Randomly Miscellaneous
Posted by Kevin Kastner in Historical Posts on Nov 30th, 2007 | 2 comments
Friday links:
Indygo introduces the Green Line express shuttle from downtown to the airport. This is something I’ve wanted for a while.
Shout-out to the Green-Lemonade blog, which deserves more traffic. I really like their “green gift” ideas as well as the challenge they took a while ago to only eat local food for a month. One of the 2 bloggers lives here in Indy.
An update (pdf warning) in the Urban Times about the new Keeping Indianapolis Beautiful headquarters in Fountain Square. An anonymous donor saved the...
Downtown Project update
Posted by Kevin Kastner in Historical Posts on Nov 26th, 2007 | 7 comments
There is a large number of projects either under construction or planned downtown. I’ll start with those under construction today; look for planned developments soon.
The main branch of the Library, which is set to open in a few weeks. Looks quite nice, hopefully all that money and wasted time will be worth it.
Lucas Oil Stadium, still on schedule to open August 8 of next year with the Drum Corps International event. I’m concerned about the necessity of a hugely expensive sports stadium when we have a dire need for better public schools and mass transit infrastructure. However, I hope...
Lacking Options
Posted by Kevin Kastner in Historical Posts on Nov 19th, 2007 | 7 comments
Last weekend, I went down to Bloomington to watch the Oaken Bucket game. The trip from the north side of Indianapolis to Bloomington took around 3 hours total, with only one quick stop for gas and ice. Traffic was a mess, with a major back-up at nearly every major traffic light along the way. There is a great deal of angst on the IU Football Forum over traffic control issues as well as roads that can not handle the amount of out-of-town fans a big game can generate. Of course, as a general rule, people are calling for additional lanes to the roads to help the flow. This seems strange to take...
On Downtown Greenspace
Posted by Kevin Kastner in Historical Posts on Nov 14th, 2007 | 4 comments
Recently, there has been quite a bit of talk regarding the amount of Downtown Greenspace in the comments section of Property Lines blog. My feeling is that this should be looked at on a case-by-case basis.
First, there’s the Simon Building, which replaced part of a public space known as Capitol Commons Park. I liked this park and felt it was a bit underutilized. My major problem with Simon locating in this park is that they did not aggressively look for purchasing a surface lot first. Simon gave the lamest excuse in the history of lame excuses, and lamented that if they were to build on a lot...
Chatham Center Approved by the IHPC
Posted by Kevin Kastner in Historical Posts on Nov 8th, 2007 | 11 comments
Last night, the IHPC gave the go-ahead to the Chatham Center Project. It was certainly an interesting meeting, and I gained a new appreciation of the process.
The meeting started with the principal architect explaining the changes that have been made to appease the commission and the neighborhood. One key change was taking a retail space away from the first floor on 9th Street, and adding an apartment. This seemed to go over well with the board as they felt it respected the residential character of 9th St.
Next, the council asked for public comment in support of the project. Steve Tegarden, owner...
