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Indianapolis begins demolition of long-troubled Towne and Terrace housing complex

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Indianapolis begins demolition of long-troubled Towne and Terrace housing complex


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The city of Indianapolis has started tearing down eight vacant buildings at Towne and Terrace, a blighted housing complex on the far east side, and has paid to relocate a total of 120 households to allow for demolition of the entire site by early 2026.

Built in the 1960s, the townhome complex near 42nd Street and Post Road devolved into a hotbed for drug dealing and crime in recent years, in part because of mismanagement by prior homeowners association leaders, the city says. City officials began buying up the complex’s 32 buildings following a 2022 settlement that ended a nine-year legal battle with the HOA, Towne and Terrace Corp.

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The city has set aside $14.4 million to buy and demolish 32 buildings and relocate about 120 households at Towne and Terrace. Demolition started Monday on eight buildings, and 23 remaining properties will come down throughout 2025, according to Aryn Schounce, senior policy adviser to Mayor Joe Hogsett. The first building was demolished in 2023.

“This demolition is more than just removing buildings,” State Sen. La Keisha Jackson, whose district includes the Towne and Terrace site, said at a press conference Monday in nearby Mt. Carmel Church. “It’s about restoring hope and assuring safety for the families who lived here.”

Once the complex is razed, Schounce told IndyStar, officials will plan the future of the site in tandem with the neighboring Oaktree Apartments, another property the city acquired and demolished. Schounce said the two sites work better together as one 38-acre mixed-use redevelopment project, rather than two separate smaller ones.

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Hogsett said police have received fewer calls for service to the housing complex since the city demolished one building last year. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department also installed four surveillance cameras at the site and increased patrols of the area.

“We look forward to continued improvements in public safety as more buildings come down over the coming months,” Hogsett said.

How the city is relocating Towne and Terrace residents

Officials expect the 20 households remaining on the site to find new homes by this spring, with the help of employees in the Department of Metropolitan Development.

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Under the federal Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Act, the city offered subsidies to tenants so they could pay the same monthly rent as they did at Towne and Terrace for the next three and a half years. For owner-occupants, the city had to pay the difference between the cost of any new comparable home and their home at Towne and Terrace. The city also reimbursed moving expenses.

Liz Durden, a Towne and Terrace resident since 1989 and the current HOA president, said she was reluctant to leave when the city first shared plans to raze all 32 buildings last April.

In the following months, however, Durden found a more expensive single-family home on the far east side, and the city paid for the difference. Now, the 62-year-old grandmother said she owns a better home without any monthly mortgage payments.

Although the process was stressful and she’s sad to see the place where she made so many memories destroyed, Durden has embraced the change.

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“I’m real emotional about it, but it gets better and better and better,” Durden said, “because when I walk through the door of my new home, I love it.”

Email IndyStar Housing, Growth and Development Reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @jordantsmith09





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Indianapolis, IN

Father dies, 2 children injured after car plunges into Indianapolis pond

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Father dies, 2 children injured after car plunges into Indianapolis pond


INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A car went into a pond early Tuesday on the northeast side of Indianapolis, leaving a man dead and two children injured.

Investigators say the man drove his car into a pond off of Pendleton Way, near I-465 and Pendleton Pike, just after midnight.

Four Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers entered the water to rescue the man and the children, Indianapolis Fire Department Chief Rita Reith said.

The children are a 9-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl, and the driver was their father, according to Reith.

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Officers at the scene say the man and the girl were believed to be in cardiac arrest and that they started CPR.

The man was transported to a local hospital, where he died shortly after arrival. The children were taken to local hospitals, where both were said to be stable.

One IMPD officer was fully submerged in the pond during the rescue attempt. He was taken to Eskenazi Hospital for evaluation and is in good condition, according to Reith.

Reith says investigators don’t know why the father’s car went into the pond.

A police investigation is underway. No other information was immediately available.

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Meet The Indiana University Indianapolis Librarian Billy Tringali

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Meet The Indiana University Indianapolis Librarian Billy Tringali


 

Photo by Michael Schrader

BILLY TRINGALI’S OFFICE at IU Indianapolis feels more like a Comic-Con booth than an academic’s hidey hole. Posters of saucer-eyed anime and manga heroes cover every vertical surface, and memorabilia line every horizontal one. “It’s like an open-air museum,” Tringali says. “There’s not an inch of wall that’s not covered.”

Tringali is IU’s instruction librarian for undergraduate health sciences, which sounds pretty buttoned up. Until he starts talking about what it entails. “I teach students to hunt things down,” he says. “I do basic AI literacy training. Essentially explaining that you don’t just trust what a chatbot says, because it’s probably lying to you.”

But that’s only part of the story. In addition to his day job, Tringali is also founder and editor of the Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, which makes him arguably one of the world’s leading voices in the scholarly study of the subject.Anime has exploded in the U.S., fueled in part by its omnipresence on streaming services such as Netflix. And manga with titles like My Hero Academia and One Piece are wildly popular among younger readers. Well, not just younger readers. Plenty of grown-ups read them too.

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Tringali says people are attracted to anime and manga for simple reasons: accessibility and variety. There’s decades’ worth of materials to read and watch, with subject matter ranging from horror, to adventure, to esoteric philosophic ramblings—sometimes all three in the same work. “Whatever interests you, it exists in anime, and there is a massive backlog for you to explore,” Tringali says. “Anime and manga can be powerful teaching tools for enhancing cultural understanding and improving language skills.”

In addition to reading and watching pretty much everything in the anime/manga world, he’s also analyzed this corner of the pop culture universe in great detail. His journal is the only open access academic periodical that exclusively publishes works discussing the worlds of anime, manga, cosplay, and their fans. What began as a graduate school project now attracts scholars and aficionados from around the world. Every year, Tringali helps run a standing-room-only academic conference at Anime Expo in Los Angeles. “We pack the house,” he says. “Fans are really, really hungry for academic analysis of popular culture.”

His influence is such that within the community he’s known as the anime apostle. He got hooked on the genre early, spending his childhood sitting on his grandmother’s “horrendously purple” living room rug watching endless episodes of Pokémon. When he realized his local library didn’t offer manga, he established a substantial collection simply by donating books from his own trove. “I watched them all being cataloged and thought, Oh, this is going to be a huge problem for me,” Tringali recalls.

Today, his enthusiasm burns just as hot as it did during his Jigglypuff-besotted youth. He channels his devotion by helping students see not only the academic value in his favorite pop culture genre but also the importance of other subcultures. For instance, he’s developing a student sewing circle for cosplay fans who dress up as characters to learn how to sew their own costumes. For the anime apostle, it’s all about spreading the word.





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More big temperature swings this week

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More big temperature swings this week


Our Monday brings clouds, but we’re also expecting many hours of sunshine to brighten things up. Winds turn more out of the west, which will allow us to warm temperatures back above average. Afternoon highs reach into the lower 40s.

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The “warm-up” doesn’t last too long. A midweek system brings the chance for rain and snow showers followed by more typical January temperatures.

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Indianapolis Weather Forecast:
Monday: Sun and clouds. High: 42°
Tuesday: Mostly cloudy. Showers possible. High: 50°
Wednesday: Mostly cloudy. Scattered rain/snow showers. High: 42°

Indianapolis 7-Day Weather Forecast

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