A final discussion question to consider today: What retailers, restaurants or development methods are missing
from Indy? Plenty of new names are entering the market, and "green" building seems to be gaining a foothold locally. But if
you had to make a wish list, what would be on it? The host of Property Lines, Cory Schouten, is on vacation this week. Live
posting resumes Monday. Have a great weekend!
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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.
A final discussion question to consider today: What retailers, restaurants or development methods are missing
from Indy? Plenty of new names are entering the market, and "green" building seems to be gaining a foothold locally. But if
you had to make a wish list, what would be on it? The host of Property Lines, Cory Schouten, is on vacation this week. Live
posting resumes Monday. Have a great weekend!
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It's also across the street from Fogo de Chao and Morton's....
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Yep, the haters are trying to make good news bad. I guess it is hard to get people to believe the series is dying when they are gaining new sponsors.
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David Copperfield! I remember watching his specials on TV when I was little.
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Don't forget this is next to an MMA gym, a pawn shop, and some abandoned spaces.
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Good project for Zionsville - A group who has owned the property for many years has waited and worked patiently to bring highest and best use development to a major corridor, and mix that in with the great downtown you have. Win Win. All the Best to Pittman Partners and Zionsville.
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Even though I can't really afford it, I would love to see more designer boutiques enter the market. I think we will finally start seeing those soon, because I frankly cannot see what is going to fill up Venu unless Fashion Mall tenants start jumping ship. So, bring on Hugo Boss, Kenneth Cole, Ralph Lauren, John Varvatos, etc. (obviously, I'm tired of not having many men's stores).
For retail, I am desperate for a SuperTarget downtown. They have been able to integrate into an urban setting in Chicago. So, there is absolutely no reason why they cannot do it here. Free of the developments that are already touting them as a possibility, I beseech anyone to put one downtown. I love what has been done to O'Malia's, but they still need competition.
Finally, I am happy to see LEED certification come to Indy. Now, I would like to see a push to convert existing buildings to more environmentally friendly structures. If Chicago can get the Sears Tower to be greener, then we can certainly convert our buildings downtown.
Which, along the same lines.... My biggest wish....
VIABLE MASS TRANSIT SYSTEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:)
Isn't Blu Martini putting in a restaurant/bar on Mass Ave and College? Even if so, a nicer full service sushi restaurant in the heart of downtown would be welcomed by me....
Improved Mass Transit
Jamba Juice
Target store downtown
Whole Foods downtown
Apple Store downtown
Less parking lots
More street retail
More street vendors
More walk-up windows
The list could go on and on and on and on and I like it here!
2. Victoria's Secrets merchandise sold at all Starbucks.
3. IKEA @ Eastgate mall so the gomers can at least look less trashy.
4. New Jail @ 135 N Penn
5. The last election proven to be a bad joke.
Also I second whole foods, target, ikea, and mass transit.
In general, more street level retail.
1. Landmark Cinema.
2. Affordable, not fast food, dining.
3. Macy's or Bloomingdales at Circle Center.
4. Whole Foods or Sunflower Market.
5. Target, regular or super is fine.
6. MASS TRANSIT to get around the central city.
7. LA Fitness
Mikado’s sushi is decent, but the atmosphere and decor is disgusting….
Disgusting?! In what way? Granted the prices are (too) high. I've always thought the room was quite elegant/dramatic. For me, the service has always been the low-point (being ignored by gabbing waiters and having to track down the server to even get the check). But the food quality and atmosphere have been enough to get me to return.
2 - fitness facility in my employer's building!
3- Best Buy downtown
I love their sushi, but just decide to order takeout from there now...
2. A REAL mass transit system, powered by electricity
3. A REAL...
Notice a theme? The people of this city need to get their head out of their asses and demand progress on this issue. Otherwise, as our oil supplies dwindle (and that's a cold, hard reality we have to face) a city without public transit will cease to exist as a city of any importance.
On the other hand. I am seriously baffled with the vacant Illinois Building. WHY isn't that building being used???? A bloomingdale's or MACY'S there would be a great location. Considering the already established healthy businesses nearby (The Block, Hilton, Bucca di Beppo, Circle Centre, etc...)
IKEA would be very nice to have in Indy as well. More men's clothing stores. Why not a Virgin Megastore in downtown? I think Venu should try to lure Neiman Marcus or bloomingdale's to their shopping complex. That would be very nice competition with Nordstrom and Saks across the street, but at the same time, it will level out real well.
No major bookstore,
No major housewares store,
No organic grocery,
Not even a TJMaxx.
Too tired of spending gas money to go to Greenwood.
This building has an interesting past. I still remember when the ISM moved out and the City realized that it owned the building. What a windfall. The Peterson administration explored several ideas for adaptive reuse, even moving courts and/or city-county offices into the building after the Central Library reopened. Nothing seemed feasible.
The interiors are probably too elegant and formal to facilitate office space or down-market uses, but there are certainly many options for formal uses such as courts, banquets, museum space, etc. It will be interesting to see what the new administration can do with this historic gem.
Regarding oil supplies, if our hare-brained Senate would cool their heels on environmental terrorism and allow for drilling, we could have already become energy dependent.
A monorail system running downtown and to neighborhoods, nice idea in Disneyworld, but there's just no way it can be cost efficient. People talk about mass transit, but the ideas are just not feasible.
Dustin - perhaps you should buy a little rickshaw and pull people around town in it. You could get a car or two off the streets, make some dough, be less frustrated and angry, and know you did something positive for mankind, not to mention getting in great shape!!!
