The March public meeting of the Broad Ripple Village Association's Land Use and Development (LUD) committee was held virtually as a Zoom meeting on March 23, 2021. About 25 were in attendance.

There were originally four items on the agenda, but that was reduced to three (in bold below) before the meeting (All images included here were presented at the public meeting.)

This proposal is to add a 2nd floor deck and new facade to the existing Kayak Pools building on the south west corner of 65th and Ferguson Street.

After a long discussion with the committee, the architect agreed to reconfigure the sidewalks to fit better with the properties to the east and west along 65th Street. They will return to the next LUD meeting to present the new plans.

This proposal is to rezone the building on the south west corner of 66th and Cornell Avenue. The Sapling School, currently at 838 E. 65th Street [C4 on map], would renovate the building, add fencing and a playground and move in.

The petitioner agreed to look into reducing the size of the 66th Street side deck to accommodate a new sidewalk along the south side of 66th Street.

The LUD committee agreed to vote electronically on this petition after receiving the sidewalk updates.

Tom Healy and Joshua John presented the status of the RiverWalk project that is planned to connect Broad Ripple Park to the Monon Trail. The RiverWalk Task Force first met four years ago to rekindle the desire of the connector path. Estimates at the time showed that $1.5 million would be needed. A Department of Public Works (DPW) Neighborhood Infrastructure grant was secured that would match up to $764,000 of funds raised by the Village. About $100k was raised to start things off.

Since then, DPW announced the Broad Ripple Avenue drainage project. It would involve tearing up the street from College to Primrose. The groups worked together and devised a way to combine the drainage project with the RiverWalk project to minimize street excavating and to lower the costs. This brought the Riverwalk estimate down to $1.1 million. The fund raising to achieve the matching grant dollars is nearing the goal. The task force plans to reach out to the community at the Spring BRVA meeting to complete the goal.

The two projects are planned to start in Spring of 2022 and finish in that Summer. Part of that project will include moving the bike lane from the driving lane of Broad Ripple Avenue into the median-protected RiverWalk pathway and straighting the Monon Trail crossing.

The next public meeting of the committee is scheduled for Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at 6pm. Location TBD.