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The excavation and reinterment of graves discovered at the site of the former Greenlawn Cemetery in downtown Indianapolis continues to progress.
Nearly a year after Keystone Group announced it had discovered 87 burials while redeveloping the site, the private developer has not chosen a new location for the remains.
Officials say excavation of a smaller city-owned plot at the site is progressing, but only a quarter of the site has been processed. Much of the progress made by the city so far has been done to facilitate the Henry Street bridge project, which the city says is slated for completion late next year.
Keystone Group had initially planned a multi-use development anchored by a 20,000-seat stadium for the Indy Eleven soccer team at 402 Kentucky Ave. The property is the site of at least four historic cemeteries collectively known as Greenlawn Cemetery.
A representative for Keystone told IBJ that workers have not found additional graves since last year. However, only 6 acres of the 20-acre site have been excavated.
A breakdown in negotiations with the Hogsett administration, which is pursuing a Major League Soccer expansion club instead of supporting Indy Eleven’s soccer stadium, put Keystone’s plans in jeopardy. WXIN-TV Channel 59 reported recently that the former factory site adjacent to Lucas Oil Stadium is now being used as truck parking.
Jennifer Pavlik, senior vice president and chief of staff for Keystone Group, said the developer remains “engaged in conversations with community leaders to determine a respectful final resting place that appropriately honors the long-overlooked history of our city’s early residents.”
Reinterring discovered remains
While plans for the future redevelopment have stagnated, so, too, have plans for reinterring the remains.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources must approve all reinterment plans. In April 2024, Keystone Group submitted plans to reinter the remains at Mount Jackson Cemetery on the city’s west side. However, in May, state historical preservation leaders requested more information.
DNR spokeswoman Holly Lawson told IBJ in an email that Keystone has not communicated with the state since sending a letter seeking additional information.
Pavlik told IBJ the company is working through the DNR process as community conversations continue, and would publicly share reinterment plans once they’re finalized.
In the meantime, remains discovered by Keystone are held at the Indiana University Indianapolis Department of Anthropology, where they are “undergoing respectful analysis and documentation by experts … prior to reinterment,” according to Pavlik’s statement.
Remains and grave shafts are not the same as bodies. The number of individual bodies cannot be determined without a thorough analysis.
Leon Bates, a local historian who has been heavily involved in advocacy around the former cemetery, says the delay may be a good thing, so that remains from Greenlawn may be reinterred at the same location. The best practice when relocating remains is to reinter them all in one place, Bates said, so that families and remains of residents with other ties can stay together.
“It may be the best temporary solution,” Bates said. “Don’t rush into it, just let those remains sit there until the city gets done with their plan, and then possibly relocate all of those folks to one place.”
However, he disagrees with Keystone’s current use of the land.
“It is distressing that Keystone has chosen to park those heavy vehicles, or park any vehicle, on the old cemetery site,” he said, “and that driving across that site like that repeatedly is just going to damage what’s still there in the ground.”
City’s archaeological timeline also stretched
At the city’s 1.4-acre sliver of the historical burial ground, just about a quarter of the land has been excavated.
City officials initially expected archaeological work at the east bank of the White River to be done by the end of April, which would allow construction to begin in that area. This work was completed ahead of schedule, in mid-March, said Kyle Bloyd, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Works.
The Henry Street Bridge project, which will include an extension of the Cultural Trail across the river, is expected to be complete in fall 2026, Bloyd said.
With archaeological work along the river done, the city is now working to establish a new timeline for the completion of the remaining archaeological work, Bloyd said, which could be done as soon as summer 2025.
Contractors had discovered 472 grave shafts as of March 21, despite having excavated roughly a quarter of the plot. The city initially anticipated finding about 650 graves on the city’s plot. Proper excavation and resettlement of the remains is expected to cost upward of $12 million.
The city has said remains will be carefully removed and transferred to a facility for documentation and analysis. Indiana University Indianapolis bioarchaeologist Jeremy Wilson will lead that process.
The Henry Street Bridge will connect the Elanco Animal Health Inc. headquarters to the southeastern side of downtown Indianapolis. The Lilly Endowment granted the city $15 million for elements of the bridge’s design. Other roadway improvements are being paid for by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include information about the current projected timeline for the Henry Street Bridge project. The update also removed a reference to a contractor not associated with the project and clarified the city’s progress on the land associated with the bridge construction and the remainder of the 1.4-acre plot. The updated version of this story also includes a more recent report regarding the number of grave shafts discovered by the city and has clarified that the city has allotted $12 million for the archaeological work associated with the removal of graves.
