, we already HAVE fantastic open urban spaces: Circle, Canal, White River State Park, University Park. A big blob high rise mat not be necessary, but the site needs some elevation. Does the Pan Am Building stay? That utilitarian pre-fab building has NEVER worked. Out!!
We should look to the models used in several South American cities, many of which are similar in size to Indy, where private bus lines run high-end buses in rail-efficient routes to serve high volumes of customers. I might actually have to blog about this very thing.
As for the Pan Am Plaza, They can do whatever they want with it. I think the most preferable thing would be to raze the site, keeping maybe the rink fronting Capitol but exposing the rink itself. Take down the rest and build a new plaza facing Capitol(where the majority of visitors downtown will be) integrating the rink and flags, and then build an iconic piece of architecture that adds something useful to the urban mix.
As a member of the IRTC for the past 4 years, I attend meetings regularly concerning mass transit in Indy.
Indy-
Yes, for the past two sessions I have stated that. These things take time and last year, the property tax fiasco caused the delay. This past session, same thing plus Mayor Peterson's defeat. So, two very big issues caused this to get pushed to the side. I was just in a meeting with the Anderson-area representative/senator and they are both sponsering this for the next session. We shall see what happens.
As for the Cultural Trail. I totally agree with you. This will go a long way at changing the perception of open space in downtown. The one worry I have that I am not sure how the landscaping on the trial is going to be b/c now it looks like just a huge amount of hard surface.
Moreover, the closest large park aside from White River Park, is not Eagle Creek, but rather the huge Riverside Park and its related golf courses stretching from18th Street all the way up to 38th Street; also, there is the smaller, but still sizeable Brookside Park--both are about a 5 minute drive from downtown. The old City of Indianapolis area has PLENTY of greenspace--any shortage of greenspace is in the former suburban areas incorporated into the city during consolidation.
What Indianapolis needs to do is to better maintain its existing greenspaces and make them more accessible to visitors and better connected to each other and the rest of the city (through greenways, etc.)--the city does not need to add new green space, except perhaps along the outer fringes of the city. The city and its residents do not know or appreciate what they have, do not take care of what they have, and always want something else. How about trying the radical idea of maintaining and improving what already exists???
As for Pan Am Plaza, it is a barren, unkempt, bricked up lot and serves as nothing more than a glorified roof for the parking garage beneath it. I applaud the developers for planning to redevelop the site while turning a smaller portion into a truly functional open space and creating a memorial to the Pan Am Games.
You have defined the urban core to mean the Mile Square and the immediate surrounding area. Military Park, the Canal, White River State Park, the War Memorial Plaza/University Park, Capital Commons, etc. are all located within your definition of the urban core of Indianapolis. Together, these greenspaces comprise a few hundred acres. Few cities have much more greenspace in such a small portion of their central city center.
Also, I have been to Columbus, OH several times. Quite frankly, I don't know why you think the city has more greenspace in it's immediate downtown area than Indianapolis--just look at a map, Columbus has about the same, if not fewer parks in its immediate downtown. In addition, you mention Goodale Park and Schiller Park--both these parks are 30 acres each, so they do not qualify as large urban parks. Columbus has one large park near downtown--the Lou Berliner Park. However, Indianapolis has the rather large 250-acre White River State Park right smack downtown--and it is larger than the Columbus's Lou Berliner Park.
Additionally, once the Cultural Trail is completed I believe it will be the jewel that ties the pedestrian network, the historic/cultural sites, and the urban greenspaces together. Also, don't forget that a small park is planned for the Market Square Arena redevelopment site.
I agree with you that it would have been a good thing if Ralston's original diagonal streets and their corner pocket parks in the Mile Square area had been kept intact. However, since large office towers now occupy a portion of at least two of these original diagonal streets, I am afraid that what was done is done. In any event, Indianapolis had plenty of greenspace in its urban core and the current plans will only improve this greenspace and make it better connected to the urban fabric.