Indianapolis, IN
The Twisted Tale of Indianapolis’ White River
First-time visitors to Indianapolis might look at the White River and see a natural oasis in a vast urban landscape. They could spend a day paddling through some of Indianapolis’ most populated neighborhoods, but not see another person on the water. Towering oak trees line the banks for much of its path through the city, in the summer offering some needed respite from the sweltering sun. Underneath the clear water, visitors might see dozens of carp, sunfish, and smallmouth bass dart beneath their boat as a blue heron stands in the shallows, waiting for its next meal.
This idyllic scene is just the latest chapter of the White River saga, which has almost as many twists and turns as the waterway itself: Historic blunders. Massive pollution. Unchecked environmental racism. A $2 billion infrastructure project called DigIndy promises to solve many of the problems facing the river. But as the pollution decreases, city officials’ desires to use the river as an economic driver and recreational amenity continue to increase. After years of living next to polluted waterways, the questions for the surrounding residents are now: Will they be able to afford to stay and enjoy the revitalized river? And with other contaminants continuing to flow into the water unchecked, combined with centuries of neglect and abuse, just how clean is the river actually?
Known as the Wapahani by the Indigenous Miami Nation, the White River was a major reason European settlers laid the foundations of Indianapolis here more than two centuries ago. After quickly realizing the river was too shallow for shipping goods, they found other, ultimately much more damaging, ways to utilize it.
Almost from the start, Indianapolis sewage discharged directly into the river, along with industrial waste from factories and slaughterhouses. As the city grew, so did the amount of pollution, becoming a problem that generations of officials believed was too big to solve, a mindset that would continue into the 1980s and 1990s. Reports from the time described the surface of the river routinely being coated with a “black scum,” while “bubbles of gas rise to the surface,” according to late local historian Paul Mullins.
With the river too dirty to safely swim or recreate in, beginning in the 1920s the city constructed more than 20 public swimming pools—all but one of which were earmarked for white residents only. Black residents had two choices: the Douglass Park pool or Belmont Beach, the city’s unofficial Black beach. The beach was located on one of the most polluted spots on the river, so children often swam in water contaminated by dead fish and human feces.
In the 1950s, Indianapolis constructed a series of combined sewage and storm water sewers; in the ensuing decades, every time a large rain event would occur, human waste would back up and spill out into the waterways. The stench coming off the river and its tributaries—such as Fall Creek—after a rainstorm was enough to make even the strongest person retch.
After years of mostly white residents on the northside of Indianapolis complaining about their own sewage backups in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the city surreptitiously began piping more than two million gallons of sewage annually away from wealthier neighborhoods and into Fall Creek, which drained into the White River. It’s no coincidence the surrounding neighborhoods were inhabited by minority and low-income families. The racist overtones couldn’t be ignored, local historian and advocate Leon Bates told Sierra. That’s when the federal government stepped in.
A group of social- and environmental-justice advocates filed a complaint with the Environmental Protection Agency, alleging the sewage issues disproportionately affected minority residents. The EPA agreed, and in 2006, mandated Indianapolis solve the issues once and for all. In 2011, Citizens Energy Group began to oversee the $2 billion DigIndy project. Six huge tunnels totaling 28 miles would store up to 250 million gallons of wastewater before being treated at the Southport Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant. DigIndy is slated to wrap up in 2025 with the completion of the Fall Creek and Pogues Run tunnels, the last major sewage-overflow contributors to be remediated.
Residents are already seeing huge improvements. After a massive fish kill in 1999, marine life has returned to the river. Routine volunteer cleanup events help remove tires, old mattresses, and other trash recklessly discarded on and around the river. A canoe and kayak rental shop opened on the banks earlier in 2023, encouraging more people to explore the river. After nearly 200 years of being one of the most polluted waterways in the US, the White River received a C grade for overall health (in Indiana, a C student is called a Hoosier valedictorian). With E. coli levels still dangerously high, the water is clean enough for boating, but not swimming. Most of the experts who spoke to Sierra admitted it likely never will be. And yet, things are looking up enough that along with fish and birds, humans are also returning to utilize the river.
“I’m on the river three or four times a week,” says Ed Fujawa, author of “Vanished Indianapolis” and a local resident.
In November, officials broke ground on the $13 million Riverside Adventure Park, which will include boat ramps and trails for hiking and biking. And Belmont Beach has also been resurrected, this time as a pop-up park run by the city’s parks department. Talks are ongoing between the city and residents of the Haughville neighborhood about making the site a permanent park.