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Amazing how important this abandoned graveyard has become, especially with millions of dollars in investment is at stake. City ‘leaders’ apparently didn’t feel too bad when 20,000 seat Federal Stadium was constructed on the site, opening in 1914. When the Indianapolis Indians offered to buy it in 1916 but were out bid by the Terre Haute Traction Company, which built a huge interurban facility, and finally one of the bastions of industry in Indianapolis, Diamond Chain. At this late date it’s almost an impossible task. For anthropologists and archaeologists to meticulously spend years trying to identify unknown remains, some nearly 200 years old, serves what practical purpose? An effort to remove any and all remains needs to be made, moved to an appropriate resting place with proper memorial group signage, but the expensive, meticulous process of ‘identification’ at this juncture is counterproductive, impractical and too costly on a number of of fronts. Furthermore, the longer this process drags on, it only adds to the site’s disturbing status. Red tape needs to be ‘cut’ with a concerted effort to wrap things up in a respectful, expedited way as possible.
Well stated!
Yep, it’s just shocking that here in 2025, people have more respect for the remains of the people who came before us than our forebears had in 1914. I’m pretty sure if this had been a graveyard of Lillys and Showalters and the other Caucasian leaders of our city back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, we’d have just plowed it under and over and sideways, and hung up a sign saying there used to be a bunch of rich white folks buried here, but what the heck, we wanted to build a bridge and a soccer stadium, so sucks to be them. Maybe we can have a new restaurant in the current Crown Hill Cemetery, move those old rotted and decomposed corpses somewhere else, and put up a restaurant at the top of the hill, with a great view of Indianapolis. Think that would fly? Maybe a new Indy Car event at Crown Hill Cemetery…tear up the graves of all the drivers and owners and car builders buried there and pave a nice road for a road rally… run it the night before The Race, in a fitting Memorial Day event to remember those who came (and died) first…
Or aren’t these folks entitled to the same red tape cutting, plow them under, as you reserve for the mostly African American and other lower social class folks buried at the Greenlawn?
Are you angry?
Not so well stated!
No, not angry. Just opposed to developers literally bulldozing the resting places of our ancestors to put up another factory or housing development or sports stadium. Concerned with what happens in 50 or 100 years when people eyeballing more development on the North Side, having run out of golf courses, look out over Oaklawn Cemetery and decide my family doesn’t deserve to rest in peace there any longer, and will be exhumed by payloaders or excavators and dumped into dumptrucks and taken to a spot that needs to be levelled to make way for a road or building. I know, that’s completely unthinkable. Just as the folks who buried loved ones in Greelawn thought when they buried their loved ones. IUPUI had more respect for the interred in the old potter’s fields as they built their buildings than this group shows.
Scoop em and move em? Really??? Have you bounced that sentiment off your minister?
And Kevin P, sorry to disappoint, but I think it was well expressed. Or was there a grammatical error; if so, sorry for the typo. The “scoop em” comment completely validates my prior message. I wonder what Mike S. would make of an excavator showing up at his parents’s or family graves and “scooping ’em up” and dumping them somewhere in a pit with a sign that says some people lived and died and their bones are dumped here, but we didn’t bother to find out who they were, or treat them with respect…
Better stated.
No Tim, your grammar and punctuation were fine. It was your analogies and comparisons that weakened your point and opinions.
Scoop em and move em!
In the midst of all this, no one has considered the indigenous American Indians likely ‘resting’ underneath the Zoo, NCAA headquarters, the State museum, ironically, Eiteljorg , Askenazi, Roudebush VA hospital, Victory Field, Gainbridge or Lucas Oil stadium. Maybe under the State government complex and State House itself! Who knows?
Disagree Kevin P. My comparisons and analogies were spot on. The remains of confederate soldiers, traitors to and enemies of our nation, were given better treatment. A common grave in the Crown Point and a monument in Garfield Park. In 1931, it didn’t get much better. And those were traitors. Don’t the remains of non-traitors deserve at least that much?
So tell me when in Indianapolis a cemetery for Caucasian peoples, especially upper class Caucasians, was plowed to make room for development without careful research and reinternment. Or was plowed at all?
The problem you had with my analogies is simple. No one would move the remains of Caucasians to make room for restaurants or race courses. Even if we didn’t know their names anymore. But a soccer stadium and a bridge to, essentially, nowhere? Well, can’t let some old graves of minorities and the poor stand in the way…
No, we can’t fix what was done in the early 1900s. Or when the structures described by Brad R were built (though, those weren’t on the old graveyards, and for the most recent buildings, the reinternment process would have been followed. As for Eskenazi and the VA hospital, those were built where they were built because it was a swamp and no one would develop anything there anyway. However, as IUPUI built buildings through the 70s and 80s, construction crews came upon the old Potter’s Fields where the nameless poor were buried, especially after mass disease outbreaks. Those remains were reinterred elsewhere with appropriate respect. No one just scooped em up and moved em, to quote a contributor to this thread.