The February public meeting of the Broad Ripple Village Association's Land Use and Development (LUD) committee was held in-person at Storefront Theatre of Indianapolis, 717 Broad Ripple Avenue [H3 on map], on February 23, 2021.

In your editor's opinion, this meeting should have been held like other recent meetings via a virtual Zoom call. The downtown zoning hearings are still virtual. With social distancing and mask-wearing it was quite difficult to hear the presenters or see their slides. Zoom meetings do not have those issues.

There were two items on the agenda (in bold below)(All images included here were presented at the public meeting.)

This is the second time for this petition to come before the LUD committee. The project is to raze the abandoned Chase Bank Drive-Thru facility to the south of the parking garage on College Avenue and to build a five-story building on the lot. The first three floors would be used by Purdue Polytechnic High School (PPHS). The 4th and 5th floors, a new apartment complex, would extend to cover the entire parking garage.

Only a few changes were made to the design presented at the January meeting. These include extra safety signage and ground markings and some facade changes to "break up" the appearance of the upper floors.

The apartment component would have 69 units - a mix of studio, 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom units.

The school would occupy half of the first floor, when the remainder used for parking, and the entire second and third floors.

The goal of the project is to be open for the 22/23 school year. This is when PPHS will need the extra space and will either move (from the current location at 1405 Broad Ripple Avenue [I11 on map]) to this new building or find a suitable location elsewhere in the city.

A lengthy remonstrance was presented by adjoining property neighbor Dr. David Brunner of Broad Ripple Animal Clinic. The Clinic has been on the site for 35 years. Dr. Brunner joked that it is not lost on him that his name is David and the project is his Goliath. Dr. Brunner presented his reasons to change, but not necessarily stop, this project. Those included traffic issues, blocking the alley, deliveries to the building. Dr. Brunner offered to buy the property from the developer, at the price it paid Chase, and put a public park there.

Tom Healy then presented that a project like this, to keep a desirable school in the area and to add more residents, is exactly what the community and the BRVA have been working for through the Envision Broad Ripple Plan. The project is right on the IndyGo Red Line, allowing students to use their supplied bus passes to ride right to the school.

A motion was made to support the project with all of the modifications called for during the meeting process. Then, another motion was made to delay the vote for further refinements to address concerns, as those made by Dr. Brunner. There was some confusion about what to do with two motions on the floor. The first was seconded and the committee voted to pass it. The second motion "died on the floor".

The hearing downtown for this project is scheduled for March 11. It will be a virtual Department of Metropolitan Development Hearing Examiner meeting.

This is also the second time that the Monon Court project has been before the committee. This time was also for information only, no vote requested.

This project is to raze the apartment building on the northeast corner of 61st Street and the Monon Trail [K6 on map] and replace it with a 5-story apartment building.

Some of the changes from the January LUD meeting were to change the trash collection area, break up the look of the facade, preserve green space, add art to the lot and attempt to retain some affordable rent units.

51 units are in the existing building. The new building would have 186 units.

This project is requesting a rezoning that will allow developer, the City, and the BRVA to specify the zoning restrictions for the new construction. The petitioner stated that this would happen over the next few months.

The next public meeting of the committee is scheduled for Tuesday, March 23, 2021, at 6pm. Location TBD.