“[The Belmont Beach] project has always been led by Haughville residents, for Haughville residents,” says Ebony Chappel, Friends of Belmont Beach executive director. “The president of our board is a fourth-generation child of Haughville and I’m third generation … We’re aware and sensitive to concerns from others in the community, which is why we’re always including their thoughts in the forefront of everything we do.”
Some residents have expressed concern that the much-anticipated river improvements could lead to gentrification. After years of living next to the horribly polluted river, the resulting cleanup and renewal could lead to long-suffering residents being priced out of their homes. Both the city and Haughville neighborhood group are optimistic that won’t happen, but Bates remains skeptical.
“We’ve already seen people get priced out of the neighborhoods” nearby, Bates says, adding that Indianapolis should proactively make efforts to slow or stop widespread gentrification, such as freezing property taxes for long-term Haughville residents until they die or sell the property.
The city’s White River Vision Plan promises to “explore the enormous potential of our river to enhance regional vibrancy, ecological integrity, livability, and economic vitality.” Tourism and city economic officials have traveled as far away as Singapore to study how communities best use their rivers, says Carmen Lethig, Long-Range Planning Administrator for Indianapolis. In the works for riverside developments are plans for a multimillion-dollar retail and entertainment complex centered around a new soccer stadium, as well as the new corporate headquarters for a pharmaceutical company. But there doesn’t seem to be much, if any, political will to improve the water quality even further; surface level improvements seem to be enough.
One of the most polluted states in the nation, Indiana has the most miles of rivers and streams deemed too polluted to swim in of any state, according to a report by the Environmental Integrity Project. Pollution from farm runoff—which contains herbicides, fertilizers, and animal waste—and other contaminants continue to flow into the White River from upstream.
Testing should be done daily, says Sierra Club Heartland Group chair Jesse Kirkham, as the pollution levels can vary wildly day-to-day. But water-quality testing by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management in the White River and its tributaries has dropped precipitously over the years for lack of funding. Volunteers with the Sierra Club, White River Alliance, and other groups have picked up some of that slack. Considering its history, the White River’s comeback thus far is nothing short of miraculous, but there’s still a long way to go before a true happy ending can be written.
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — School’s out for the summer, and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is offering free activities designed to steer kids away from gangs and violence. The programs help young people build connections with police officers.
One long-running program continues to make an impact.
G.R.E.A.T. (Gang Resistance Education and Training) Camp has been around for nearly 30 years. This camp expands on the school-year G.R.E.A.T. curriculum, reinforcing leadership, teamwork, and conflict-resolution skills and mentorship from IMPD officers.
Dwayncate Vinson has attended camp for four years.
“It helps, like, what to do and what not to do. If you have an encounter with a police officer,” Vinson said.
He says he loves the activities like playing basketball and going to Kings Island.
During the summer, students take part in team-building activities and community service projects. They also get the chance to meet and interact with specialty units, including K-9 officers and SWAT teams.
“I would recommend this camp because it helps you stay out of trouble when you grow up, and if you want to become a police officer, it can help you with that a lot,” said Vinson.
While campers say the program is a lot of fun, organizers say it’s also about connecting kids with resources and positive role models. IMPD GREAT officer and organizer Marilyn Grunell has been spearheading the program for decades.
“We don’t want them to repeat that cycle; we want them to walk away from the violence instead of getting involved in it,” Grunell said.
The camp allows the kids to spend time with police officers one-on-one in a safe and welcoming environment.
“This is a great program we’d love for it to continue as many years as we can get it going out there for youth,” said Grunell.
The Great Camp is one of multiple programs and activities offered in the city for free. You can check more of IMPD’s programs website.
Lille Bønne brings coffee, community to historic Fletcher Place church
Originally built for a small Danish Lutheran congregation in 1872, the church has new life as a café and community center with nods to its Danish roots.
Fletcher Place’s historic Danish church, built in 1872 by a small Danish Lutheran congregation, still has its original stained-glass windows and Indiana poplar hardwood floors. But not everything about the storied building has gone unchanged. The church’s coffee hour, for one, has made significant strides over the last century and a half.
Four years since its last worship service, the building has reopened as a public café and community center called Lille Bønne Community Living Room. Danish for “little bean,” Lille Bønne functions as a casual coffee, breakfast and lunch spot as well as a classroom, live music venue, yoga studio or whatever else the neighborhood asks of it.
“At the risk of trying to do and be too much for everyone,” co-founder Abby Maci Reckard said, “that’s kind of the goal.”
