Star of ‘Good Bones’ show says city officials hampered her work

When Mina Starsiak Hawk recently announced the “Good Bones” HGTV show she co-hosts would not continue after its current season, she told listeners of her “Mina AF” podcast that her next steps were unknown.

But one thing seems likely: She won’t be redeveloping or building houses regularly in Indianapolis anymore.

Starsiak Hawk blames that decision in part on frustrations with the city’s Department of Metropolitan Development and the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services.

City officials defend their process and say no one receives preferential treatment—even if the work they’re doing ends up on TV.

Starsiak Hawk and her mother, Karen E Laine, renovated and built dozens of houses—many in the Bates-Hendricks and Fountain Square neighborhoods—for episodes of “Good Bones.” The first episode of the show’s eighth and final season aired on Aug. 15.

On her podcast, Starsiak Hawk described the decision to bring “Good Bones” to an end as something mutually agreed upon by herself and Colorado-based production company High Noon Entertainment.

Phasing out home renovation work in Marion County is a Two Chicks and a Hammer decision, and Starsiak Hawk said she doesn’t take that lightly. In recent years, the company established offices and opened a home furnishings retail shop in Bates-Hendricks.

But with “Good Bones” winding down, Starsiak Hawk said her Two Chicks and a Hammer renovation company increasingly “butted heads” with city planners who OK construction permits.

Starring on a TV show elevates Starsiak Hawk’s visibility, but she said she doesn’t seek special treatment when submitting plans for details such as building heights, setback distances to property lines and material used on the exteriors of homes.

“I have done everything I could possibly do to try to work within the system,” she said. “It’s tricky because, in local government, very few people are in charge of a lot of big decisions. It seems for a long time this plan for the city to have urban density, growth and development was not actually being enacted by the people making those decisions.”

Property owners make variance requests when their plans don’t match the standards of applicable zoning ordinances. Starsiak Hawk said she believes decision-makers apply personal architectural preferences when rejecting proposals not intended to be dictated by cosmetic guidelines.

“They’ll take one thing they’re allowed to do and then bend you over a barrel for 10 other things,” she said. “I have to go back to my architect eight or 10 or 12 times to try to meet this moving target.”

Representatives of the Department of Metropolitan Development and the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services declined to discuss specific grievances made by Starsiak Hawk.

A spokesperson for the city provided a statement to IBJ indicating that permitting decisions are made without bias:

“We understand the benefit of showcasing the diversity of Indianapolis’ neighborhoods, housing and people, and we appreciate Two Chicks and a Hammer’s commitment to our community over the last eight years. In that time, city agencies, recognizing the significance of the show for Indianapolis, often engaged with the team to guide them through the requirements and rules of our planning and permitting processes. These requirements are derived from state laws and local ordinances, and we must equitably enforce them for all Indianapolis residents and businesses.”

But Jason Blankenship, owner of Blankenship Custom Homes, said Two Chicks and a Hammer isn’t the only company perplexed by rulings made by the Department of Metropolitan Development and the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services. Blankenship, who has renovated and built houses in Indianapolis for 20 years, said there’s a rising trend in rejected plans.

“It’s as if everything we submit is getting so much pushback,” Blankenship said. “We’re asking for the standard, ‘Oh, hey, can we put the garage three feet from the property line instead of five?’ It’s stuff that’s been approved 1,000 times.”

Similar to Starsiak Hawk, Blankenship said he believes personal architectural preferences are factoring into decisions. Modern designs that reach three stories high and feature flat roofs are not in favor, he said.

“One thing that should never fall into a zoning hearing is architectural guidelines,” Blankenship said. “Architecture has nothing to do with zoning, which should be no more than a box on a site plan.”

Starsiak Hawk said Two Chicks’ decision to branch out to work in The Valley neighborhood, which includes the future headquarters of Elanco Animal Health Inc. south of the Indianapolis Zoo, proved to be especially challenging.

Unlike Bates-Hendricks and Fountain Square, The Valley neighborhood is part of the city’s Regional Center, a term synonymous with downtown and an area where a specific set of urban-design guidelines apply.

Starsiak Hawk said plans for street-facing garages were rejected in the neighborhood, and proposed porches were nixed for being too small to facilitate interaction with neighbors.

