Normally an announcement as modest as the sale of a small, well-maintained historic commercial building shouldn’t cause anyone’s pulse to race. And, outside of this Urban Indy blogosphere, it probably hasn’t. Truth be told, even within Urban Indy readership, nobody’s popping any blood-pressure pills. But the change in ownership of the Marott Center on …
The urban advocates are nearly unanimous that our metro areas, in general, suffer from a dearth of good urban park space. Nonetheless, it is often hard to build much of an argument for new park construction, or the requisite land assembly. After all, most American cities are seriously lacking when it comes to density, and …
Try not to bounce in your chairs too much: a writer at Urban Indy has finally decided to assess the CVS at 16th and Meridian, a few years after it opened. The general view around these parts–which probably prompted the majority of us not to feature it–was a resounding “meh” at the results, even though …
Hardly a week goes by without someone posting on the IBJ’s Property Lines blog, asking first Cory Schouten, and, more recently, Scott Olson, more or less the same question: “What’s the latest news on the old Nordstrom space at Circle Centre?â€Â The city parted ways with its downtown Nordstrom nearly two years ago (July 2011), …
It’s rare that buildings this small get a comprehensive analysis on Urban Indy.  Usually it’s just a snapshot.  But since these multi-family structures represent probably the first permits for new construction on the near south side in decades, and I, your journalist, am incapable of keeping my articles short, you get the full deal. And, …
I was torn between posting my latest here or on my personal site, American Dirt. While most Indy-themed articles end up finding their way here, this one scrutinized airports in a way that I usually only apply to my personal site. So I’ll paraphrase it here, but the full post is there on Dirt. It’s …
That most American cities suffer from a plethora of one-way streets is a blog topic in and of itself. After all, just last week I revealed on my personal blog how Houston’s vast downtown only has five streets with two-way sections, and not one of these streets completely transects the city center. The desirability of one-way …
Most people who have lived in Indy for at least a few years know that the south side of town is the least densely populated and, for the most part, the least developed of the four. Two of the three southside townships—Decatur and Franklin—still claim huge stretches of land that are essentially rural farms, and …
The cranes that punctuate downtown Indy’s skyline should bear some real fruit within the next two years. Finally. Urban bloggers have recently observed—with no small amount of criticism—the relatively meager increase in downtown Indianapolis’ housing construction that took place during the previous decade (from 2000 to 2010) when compared to other peer cities in the …
Since blog-posting brevity is not usually one of my strong suits, I figured it was time I tackle a subject that has to be short. The topic itself is small. Chances are, I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. But it nonetheless caught my attention as a potential harbinger of problems down the road. …