The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 220

-SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 1978 PAGE 11-SEC. 1B- THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR OBLITERATION BY INDUSTRY OPPOSED Southside's Concord Neighborhood Ponders Its Future 'thin cv ff! I JS V'LT' 1 Xr I him I i fe-" V. H- irvi'ii'ii ti mrir I msmmmxtM Mxmmrtt, By GORDON WITKIN Urban renewal is the key to unlock the door to further industrial development of the city's most industrialized area the Southside. Before new structures can be built, old ones must be razed. That sometimes means -moving people, often hardworking, older people who may not want to leave an area they've lived in for years.

And before anything can go up, the city must decide what type of area it wants to create, a decision bound to elicit vocal opinion from several different sides. Such is the case in the Concord neighborhood on the city's near-Southside. The Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development is seeking to attract light industrial development there in what it sees as the logical direction for an area decaying residentially. CONCORD INHABITANTS, meanwhile, believe theirs is still a viable neighborhood. While not opposed to industrial development, they are bitter that such a program seems to be the city's top priority in an area that needs housing and commercial development so badly, they contend.

And though they've been promised that no one will be relocated against their will. Concord residents are suspicious of a city they feel has broken promises in the past. They refuse to be sold down an industrial road and seem ready to hold out as long as they can. The city, trying hard not to play the heavy, appears willing to wait them out. Concord, roughly bounded by the central business district on the north, Raymond Street on the south, White River on the west and Madison Avenue on the east, is an old area.

It is a blue-collar neighborhood with clusterings of German and Dutch descendants who like where they live, despite having to cope daily with Indianapolis' well-known Northside bias. ABOUT 7,000 people reside in Concord, which is also home to many small, family-owned businesses. The area has suffered a 40 percent population loss since 1970, and its residential vacancy rate is twice that for the whole of Marion County. Much of the residential land seemingly threatened by future industrial development is north of 1-70, an area cut off (Star Ptoto) INTERSTATE, ACCESS ROADS TO IT HAVE CHANGED SOUTHSIDE FOR GOOD, BAD Old Neighborhoods Carved Up, But Slum Areas Cleared Out For Construction from the rest of the neighborhood by that interstate. Vacant lots are prevalent, and many of the houses are dilapidated.

Even the staunchest neighborhood supporters concede that this sector is probably beyond saving. Many who live there, though, are committed to it and refuse to sell. This puts the city in a "buy a lot when we can" situation that makes industrial site preparation a slow, tedious process of stringing together acquired land. Industrial planning thus becomes a necessarily long-range, piecemeal process. "WE PROJECT continued decline there, so we've started land acquisition now," says Robert Kennedy, director of the Department of Metropolitan Development.

"The problem is, the longer people wait, the less the land will be worth." Why is the city eager to bring more industry to the Southside? First and foremost, to bolster Center Township's lagging tax base. In 1960, the assessed valuation accounted for 52 percent of the county total, but by 1975 accounted for only 30 percent. In that period. Center Township's assessed valuation grew at the slowest rate of the city's nine townships. Secondly, the city is committed to replace run-down houses and unusable industrial land with attractive, productive structures that would provide Concord with continuity of land use.

ONE OF THE sector's biggest problems has always been poorly mixed and marginal land use, which has resulted in what the city calls "unsightly industrial uses" such as scrapyards or oil recovery operations. At the present time, Concord is an excellent place for industry to locate, a city planner says. A prime reason for locating there is the Southside's access to transportation systems. The completion of the 1-651-70 inner belt in October, 1976 (at a total cost of almost $280 million) put Southside businesses within 20 minutes of almost any Marion County location. At the same time, the Southside houses railroad lines that afford businesses the opportunity to move goods quickly and efficiently definitely a future consideration.