Downtown:
Retailers
1. Design Within Reach www.dwr.com
2. Camper Shoes www.camper.com
3. Apple
Restaurants
1. Thai
2. Sushi/Japanese
3. (More) Indian
Development Methods
1. Better Sidewalks/Pedestrian Culture downtown. (Some of our roads don't even have them). The regional center should have a minmum of 10' wide sidewalk space. These little 5' strips next to the 4 and 5 lane downtown highways like Delaware, Michigan, Pennysylvania, and New York streets have got to go. I'd like to see most of downtown bricked like the area around the circle.
2. High-Rise 30+ stories
3. Mixed-Use
4. APARTMENTS. There are very few attractive options for the affluent renter downtown.
Develop all of the surface parking lots and charge $30/day to park your car downtown like most cities and ridership will increase. The lack of viable mass transit in Indy is absurd.
I want to congratulate berwickguy for his inane attempt at a guffaw. To subjectively assume a person out of shape based on their viewpoints on the severe lack of mass transit, is synonymous to a little 5 year old brat calling another child a brat. In addition, your advice for me getting a rickshaw and use it as a form of employment merely points out the lack of mature debate skills you have berwickguy. Enjoy your macaronni and cheese little child.
4 - Open wireless access in downtown Indy.
Can we just move Keystone downtown so I don't have to go there all the time?
As for transit, let's fix what we've got now before we expand. Clean, on-time (not early, not late) buses with professional, courteous driver who consistently apply and follow the rules they are subject to.
Finally, a decent 2-bedroom apartment with a full sized kitchen that doesn't cost my entire months salary downtown.
An art cinema on Mass Ave
Apple Store downtown
An expansion of direct flight service with the new airport
Another department store downtown (probably not for several years)
More street level/free standing retail downtown
Improved bus service that runs more frequently (i.e. not on schedules)
A lively downtown student population
Another concert venue
Downtown Indy is in dire need of a sports/health club. NIFS is too far west for walking/skyway traffic. I don't even care if the rates are a little higher. LifeTime Fitness is a name that comes to mind - for those of us that don't want to drive to Carmel every time we want to work out. I just don't get it.
1) Little Italy
2) Chinatown
3) Japantown
4)Germantown
5)etc.
Any cultural neighborhoods where there is a combination of restaurants, grocery shops, stores and festivals that would give some flavor to the bland districts down town.
International Flavor. Indy is really vanilla and in order for the City to really makes progress, we need to be more of a melting pot. We should be doing all we can to get more foreigners here!
I too have lived in large cities on both coasts that have strong melting pot communities but Indy does have there own immigrant populations they are just not from the same traditional communities that we know from other cities. Since I have lived here I have encountered a large immigrant population from Africa, Europe and Mexico that Indy could embrace and expand upon for an ethnic identity.
#2. Re-zone, redevelope (industrial/commercial) east Washington Street in relation to (supposedly) new interstate ramp configurations. The 'National Road' should be spared the decayed look this city has allowed for 6 decades.
#3. The actual beginning of rail--somewhere. 30-years of focus groups and discussion is enough.
#4 IBJ's graphic mock-up of all the new proposed downtown projects set against actual structures to see how it might appear.
1. Pei Wei Asian Diner (owned by pf changs-takeout/diner)
2. Potbelly's Sandwich
3. Brueggers Bagels
1. Market-driven green development. There are aspects of green redevelopment that make a lot of economic sense in the old city, and there are people who would prefer to have lower-impact homes and offices if given a choice.
2. City subsidies ONLY for LEED-certified commercial projects.
3. HUD subsidies ONLY for housing development that meets green specs for efficient construction, energy use, water conservation, and appropriate density/footprint.
4. Create clusters of small-to-midsize mixed use development to support transit options. Commit to a web (not a hub-and-spoke) of clean, fast, efficient, limited-stop bus rapid transit. Rail isn't necessarily the answer as it can't be re-deployed. A billion bucks would buy a lot of bus rapid transit lines.
5. Vastly reduce surface parking within walking distance of tall buildings downtown and substitute mixed-use buildings that include structured parking. (This complements #4.) The Cosmopolitan on the Canal (Flaherty and Collins) is an excellent example of #4 and #5.
6. Finish the Greenways trail system (Fall Creek, White River, Pennsy, Pleasant Run, Upper Canal). Sorry, Prosecuter Brizzi. Hundreds of citizens out on trails is a far better crime deterrent in the neighborhoods than a hundred more cops in cars. Cheaper, too. Duh: one cop plus one car for 20 years = $2 million or more.
7. Everyone who badmouths IPS without direct experience should send their kids here for a year to help stabilize the schools and help fix declining enrollments. Or maybe we should just merge the Township schools into IPS to get rid of 8 extra superintendents and all the attendant overhead.
Anways, as for ethnic districs I think Indy should actually capitalize on the city's incredible integration. There is a lot of diversity here, but it isn't all sliced up into distinct districts, which is really how a city should be. Just go out on West 38th street to see all the international markets and restaurants (so what if they're in strip malls, they're there at least). There are many ethnic events here and the city could do more to promote and encourage the celebration of the cultures that call Indy home, rather than round them up into sectioned neighborhoods.
2. Koreatown
On a second note....MASS TRANSIT... Why is it cities of comparable metro size such as Sacramento, Portland, Denver and the like have made Light Rail or equivalent work? What's Indianapolis' obsession with cars? Los Angeles has similar issues...and trust me we don't want to be in that same boat.
Just my two cents...