Park or parking?
The new owner of the old SCPA school presented plans Wednesday to turn the historic building into 170 market-rate apartments, preserving details from marble arches to blackboards.
The catch: He wants to turn half of the old playground into a parking lot. Pendleton residents who have long treasured and used the greenspace provided significant push back on that point. They described walking their dogs, picnicking and playing in a kickball league there.
“It is important to us to preserve natural resources as much as historic resources,” neighbor Myra Greenberg said to applause from the crowd of around 100 at the Pendleton Community Council meeting. “It was the residents who planted all the trees that are there now. The citizens owned this space for 60 years.”
John Watson, principal of Indianapolis-based Core Redevelopment, said the apartments will range from 500 to 1,100 square feet, and $775 to $1,600 monthly rent. He insisted that the $23 million development requires 230 spaces, less than the 255 spaces dictated by zoning.
“I have to park people somewhere,” Watson said.
On-street parking isn’t an option, he said: “Within three blocks of the school there are some negative influences. I can’t ignore that.”
“Negative influences” presumably refers to the people of color in the neighborhood.
Watson said he’s short about $3 million on funding for the project, assuming he receives historic tax credits. “We’re talking to the city about helping to close that gap, a couple of not-for-profits,” he said. “I’m confident we’ll get there, but we’re not there yet.”
Hmm, if only there were some way to save $3 million. Perhaps by using existing parking:
I read your blog regularly, and did a double-take on which blog I was reading covering this project. Thanks for bringing attention to this. It’s really great to have a developer (from outside the metro, no less) investing in historic preservation in this beautiful neighborhood (streetview around some of the intact streets). However, it’s disappointing they are bringing with them the idea that yet-another-surface-lot is a higher use than existing green space!
After the School for Creative and Performing Arts moved to a new building, many thought this old school would sit vacant until perhaps a charter school purchased the building. Or worse, that it would deteriorate and be torn down. It’s a shame the excitement of the adaptive reuse is followed by the disappointment of a huge asphalt patch.
The ‘negative influence’ he was refering to is most likely the traffic people feel will be driven into the neighborhood by the very large casino being built just a few blocks away. It’s massive parking garage is visible out my window as I type this though, and I’m not sure that it’s apropriate to think of demand for unpriced and unregulated spaces as the baseline demand here, or perhaps in any case. Applying some rate to onstreet parking, as I and a few other neighbors have proposed would go a long way to freeing up some spaces for residents, but so far the idea has gained relatively little traction at city hall.
I can say with confidence that your assumption of racism is pretty thoroughly unfounded in this case as far as I can tell.
It looks like there is quite a bit of off-street parking right across the street! I think the real problem is that makes it impossible for people to have their assigned parking space on a private, access-controlled place, like what they are used to in suburbia.