And Concord is well served by public transportation, which means employees can get to work easily without driving. TRANSPORTATION planners do have some idea of what any new public mass transit system must do to convince automobile drivers even to consider changing their travel patterns. Essentially, such a system must offer something approaching the door-to-door convenience of the car, with the comfort and privacy that are built into the private vehicle. Some transportation specialists insist that most people will not give up their cars while costs rise for fuel, because the individual trip is viewed as cost-free, regardless of the reality of purchase, maintenance and repair and even taxes for roads. But a future system probably will be a mixture of the car and whatever is developed.

The planners presently are enamored with a new kind of elevated vehicle, like monorails, but featuring brightly colored cars that can be called to a station on demand and routed directly to a desired destination on the system, rather than having to stay in line and stopping at each station. SUCH VEHICLES would have closed-circuit television for security monitoring and operate around the clock. There remains, of course, the risk of where to build the lines, which the advocates say are attractive. But they also are just short of permanent, and efforts to predict or even influence future patterns of movement is looked at by other planners as potentially costly. Supporters of the systems, known generally as "People Movers," argue that the history of railroad station development is that land values and development respond to the location of a station.

The effect of locating a station next to or' within a building where people work or shop multiplies the use of the property many times, while reducing the cost of the transit system, it is argued. The legalities and economics of such tit' Transportation hardly any was left for the projects themselves." Street repair was the only area in which a really complete job was done, Katz says. Otherwise, getting the money to the neighborhood level "was like pulling teeth." "There seemed to be a lack of willingness to do what was funded, and we began to feel a sense of resistance from the city. It became an incredible struggle to get anything done. If a half of that million actually got spent, that would be a lot." Failure of city government to act took all the momentum out of the ADT proposals, according to architect Donald Perry, an ADT member.

"BECAUSE government didn't get in gear, our peak of initiative passed and faded," Perry says. "Our funding from Lilly Endowment evaporated and city initiatives moved on to other efforts and priorities. We had a chance to make Concord a real neighborhood again. industrial wipeout of the near-Southside is inevitable. "And the result is that what was once good will has turned into antipathy.

Local government now thinks people are being unreasonable, while people down there who for years have heard promises are naturally suspicious." Nick Shelly, assistant administrator of planning and zoning for the Department of Metropolitan Development, disagrees with Perry and Katz. "We have had some problems with housing rehabilitation, but all other in-' gredients of the neighborhood improvement program have been working and working well," he says. "You've got to remember that new programs take time getting started. And we have had problems getting the housing rehabilitation program off the ground because of a lark of contractors. Single-family dwelling rehabilitation is a difficult thing for contractors, because they want bigger projects with more of a profit margin.

From the neighborhood perspective, housing rehabilitation is the biggest problem, and I agree with them." Given the current situation, most observers, Perry included, think the city's current Concord strategy is not a bad one. Steady population loss has hurt the area's neighborhood concept and made attraction of commercial development a virtual impossibility. A couple of small stores are making a go of it, but any large scale devlopment like a shopping center appears out of the question. So, for the time being, it's on with industrial development. And the current push in that realm is the city's proposal for a Concord industrial park.

THE AREA PROPOSED for the park is bounded by Morris Street on the north. Raymond Street on the south. West Street on the west and Senate Avenue and Meridian Street on the east. The area is zoned industrial, but much of it is now unused or housing some of those "unsightly" industrial uses. The plan calls for the city to buy the land, do the necessary demolition and clearance work, install the required utilities and then resell the land to private buyers as industrial sites.

The city has applied for a $610,000 federal grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help finance the project, which would cost a total of $15 million. A decision on the grant was expected in late April, but had not been received at press time. Carley said chances of approval were slim, however, because about 80 cities were applying for 10 available grants. If federal funds are not forthcoming, the plan will not be abandoned, Carley said, but merely put on the backburner until 1979. NEIGHBORHOOD reaction to the plan is mixed.

