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“The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one!” You certainly cannot solve a problem while pretending there isn’t one. Nor can you plan, nor iteratively implement a staged approach to deal with a situation to implement a set of measureable corrective actions over time by continually making excuses. First, you must unanimously admit there is a problem. Second, then and only then, can you breakdown and explore root causes required as a foundation to develop a comprehensive plan/program to address each and every area at the root level. Third, the construction of an actionable plan, with a set of corrective and measurable actions, aligned to the acknowledged problem, can then and only then be formulated and used as the foundational roadmap to effectively drive solutions vs. trying to explain the situation away with meaningless data analogies.
Downtown was nice but the decline started before the pandemic and riots. I visit downtown on occasion, and I feel cautiously safe, but the smell of weed is constant in some areas. The restaurants are ok, but you can travel to other locations outside of the city and spend the same amount of money and have better food, service, and atmosphere. So the decision to go downtown for food that is fair, spend 20 minutes finding a parking space, and pay a high price is easy – go somewhere else. We went to a nice place and were enjoying a nice meal when a group was seated next to us that smelled like they were still smoking a J – we ended our meal, paid the bill, and left.
So a whole article that instead of tackling the real issues behind crime(guns, lack of activities for our young people) instead blames a few weeks of protest for the issues of downtown that most of downtowns residents probably supported. The real issue is that young people have lost the ability to problem solve and are bored. Everything is solved by violence today. (Castleton is the same problem). The business people you interviewed could help with these issues but they just moved away. Drive downtown and see the half/million dollar homes on the way to the mile square. They are all full and full of white residents who love living in places like Meridian Kessler/Fountain Square. So the Indy is a war zone comments we see daily clearly aren’t true. We have a lost teen issue and a homeless issue. Solve those and downtown will be fine.
You have encapsulated the issues brilliantly.
Interesting that no one who actually lives downtown shares these suburbanite concerns. Those who live in the city, recognize we live in a city and with that comes people of all walks of life. But glad that those who live on Geist get to air their bias. Downtown is back, better than ever, and full of all types of life. Welcome to Indy. We are glad to have you.
Always the sneer toward those timid, ignorant suburbanites. If downtown is “better than ever” why are there so many vacant storefronts? Why is City Market a shell of what it was as recently as 2019? Why are the most consistent congregants along Monument Circle the homeless?
On a per capita basis, densely populated areas may indeed have less crime. But what about per capital compared to five years ago? About the only visible metric where the city seems to be doing better today is in streetlights? I guess that simply shows that adding more streetlights doesn’t do much to curtail crime.
Two incidents from the last year suggest there is a crime problem downtown. A friend was paying for parking at a kiosk away from her car and her car was jacked with her sister-in-law in it. Her sister-in-law had to jump out of a moving car to escape. Two sons of a former co-worker were walking to their car after an evening of clubbing and got beaten up and robbed on the way to their car.
Either our friends/acquaintances are the unluckiest people in the world or their is a safety problem downtown. It’s not like we have thousands of friends who all frequent downtown. These two incidents are from a relative small sample size.
It’s basic math, more people equals more potential for negative experiences. Yet the statistics cited above prove that, per capita, downtown remains one of the safest areas in the city. Tons of new apartments are being developed and filled with residents, new hotels and restaurants continue to open and hundreds of billions of dollars in other new development are in progress and proposed so clearly there is an interest in downtown as a place to be. There is no other part of the entire metropolitan area that comes close to matching the entertainment, dining and nightlife that downtown Indy has to offer.
Always the “per capita” excuse, but the fact remains that there fewer restaurants and operative businesses in the main storefronts downtown, more trash, more graffiti, than just a few years ago. Apartments catering to young people are easy to build and finance and there will continue to be a short-term demand because apartments are gated communities in the sky. They’re easy to protect and people don’t generally feel like their homes are threatened, thanks to secure front doors and 24-hour concierge/security.
But how long will this demand continue if the aggregate number of restaurants/bars/nightlife continues its slow decline, even while more young people with heavy disposable incomes move in? Some cities that have completely ceded ground to the “social justice” protests of 2020–places like Portland on Minneapolis–are now watching their downtowns go completely empty, and this is while these cities have MORE people living downtown than Indy. Barricaded in their sky fortresses. Good luck selling those condos when there’s nothing to do except dodge the fentanyl addicts on the sidewalk.
This was a nice piece by the IBJ. Generally speaking, the media does a poor job of portraying downtown Indianapolis and other metropolitan areas nationwide. As someone who lives, works, and makes substantial investments in downtown Indianapolis, I can honestly say the perception is far worse than the reality. I am in these streets everyday. The urban vs suburban narrative in Indy and nationwide is a joke. Politically driven BS designed to scare people.
It’s only politically-driven BS until it happens to you or someone you know. That “per capita” excuse becomes obsolete instantaneously when it’s you or your loved ones being attacked on a sidewalk. I love working and living downtown as well but can concede that there is ample room for improvement.
Is the renewed focus on late night bar areas designed to force those owners into business closure?