I am very ambivalent concerning this question. I have lived here my whole life (66 out of 70 years). which has been a mistake. I ought to have moved to some other city to make a comparison, as of this moment I feel as if I ought to have moved 30 years ago with my brother to Chicago. Indianapolis has improved iln certain areas. The Circle Center Mall, its problems notwithstanding, brought the Downtown back to life. Certain neighborhoods have shown definite improvement, such as Fountain Square and Mass Ave. I live just north of Broad Ripple and I am very uncertain as to what is happening here. Broad Riipple Ave is very close to jumping the shark. There are too many bars ( Kilroy's) certainly did not not help the situation; too many young people getting drunk on weekends; not enough retail shops or places such as ice cream parlors for families to go. (Mass Ave has it all over Broad Ripple here). There are plenty of cops on the Strip on the weekend but they are not in the neighborhood where the crime is taking place. In contrast to Mr. Tully I do not see the Browning development really helping the situation. The footprint is too big. Is there a need for another big garage? How will the infrastructure (i.e. College Ave) handle it. We need something like a Trader Joes not another Whole Foods. Broad Ripple really does need more and better apartments. The neighborhood has lost 16% of its population in the last decade; this is not sustainable.
Now back to city as a whole. As written above this city has very poor public transportation. This is going to hurt in the future. There is no reccycling program to speak to speak of. Having had no children I am not particulary qualified to comment on education, however my mother was a public school teacher and she would not be happy with the fact that the public schools seem to be losing out daily to Charter schools. I am also against vouchers; it violates the First Amendment. If parents want to send their kids to religious schools let them pay for the education themselves. Crime is on the rise particularly the number of homicides, and this is one area where I definitely find fault with the Mayor(who shall not be named). What is his problem? To take $6 million out of the Rebuild the City Fund or whatever it is called to train new policemen seems like a no brainer to me. And it's not as if the city's streets and sidewalks have shown major improvement; they haven't. This Mayor has been way too cozy with local developers. Much of this development has been good for downtown. You wrote about City Way. Why don't we just call it what it is. Lillyville. There is $86 million dollars of public money involved in a project to build a campus for Eli Lilly & Co. and to line the pockets of the people at Buckingham Development. (As far as I'm concerned Buckingham Development can go develop Hell; I am sure that they would be welcome there). Thle Mayor gave his State of the City address at the Alexander. People who live at 22nd and Clifton and 38th and Post paid great attention to that, I am sure. People in those neighborhoods experience crime almost every day. They have more immediate concerns that what a bunch of swells do at City Way). Oh, and by the way a much more valuable piece of property , namely Markett Square still sits empty. Where is TIF money for that? I could go on but I have vented enough for now.
Thanks for forum, Chuck Gillespie
William Parnham - 11 years ago
I hate to say it, but Indianapolis is failing. I've lived here since 1981 and the city has not improved in ways that have benefited residents. Sure, we have more downtown but our neighborhoods are crumbling and with several exceptions many are unlivable. We've taken the genuine and replaced it with the pretentious and phony. We have misallocated tax dollars to built a Potemkin Village downtown to impress tourists. We spend billions on stadiums that do not pay their fair share. My travels take me regularly to places like Denver, Portland, Austin, Minneapolis and other peer cities and we are falling behind all of them when it comes to quality of life issues. They all have stronger cores than us. None of them have 10,000 abandoned homes. We are failing miserably and it is so obvious to anyone who is honest, as opposed to simply cheerleading. We need some tough love, and we need to challenge ourselves to change, for each day the gap between the cities I mentioned and Indy grows larger. What we are doing is not working. Epic fail, Indy.
Paul Johnson - 11 years ago
We need streets to drive on! It's nice to have a cultural trail but our streets are so bad that it's truly sad to see.
I guess part of the infrastructure problem and the education problem is the unwillingness to pay taxes. We don't seem to care that others have the necessities as long as we are comfortable. We are laying off, or not recruiting enough, police and fire fighters and of course we're cutting back on teachers, especially in IPS.
We need to be willing to pay whatever it takes to improve our daily way of life and let the other things wait until that's done.
Jill Daly - 11 years ago
We live in Irvington, send our kids to Our Lady of Lourdes (we are parishioners) because we want our kids to be raised with strong Catholic values. Lourdes school is thriving & we are very happy that our kids go to school at our neighborhood school where there are many other neighborhood families with many very involved parents. I would describe Lourdes as a loving community & that is what is so comforting, to know that our children are growing up in this environment. We don't have any desire to move to the suburbs.