Most residents want to know more about the project before making a decision. Concord businessmen are clearly in favor of the project, and of South-side industrial development generally. Most concede that at least part of the area is decaying residentially, and some have wanted to expand but been unable to because of nearby housing. "We can't expand until we acquire some more lots," says Walter Corbin, president of Scherer Electric Co. "But people live there.

their home and we have to treat them as neighbors. We've been doing piecemeal for the last 20 years. Now we need more parking, and we can't have it until one of these family units decides to sell." The problem is a common one for Southside businesses, many of which are small to medium-sized, family-owned Operations that have been in the area for 30 years or more. Many have acquired land when they could and expanded or Improved their physical plants bit by bit. With a small business, though, finding enough capital for an expansion Investment can also be a problem.

Some, however, have been helped by local development groups such as Mid-City Pioneer Corp. Mid-City, established in 1976, is an eight-member organization of business and community leaders working with the Small Business Administration (SBA) to provide loans. A VARIETY of lending programs exist, and Mid-City has helped make eight loans to a diverse group of businesses. Originally funded by the Southside Community Development Organization, Mid-City, like many such groups, is strapped for funds. It's now hoping to receive a portion of money the city is making available to local development corporations.

The biggest Southside business expansion, of course, has come from Eli Lilly which has continually reaffirmed its commitment to remain and grow there. The company's new industrial center, being built at the site of the old stockyards on Kentucky Avenue, will, when completed sometime after 1985, represent an investment of approximately $150 million on a 160-acre tract that will be the eventual home of all the company's manufacturing operations. About 3,000 people will work there. The first building to be completed, a resupply warehouse, was occupied in the summer of 1975. Since then, a dry products manufacture building, an administrative services facility, an office building and two maintenance structures have been built.

WORK HAS JUST begun on a products manufacturing building which, when finished, will bring the investment total to $60 million. Also committed to Southside development is the Indianapolis Chevrolet Truck Body Plant (located just across the river at 340 White River Parkway Southwest which has just begun a four-building, multimillion dollar expaasion program. Included in the expansion will be facilities for receiving, steel storage, rail-car shipping and warehousing. A total of 285,000 square feet and 500 jobs will be added by the construction, which is scheduled for completion in mid-1979 3M INDUSTRIAL 3M INDUSTRIAL ADHESIVES. POLY or STEEL STRAP.

MISC. PACKING AND SHIPPING DEPT. ITEMS. 7 SO IF ALL this Is true, why aren't businessmen gobbling up all the available Southside land and clamoring for more? "First, you've got the Northside bias to think about," David Carley of the Division of Urban Renewal says. "Second, the interstate was only recently completed and it takes time for these things to sink in.

The industrial real estate market moves slowly and conservatively. "There's also a marketing problem. one down there's been doing any promoting of industrial development. And we'd like to establish standards for things like building design and landscaping to reduce friction with the neighborhood." Friction with the neighborhood has been a concern for the past decade, with communication and trust the primary difficulties. City authorities say a good part of the problem is the neighborhood's constantly changing leadership, while Concord leaders claim area residents are suspicious of government because of promises broken in the past.

Much of the ill will stems from what Concord leaders say was the city's failure to follow through on an advocacy development project begun in 1971. CREATED BY Concord Center, the project brought legal, architectural and social welfare professionals together to form the Advocate Development Team (ADT), whose job it was to plan the neighborhood's future. The ADT was funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. and several neighborhood organizations. The group identified objectives, defined options and possible income resources and did its own master plan for the neighborhood.

Its report, completed in 1974, concluded that Concord would be an ideal place to re-create a true neighborhood, an area where people could live, work and shop. There had been deterioration, the report conceded, but enough stability remained to turn tre area around through a halting of mixed land usage, a program of housing rehabilitation and utilization of existing neighborhood resources. The report was adopted by the Department of Metropolitan Development; the Mayor's Community Development Task Force designated Concord as a "target area" for city funds, and the neighborhood received additional funds through the federal Housing and Community Development Act. IN ALL, Concord was to receive nearly $1 million in 1974 to implement many of the projects recommended by the ADT, with the city as administering body. That's when the problems began, say neighborhood leaders, who claim the city was not prepared to handle the money or the programs.

