Plan to fund purchase of Broad Ripple Family Center upsets Midtown leaders

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Midtown community leaders are upset with a plan to use money from the Midtown Tax Increment Finance District to fund the city’s purchase of the Broad Ripple Community Center.

Michael McKillip, executive director of Midtown Indy, says the plan was not done in good faith with the community leaders, who helped to create the tax-increment finance district.

TIF districts are typically used in Indiana redirect all tax dollars for the redevelopment of an area.

McKillip says the original purpose of the Midtown district was to use the money collected for needs that the community identifies. The Midtown TIF District has been active for 11 years.

“The community has worked to bring grocery stores to food deserts, to support health care opportunities, to support infrastructure gaps and socioeconomic dividing lines like 38th Street,” McKillip said Tuesday. “And if this proposal moves forward, it will be siphoned out and not available for any of those other community outcomes.”

Instead, the city is trying to spend $26 million to purchase the Broad Ripple Family Center before it has to start paying $1 million a year in rent on the facility.

McKillip says the city wants to use $22 million from the TIF. The district will only exist for 25 years, so, he says, buying the family center will dry up a lot of resources that community leaders earmarked for other projects.

“None of the residents or neighborhoods are opposed to the city acquiring the Broad Ripple Family Center,” McKillip said. “The frustration comes when, after three years of understanding the obligation, it solicited itself to buy the Broad Ripple Family Center, that the determination was we don’t have another solution. We’re going to take your money.”

Community leaders say the money would be better spent to redevelop 38th Street to make it a safer area to walk, bike and drive.

McKillip said, “38th Street has three of the region’s 50 most dangerous intersections. If you walk or bike 38th Street, you will not find one intersection with pedestrian infrastructure that is fully functional.”

McKillip says the model where money is spent in Broad Ripple and then additional money is spent in another area of Midtown to help Broad Ripple development has worked in the past.

“Well, the very first TIF bond issued demonstrated the model for how this TIF was supposed to work,” McKillip said. “About $5 million went to a grocery store and multifamily housing project in Broad Ripple called the Coil, and $1 million was spun off that project and came across the street to Tarkington Park.”

This proposal was before the Metropolitan and Economic Development Committee on Monday but was tabled until the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.

No one from the council was available Tuesday to comment on this story.

Midtown leaders have been encouraging community members to contact their city councilors if they have opinions on the spending.