Jay Napoleon, president of The Valley Neighborhood Association, told IBJ the neighborhood, the Department of Metropolitan Development and Two Chicks and a Hammer managed to resolve variance requests made by Starsiak Hawk’s company.

“This process happens hundreds of times a year in every neighborhood,” Napoleon said.

His neighborhood is wary of development that creates investor opportunities for short-term rentals through platforms such as Airbnb and VRBO, he said.

“The Valley is not alone in this worry, but we are also aware that right now we are ‘white hot’ for that kind of development,” he said. “Sometimes that means pushing back against development plans that encourage that result.”

Starsiak Hawk said she can’t guarantee that a buyer of one of her properties will never rent the house.

But her struggles weren’t isolated to The Valley.

In the Old Southside neighborhood—also in the Regional Center—Starsiak Hawk said it was frustrating to learn one property’s zoning classification changed decades after a duplex was built on the site. Zoning shifted from residential to commercial, but the duplex could stand in perpetuity with no consequences.

If the building is razed, however, only a commercial building can replace it. Two Chicks and a Hammer wanted to take down the duplex, give attention to a crumbling foundation and build a duplex similar to the original. The plan wasn’t approved, Starsiak Hawk said.

Reflecting on past work in Indianapolis, Starsiak Hawk said Two Chicks and a Hammer strived to maintain a neighborhood’s aesthetic.

“I’m not trying to build crazy stuff,” she said. “I’m trying to build stuff so people will want to live here. … I’m not sure how I have kept 13 houses for eight seasons. Logistically, to get anything done in a reasonable amount of time is just not possible—particularly if you’re not someone [city planners] care for.”

The 13-houses-per-TV-season format ultimately proved unsustainable, Starsiak Hawk said.

“For the last two years, I’ve known,” she said. “It was, ‘Y’all, I’m losing it. I can’t keep doing what we’re doing, in terms of the pace and the finances of it. We need to start making a plan.’ We’ve been talking about what works for [production company High Noon] and what works for us for a long time.”

Post-“Good Bones” renovations on the company’s schedule will happen in Zionsville and Martinsville. Working outside of Marion County wasn’t unprecedented on “Good Bones,” which traveled to Mooresville for a first-season renovation.

Indianapolis showcase

“Good Bones” attracted more than 22.6 million viewers across 14 episodes that aired in 2020, according to Nielsen data.

Visit Indy Vice President Chris Gahl said Indianapolis images that appear in the show boost the city’s stature.

“We hear from visitors nearly weekly, through email and through calls, that they have an interest in going to see the homes featured on the show,” Gahl said. “We hear nearly weekly from meeting and event professionals who are thinking about Indianapolis, intrigued with the fact that ‘Good Bones’ is filmed here. Meeting planners are traditionally female, 28 to 42. And that aligns with a lot of the viewership demographics of ‘Good Bones.’”

Gahl said “Good Bones” also played a role in the city’s securing visits by NBC series “American Ninja Warrior” on Monument Circle in 2016 and 2018.

Since an initiative titled Film Indy launched in 2014 to attract film and video projects, the city has found the most success with reality TV shows.

“‘Good Bones’ is an established mechanism to showcase that you can do production here in Indianapolis and be successful,” Gahl said. “We were able to warm ‘American Ninja Warrior’ up to that idea, in large part because we pointed to an existing show that has credibility.”

Gahl described Starsiak Hawk as a team player in hospitality efforts.

“Through the years, we’ve had Mina visit VIPs who have an interest in Indianapolis and also are fans of the show,” he said. “She’s helped us direct conventions and land conventions in Indianapolis.”

Carolina calling

Although Laine continues to co-star on “Good Bones,” she retired from Two Chicks and a Hammer in 2019. Starsiak Hawk bought out Laine’s financial interest in the company.

Laine, a former defense attorney, said she never participated in applying for construction permits for Two Chicks and a Hammer and had no firsthand knowledge of the company’s relationship with the Department of Metropolitan Development and the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services.

“I think it’s sometimes easy, and this has happened to me in other situations, to get off on the wrong foot with a government employee,” Laine said. “And then it’s just an uphill battle to heal that relationship.”

Laine is currently renovating a 585-square-foot cottage in Wilmington, North Carolina. Wilmington-based newspaper Port City Daily reported that High Noon Entertainment obtained film permits to document work at the cottage.