"It took about a year and a half for 'the city to get these programs going," says Irving Katz, ADT coordinator, "and so much was spent on administration, "ENERGY IS going to be a big problem soon, and access will be the name of the game," says Kennedy. "Any business not near rail lines and public transportation is going to be in trouble in 10 years." Another Southside plus has been a low crime rate. There are the usual problems with teenage vandalism and the like, but serious crime does not seem to be a concern. "I haven't had a break-in here since 1968," says Allen Durnil of Indiana Ornamental Iron 12 East Ray Street. "It's generally a lot tamer down here since the interstate went in.

The traffic discourages people and the building of the highway cleared out some of that neighborhood, which wasn't the best." Southside land costs are cheaper, too. It has been estimated that a businessman could save $5,000410,000 per acre if he bought on the Southside instead of in a suburban industrial park, for instance. space-sharing is gaining supporters for the concept, too. In downtown areas, a "People Mover" might follow the establishment of malls with moving sidewalks and second-level walkways between important buildings. But why only in downtown areas? One transportation planner has warned that downtown is only one neighborhood needing revitalization in the city, and that growth of a community and its transportation system must be guided so that it does not kill what already exists.

TO DRAW the business necessary, which means serving more than just the people who depend on it for mobility, a transportation service should concentrate on taking people conveniently to where they want to congregate, such as large shopping centers, planners suggest. It can do this by linking with other strategic transportation sites, such as ground-level or multi-floor parking lots. At the very least, they urge, there should be a maximum number of points at which different transportation systems meet. Evolution of a new means of moving people is almost inevitable in the early 21st Century, according to L. J.

Fabian, a Boston consultant. He said each new development in that field during the past 100 years including trains, electric rails and the automobile has taken about 50 years to come to fruition. The elevated guideway system (known as "Personal Rapid Transit" and "Automated Guideway showed up first in transportation literature in the early 1960s and only now is in the testing stage. Fabian forecast that it will be another 30 years before common use even begins. Continued From Page 12 point of four new national highways, featuring a loop around the downtown area.

The construction for these roads altered further the lives of people, including those displaced. Left behind in the central city 24 hours a day are people who can't afford to move, many of them also without the money for cars. These people continued to use the available transportation, but they aren't enough. When the profit from operating a bus system became too small, Indianapolis city officials in 1974 accepted the responsibility of keeping up transportation as a public service. That's a political decision which annually has had a hard time being renewed, because the constituency, the users of the service, just isn't powerful among suburban-dwelling officeholders.

THERE ARE signs of change, though. The Carter administration is supporting the largest-ever proposed funding of local transportation. At least part of the new emphasis is a guarantee of service to the poor, the handicapped and the elderly. Transportation planners see the scope of the proposal as a true commitment to urban revitalization, especially for the central city abandoned by the car-bound. For example, the Carter bill would allot money to build downtown transportation centers (or renovate old ones, such as Union Station).

But what kind of transportation system looms? Especially, what will be the role of the automobile? William K. Byrum, attorney for the Indianapolis Public Transportation Corporation, which operates the bus system, isn't predicting a particular kind of system, but is convinced that the economics of the fuel market will determine if more people turn to public transportation. It also will reshape residential patterns, forging a return to the central city neighborhoods, other planners and city officials anticipate. SERVING INDIANAPOLIS AND INDIANA Industry, Business and Builders FOR OVER 35 YEARS with Sincerity, Enthusiasm and Efficiency S12 N. DELAWARE ST, Indianapolis, MACHINERY MACHINE Van Demon's Creative Kitchens Baths Floor Coverings Custom Remodeling 3201 THOMPSON ROAD EAST INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA 46227 1 1 Wishes to thonk the ir confidence in their needs I1MNJ Klinjstein Machinery was founded in 1S39 by the late Hugo Klingstein, and has continued being a local family organization with the Klingstein family.

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