Hudnut to lead GM site panel 3.15.11

INDIANAPOLIS STAR

Bill Hudnut says the huge General Motors stamping plant flanking Downtown could lead to an urban renaissance for the Near Westside.

Raze the plant, bring in light industrial, put in parks, develop an urban mix of shops and homes like Mass Ave. -- all are potential ideas for the half-mile-long factory that GM will close this summer.

But for now, it's just not clear what comes next after one of the Midwest's biggest metal-forming plants shuts.

"It's hard to know in that area if an urban village is a good idea," said the former mayor, who oversaw Downtown's 1980s revitalization. "We just don't know yet."

Hudnut, now a faculty member in Georgetown University's real estate business school, will have a better grasp in June.

He'll lead a fast-working panel of advisers affiliated with the Urban Land Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C., that analyzes cities.

The panel will study the site and its potential for five days, then recommend what the city should do. Mayor Greg Ballard is bringing in Hudnut and the advisory panel at a cost of about $120,000.

Whatever the panel recommends, it could take a decade or more to assemble developers, arrange the financing and clean the 100-acre site near Oliver Avenue and Harding Street.

GM runs the plant, but the property is owned by its new Detroit offshoot, Motors Liquidation Co., which controls dozens of plants discarded by GM in its 2009 bankruptcy.

"This could become the Southern doorway to Downtown." Hudnut said. "But there are no preconceived notions about what to do on the property. GM is just one piece of the jigsaw to having a great Southside."

Motors Liquidation is expected to clean the land if it is contaminated. It's also looking for a buyer for the 2.3 million-square-foot plant. If no buyer appears, the city could buy the property for a small price. To come up with a possible redevelopment plan, the institute will bring in a panel of nine outsiders with no commercial interests in the city.

"You're looking to us for strategic advice. We're very honest and candid," said Tom Eitler, the institute's vice president for advisory services.

Cities such as Atlanta, Los Angeles and Kenosha, Wis., have implemented urban renewal projects suggested by the institute's panels. Since 1947, the institute has conducted similar five-day panels across the nation.

During their visit, panel members interview business and political leaders for a day, fan out in the neighborhood for interviews, then huddle for two days to develop a plan presented in near-final form on the fifth day.

Eitler and Hudnut together will choose the panel members. Panelists probably will include two developers, two designers, two market analysts and two experts in implementing change.

The GM plant is close to White River State Park but squarely in the old industrial zone.

The plant traces to an 1880s wagon-wheel maker that shifted to metal auto-body parts in the 1900s and was acquired in 1930 by GM.

The factory, which once employed 6,000, sustained generations of Indianapolis families. Now it's down to the final 480 employees.

Mark Shirels, 50, knows that transition firsthand. He owns and lives in a small house on the same street he grew up on in the Valley, the name for an early 1900s neighborhood built within sight of the GM plant.

"GM was a good neighbor," Shirels said. "I don't care what they do there next, as long as it improves the neighborhood."

Shirels worries that any gentrification such as new condos on the GM site might start with razing the Valley. "They're going to have to buy us out," he said.

Valley resident Gary Hinson, 43, agrees. "I don't think people in an expensive new condo are going to want to live by a $38,000 house," he said.

Rather than tear up the Valley, Hinson suggests the city invest in the neighborhood with low-interest remodeling loans, paving the dirt alleys, and a monorail over the White River into Downtown.

"We're really close to Victory Field and Lucas Oil," he said of Downtown's two recently built professional sports stadiums. "But we're kind of isolated in here."

Indianapolis architect James McQuiston, who is not involved with the GM site project, said it is not necessary to tear down the Valley.

"A lot of urban planners and developers would tell you many successful neighborhoods are a mix of income levels, lifestyles, occupations and businesses. That's what Indianapolis could actually use a lot more of -- like Mass Ave.," said McQuiston, referring to a revitalized Downtown commercial district.

What would make sense, McQuiston said, is a mix of new stores and affordable housing for families and college students, along with reusing parts of the GM plant for an array of high-tech and biotech businesses that need quick access to Indianapolis International Airport. On the Valley's edge are the Harding Street ramps to I-70, the freeway serving the airport about 10 miles away.

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