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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowNews came just before we were going to print this week that Hendricks Commercial Properties was set to close on the Circle Centre Mall property, clearing the way for the Wisconsin-based development firm to dig into the weeds on its plans to revamp the massive property.
Hendricks—the firm behind the impressive Bottleworks District and Ironworks developments—in December announced its intent to buy the mall and spend at least $600 million over the next decade to transform it into an open-air, pedestrian-focused campus with housing, offices and shopping.
Hendricks also said in December that it had a tentative agreement with Mayor Joe Hogsett’s administration to acquire the land under the mall, its parking garages and the former L.S. Ayres building at West Washington and South Meridian streets that anchors the mall’s northeast corner. (At the time IBJ went to print, it wasn’t clear whether that deal would close this week, too. Check IBJ.com for those details.)
We believe the mall project will be a huge boost of confidence for downtown and will encourage additional development.
The timeline for the project is long given the scale of the redevelopment. So we hope the city and Hendricks will pay special attention to the first phase in an attempt to create momentum for more investment downtown.
There’s already a lot going on downtown: the Indiana University Health hospital construction, the hotel and convention center project at Pan Am Plaza, Keystone Group’s Eleven Park and Elanco Animal Health’s headquarters project well underway just across the White River.
But there’s something about the sorry state of the mall that has felt like a drag on downtown optimism. The news about Hendricks’ plans has lifted that cloud. So we’re confident the city will work with Hendricks to move the project along as quickly as possible.
One way to make that happen is for the Central Indiana Regional Development Authority to give serious thought to allocating a part of the region’s $45 million recently awarded READI grant to the project.
We don’t say that lightly. We know dozens of projects are on the table for the funding, including housing and placemaking projects in Bargersville, McCordsville and Martinsville; an amphitheater in Anderson; and the Innovation Mile in Noblesville. But we think the mall is a good investment for the entire region.
We also urge leaders from the city and Hendricks to stay in communication with downtown constituencies to keep them up to date on what’s down the road for the mall. Some of the work won’t even start for several years, but good communication means other developments can be considered and proposed to complement what Hendricks has in store.
“This can become a transformative, dynamic, world-class development for Indianapolis,” Hendricks CEO Rob Gerbitz told IBJ late last year.
We couldn’t agree more—and we applaud the work the city and the state have done to try to make this project come to fruition.•
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