INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A community meeting took place on Indy’s westside over what’s threatening to be more than a traffic nightmare.

The planned full closure of the 16th Street bridge could put livelihoods and lives at risk, community advocate Aaron Williams with the Keep the Bridge Open Coalition said.

“And not to mention the countless number of businesses, we’ve calculated over 125 million dollars within a quarter mile of this bridge that generate revenue that are going to be directly impacted,” Williams said.

The aging bridge is scheduled for a full replacement this summer. But in order to do it, the city’s department of public works says it will have to be fully closed to traffic in both directions, for two years. The closure recommendation was first mentioned in a scoping report dating back to 2016.

“It’s been pretty consistent that the recommendation has been a full closure based off of what that first scoping report said,” Kyle Bloyd with the Indianapolis Department of Public Works told News 8.

But residents want to know why the critical span that connects downtown to the city’s Haughville neighborhood can’t be reduced to one lane while the reconstruction takes place, allowing some traffic to get through, instead of none at all.

“We’ve seen time and time again, Lafayette Road, West Kessler Boulecard. We’ve seen where a bridge has been open with one lane in each direction,” Williams said.

It’s a question the owner of Longs Bakery, a longtime Indianapolis favorite, has.
The bakery is walking distance to the bridge, and could see a staggering revenue loss tied to even one day of the bridge being closed, let alone two years.

“We really rely on foot traffic and 500 to 1000 customers a day that are impacted by a bridge they can’t get around or a 10th street bottleneck, that’s our biggest concern,” Carl Long, owner of Longs Bakery said.

The bridge opened in the late 1940s. The Indiana Department of Public Works says there’s no record of any significant rehab effort on the bridge since that time.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indianapolis police on Tuesday asked for the public’s help to find a missing 26-year-old man with autism.

Tyrese Pepper was described as being 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighing 150 pounds. He was wearing a dark-colored jacket with a Colts logo and navy jogger pants.

He was last seen riding a navy-and-white bicycle eastbound on East 21st Street, according to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

IMPD says Pepper is nonverbal and autistic.

If located, please call 911 immediately.

The home of a councilman in Indianapolis was shot at early Monday in what local police said was an “isolated, targeted incident.”

The incident came less than a week after the Indianapolis Metropolitan Development Commission voted 6 to 2 on April 1 to approve rezoning to allow the construction of a data center.

Ron Gibson, a Democrat who represents District 8 on the council, spoke out in support of the rezoning and the efforts to build the data center in his district.

“Earlier this morning, between approximately 12:45 a.m. and 12:50 a.m., just a few hours after Easter Sunday, an individual fired 13 rounds at the front door of my home and left a note on my doorstep that read, ‘No Data Centers,’” Gibson said in a Monday statement.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said it was called to the home on Monday morning, and officers found evidence that gunshots had been fired at the house. Police said no injuries were reported.

“I understand that public service can bring strong opinions and disagreement, but violence is never the answer, especially when it puts families at risk,” Gibson said in his statement.

The Indianapolis-Marion County City-County Council did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

The data center is set to be built by Metrobloks, a data center developer based in Los Angeles. Following the vote last week, Gibson shared a statement on social media promoting the project.

“Metrobloks has the potential to bring significant investment, create jobs, and generate long-term tax revenue that supports infrastructure, housing, and essential services,” the statement said.

A data center boom is happening across the US, with companies pouring billions into building the infrastructure to keep up with demand in the era of AI. The data centers have faced increased opposition, with critics pointing to the high resource costs, from water to energy, and other issues like noise pollution, as detailed in a Business Insider investigation.