The November 2010 public meeting of the Broad Ripple Village Association (BRVA) Land Use and Development Committee was held on November 22 at Broad Ripple United Methodist Church. This time it was held in the basement as there were too many attendees to have it upstairs. There were two items on the agenda.

First was Urban Greens restaurant that is proposed for the previous office for Indy Greenways at 900 E. 64th Street. No variances are needed for this project. It was on the agenda as a courtesy to share the plan with the committee.

Next on the agenda was a further discussion of the parking garage project that is planned for the old Marathon gas station/Marcos Pizza site. The variance hearing with the City of Indianapolis has been continued to December 13. Several variances are being requested by the petitioners to allow this structure to be built close to the property lines. Many spoke in opposition to the project's scale, stating that the original plan approved by the City of Indianapolis had only 14,000 square feet of retail space and the current design has as much as 28,000. The petitioners explained that during the refining of the design, extra rentable space was worked in, while retaining the required number of parking spaces. Other topics discussed at length were the location of the dumpsters required and how trash trucks would maneuver in the alley. My observation is that no progress was made in the differences between the petitioners and the remonstrators at this meeting.

There is no December meeting of the committee. The next meeting is planned for January 24, 2012 at 6pm.