The Next Great Placemaking Exercise for Indianapolis

Indy needs more powerful, engaging and dynamic public spaces that become quintessential places to see when you visit Indianapolis.

Chicago’s Millennium Park is a fantastic example of a placemaking project that has transformed the visitor experience in Chicago. Millennium Park is a world renowned example of urban development and I think Indianapolis could replicate pieces of the project to transform areas of our own city.

Millennium Park in Downtown Chicago. 

Millennium Park is a destination spot for visitors. Its Instagram index (the average number of people who snap pics from the location) is off the charts. If you are going to Chicago, you stop and take a picture at Cloud Gate. Any type of public space development should involve some type of public art that is engaging and approachable. Cloud Gate rocks because everyone knows how to interact with it. It’s an intuitive piece of art that engages visitors and compliments the initiative of the space perfectly.

Indianapolis was recently ranked 47th nationally in public green spaces. That’s pathetic. Downtown Indianapolis has an abundance of great resources, but could really benefit from more engaging public spaces.

Luckily there are a couple initiatives already in play that could help this problem. The Reconnecting to Our Waterways initiative has already addressed six areas that could be benefitted by urban planning and redevelopment by linking them to underused waterways in Indianapolis. The plan is pretty cool and presents a series of solutions that would create engaging spaces all over the city. One area that Reconnecting to Our Waterways does not address is the old GM stamping plant on the west side of Indianapolis. The site is huge – 101 acres – and is located right on the White River. It’s only a 15-to-20 minute walk from the Eiteljorg Museum and White River State Park. In my eyes that could be the perfect location for a great park in Indy’s urban core.

The GM Stamping Plant in Indianapolis.

What if we used the blueprint established by Chicago’s Millenium Park for the old GM site. Putting aside minor issues such as funding, public/private partnerships and viability *sarcasm*, let’s consider some of the elements that could be used.

• Engaging public art – The anchor for this space would be a large-scale public art piece that registers a mega-high score on the Instagram index. If someone was visiting Indy this would become the quintessential place for taking a great skyline picture of the city and seeing a great city landmark.

• Water park feature that doubles as an ice skating rink in winter – This would tie into the Reconnecting to Our Waterways initiative and make it a destination spot for families year around. 

• Bike path and trail that connects to the White River Wapahani Trail – The trail is already a highly used feature of White River State Park and would be a vital piece to link the southwest side of Indy to the central core. Indy has a great track record of maximizing development around trails. 

• Mixed use development – The southwest side of Indy is the least livable quadrant of the urban core. This initiative would encourage the development of housing and amenities to spark growth in the area. If the Wapahani Trail was extended, I think we could expect development to surge. I envision a scenario very similar to what happened along Virginia Avenue when the Cultural Trail was designed. 

• Fishing pier – This would be a great recreational spot for fishing and continue to reinforce the Reconnecting to Our Waterways mission.

• New soccer stadium – This is easily the most ambitious of my ideas (although it seems to have traction). Let’s say the Indy Eleven Soccer team is a success and goes on to become a full fledged Major League Soccer Franchise. They will need a new stadium and the old GM site would make perfect sense with its available land, proximity to other sporting venues (Lucas Oil Stadium, Victory Field) and opportunity for development in the area. I could easily envision the public spaces and stadium coexisting harmoniously in the same “park” setting.

A rendering of a proposed new soccer stadium in Indianapolis.