I am very ambivalent concerning this question. I have lived here my whole life (66 out of 70 years). which has been a mistake. I ought to have moved to some other city to make a comparison, as of this moment I feel as if I ought to have moved 30 years ago with my brother to Chicago. Indianapolis has improved iln certain areas. The Circle Center Mall, its problems notwithstanding, brought the Downtown back to life. Certain neighborhoods have shown definite improvement, such as Fountain Square and Mass Ave. I live just north of Broad Ripple and I am very uncertain as to what is happening here. Broad Riipple Ave is very close to jumping the shark. There are too many bars ( Kilroy's) certainly did not not help the situation; too many young people getting drunk on weekends; not enough retail shops or places such as ice cream parlors for families to go. (Mass Ave has it all over Broad Ripple here). There are plenty of cops on the Strip on the weekend but they are not in the neighborhood where the crime is taking place. In contrast to Mr. Tully I do not see the Browning development really helping the situation. The footprint is too big. Is there a need for another big garage? How will the infrastructure (i.e. College Ave) handle it. We need something like a Trader Joes not another Whole Foods. Broad Ripple really does need more and better apartments. The neighborhood has lost 16% of its population in the last decade; this is not sustainable.
Now back to city as a whole. As written above this city has very poor public transportation. This is going to hurt in the future. There is no reccycling program to speak to speak of. Having had no children I am not particulary qualified to comment on education, however my mother was a public school teacher and she would not be happy with the fact that the public schools seem to be losing out daily to Charter schools. I am also against vouchers; it violates the First Amendment. If parents want to send their kids to religious schools let them pay for the education themselves. Crime is on the rise particularly the number of homicides, and this is one area where I definitely find fault with the Mayor(who shall not be named). What is his problem? To take $6 million out of the Rebuild the City Fund or whatever it is called to train new policemen seems like a no brainer to me. And it's not as if the city's streets and sidewalks have shown major improvement; they haven't. This Mayor has been way too cozy with local developers. Much of this development has been good for downtown. You wrote about City Way. Why don't we just call it what it is. Lillyville. There is $86 million dollars of public money involved in a project to build a campus for Eli Lilly & Co. and to line the pockets of the people at Buckingham Development. (As far as I'm concerned Buckingham Development can go develop Hell; I am sure that they would be welcome there). Thle Mayor gave his State of the City address at the Alexander. People who live at 22nd and Clifton and 38th and Post paid great attention to that, I am sure. People in those neighborhoods experience crime almost every day. They have more immediate concerns that what a bunch of swells do at City Way). Oh, and by the way a much more valuable piece of property , namely Markett Square still sits empty. Where is TIF money for that? I could go on but I have vented enough for now.
Thanks for forum, Chuck Gillespie
I hate to say it, but Indianapolis is failing. I've lived here since 1981 and the city has not improved in ways that have benefited residents. Sure, we have more downtown but our neighborhoods are crumbling and with several exceptions many are unlivable. We've taken the genuine and replaced it with the pretentious and phony. We have misallocated tax dollars to built a Potemkin Village downtown to impress tourists. We spend billions on stadiums that do not pay their fair share. My travels take me regularly to places like Denver, Portland, Austin, Minneapolis and other peer cities and we are falling behind all of them when it comes to quality of life issues. They all have stronger cores than us. None of them have 10,000 abandoned homes. We are failing miserably and it is so obvious to anyone who is honest, as opposed to simply cheerleading. We need some tough love, and we need to challenge ourselves to change, for each day the gap between the cities I mentioned and Indy grows larger. What we are doing is not working. Epic fail, Indy.
We need streets to drive on! It's nice to have a cultural trail but our streets are so bad that it's truly sad to see.
I guess part of the infrastructure problem and the education problem is the unwillingness to pay taxes. We don't seem to care that others have the necessities as long as we are comfortable. We are laying off, or not recruiting enough, police and fire fighters and of course we're cutting back on teachers, especially in IPS.
We need to be willing to pay whatever it takes to improve our daily way of life and let the other things wait until that's done.
We live in Irvington, send our kids to Our Lady of Lourdes (we are parishioners) because we want our kids to be raised with strong Catholic values. Lourdes school is thriving & we are very happy that our kids go to school at our neighborhood school where there are many other neighborhood families with many very involved parents. I would describe Lourdes as a loving community & that is what is so comforting, to know that our children are growing up in this environment. We don't have any desire to move to the suburbs.