Laine told IBJ she doesn’t know if filming related to the North Carolina renovation will result in a TV show.

“After eight years of doing ‘Good Bones,’ I love our production company,” she said. “They are amazingly talented people. They have taught me so much. I don’t want to stop working with them. I would like to work with them until I die because they’re wonderful. HGTV has been wonderful to us. If I could create content for HGTV until I die, that would be a dream come true.”

The 60-year-old said she’s also visited the West Coast this summer to investigate an outdoor opportunity.

“I went to Thousand Oaks, California, to look at a landscaping job I think I would like to do, which is crazy,” Laine said. “But that’s what TV has done: It got me an interview for a landscaping job in California.”

According to a report by entertainment website Deadline, HGTV hasn’t closed the door on future on-camera work for Starsiak Hawk and Laine.

“While this is the end of ‘Good Bones’ as we know it, we’re currently in talks with Mina and Karen about other projects,” HGTV said in a statement.

Thinking smaller

Starsiak Hawk, 38, said she’s downsized the Two Chicks and a Hammer staff because she’s no longer planning projects for “Good Bones.”

“It doesn’t require 12 people,” she said on her podcast. “I threw everything against the wall to see what would stick to try to keep the team together. … It’s my responsibility to move to the next chapter in a responsible and respectful way, a caring way. I’ve done that. I feel good about that, but it’s still just really hard.”

In 2020, Starsiak Hawk opened Two Chicks District Co., a home furnishings store at 1531 S. East St.

She said 85% of the store’s customers are tourists, a statistic that makes it reasonable to speculate the store will be in peril with the show coming to an end.

“I wanted that to be a cool spot for local people to come, and they just don’t,” Starsiak Hawk said.

Meanwhile, the offices of Two Chicks and a Hammer have exited the company’s headquarters a block south of Two Chicks District Co. and relocated to Starsiak Hawk’s home in Fountain Square.

She’s attempting to sell the headquarters, a building renovated and featured on a 2022 episode of “Good Bones.”

​​“I’m an investor, and I’m a developer, but I’m not nearly as big as most [companies],” she said. “But I live here. I pay taxes in Marion County. I don’t do it from California. I don’t do it from Noblesville. I put my headquarters and store here because those things all matter to me.”

While Two Chicks and a Hammer has work in The Valley that has yet to be completed, a carriage house associated with one of the houses will be spotlighted during the final season of “Good Bones.”

Starsiak Hawk said she was surprised to see a house pop up in the neighborhood with a street-facing garage after her proposal for a similar design was rejected.

“Those are the things where you think, ‘How can it not feel personal when it’s applied so randomly?’” she said. “Let’s make it not personal. Say, ‘This is the rule, this is how you do it and it’s easy.’”

Fellow developer Blankenship said challenges in the permitting process are affecting his bottom line.

“I don’t have the money to spend $5,500 getting new sets of plans designed, only to send it in and have it rejected for some arbitrary reason we don’t even understand,” he said. “I don’t ever recoup that $5,500. It’s gone.”

Meanwhile, Blankenship said neighborhoods such as Fountain Square and Bates-Hendricks would benefit from accelerated development instead of a slowdown.

“In other places, I build homes, and they fly off the market,” he said. “In Hamilton County, you can’t even finish a house before it’s sold. In downtown, the market has slowed down. There’s way less residential development than there was. That being said, the process became twice as hard.”

As an HGTV celebrity, Starsiak Hawk has experience with naysayers. For much of the run of “Good Bones,” critics have assailed the show for contributing to elevated property values in neighborhoods and increasing the odds that lower-income residents would be displaced.

Recently, online comments have decried the layoffs at Two Chicks and a Hammer.

Former restaurant server Starsiak Hawk said she values advice shared by an HGTV executive who visited Indianapolis during the making of an early “Good Bones” episode.

“She said, ‘TV’s weird, and it will mess with you and mess with your life. And what you have to remember is, the people who love you don’t love you. They love the version of you that we’ve created. And the people who hate you and troll you and say nasty stuff? They don’t hate you. They hate the version of you that we’ve created. So if you can remember that none of this has anything to do with you, you’ll come out unscathed. And not a lot of people can do that.’”•