Reckard, who grew up on the northwest side, has lived in or near Fletcher Place for the last dozen years. She recalls taking walks through the neighborhood on summer evenings and hearing the mighty breath of the pipe organ spilling out through the church’s brick walls. In 2021 the church’s most recent tenant, the Church of Jesus Christ Apostolic Faith, announced it would move out with no sign of a successor.
At the time, Reckard was working from home while raising two pre-school-age kids with her husband, increasingly feeling like she was one stilted video call away from a Zoom-induced fugue state. She joked about repurposing the church for any number of less-than-holy pursuits, but behind those quips was a very real hunger for more genuine human connection. A few days after the property at 701 E. McCarty St. hit the market, Reckard went to her friend, neighbor and real estate agent Will Lonnemann with a 20-page business plan and the question, “How do we buy this church?”
The city eventually rezoned the church’s land as residential and its price dropped significantly amid a lack of buyers. With help from investor friend Phil Golobish, Reckard and Lonnemann paid around $235,000 for the building in 2023. In the more than three years since, they have poured a comparable sum into renovations.
Today, the former sanctuary houses an unusually charming café that seemingly answers the age-old question of what might have happened if Martin Luther got really into third-wave coffee. Lille Bønne sources its kaffebønner from longtime Fletcher Place roaster Calvin Fletcher, which guests can drink alongside a small food menu curated by chef Peter Blum, formerly of Duos Indy.
Blum’s offerings hit many of the familiar café beats − sandwiches, grab-and-go salads and a rotating soup of the day − with a few notable curveballs. One I tried during Lille Bønne’s soft opening was the smørrebrød, currently the café’s foremost nod to Scandinavian cuisine. Literally translated to “butter and bread” in Danish, smørrebrød refers to a vast array of open-faced sandwiches topped with anything from roast beef to hard-boiled eggs and whole prawns.
The debut smørrebrød at Lille Bønne featured tender shingles of sliced chicken dressed up with pungent pesto, a peppery scattering of arugula and bitey crescents of pickled red onion, all neatly pressed atop a slice of crackly rye toast and the requisite slathering of butter. The verdant pesto brings a nice zip to a cuisine not exactly famed for its explosive flavors, and I admire the architectural prowess required to keep the smørrebrød from collapsing into a meaty salad with one big crouton immediately upon tooth impact.
At $13, the smørrebrød is more likely to satisfy your intrigue than your hunger. That said, Lille Bønne does offer heftier sandwiches like roast beef and provolone or roast turkey and brie for $10. The house-made chicken salad sandwich ($13), served on a croissant from Leviathan Bakehouse, could range from a classic chicken-and-bacon situation to a turmeric-tinged curry chicken salad any given week.
For those with dietary restrictions, Lille Bønne offers a daily vegan soup ($5.50 to $9) as well as a vegan sandwich served between gluten-free slices of Indianapolis-based Native bread. The vaguely Levantine roasted tofu and hummus sandwich I picked up from the café’s grab-and-go case made me yearn for more plant-based alternatives on the menu, if only because Blum and I appear to have similarly extreme views on proper cumin dosage.
Lille Bønne’s menu is somewhat limited in scope and for good reason. Preserving the church’s historic qualities meant complying with its architects’ original vision, one that didn’t necessarily allow for an elaborate food and beverage operation. A small oven, a dishwasher, a pair of sinks and not much else constitute Lille Bønne’s kitchen, if you can call it that.
“That’s a closet,” Blum said of his new digs.
Since the pandemic closure of Duos, Blum has operated his Front Row Catering company out of a commercial kitchen space in the Carmel Palladium, which is where he now preps the bulk of Lille Bønne’s food items. Joining Blum to oversee the precious few square feet of café space is hospitality and events manager Ariel Hendrickson, who also serves as the co-owner of J’Adore with Bluebeard pastry chef Youssef Boudarine.
Not all Danish, but Dane-ish
Part of Hendrickson’s job at Lille Bønne is putting together its roster of alcoholic beverages, available throughout the day but which take center stage as the café transitions into more of a wine bar in the evenings. Most of the roughly 10 wines cost between $8 and $13 per glass, and you can also sample a selection of Danish meads ($6 for a 2-ounce pour), each with appropriately Nordic-sounding names like Odin’s Skull and Viking’s Blood.
For a different kind of liquid calories, Lille Bønne blends up a handful of 20-ounce smoothies ($9) that straddle the line between health food and dessert via straw. You can fortify your smoothie with a scoop of collagen or vegan protein powder for $1.50, which I respect as an attempt to meet the moment even if the furthest thing from my mind when I’m sitting in a beautiful historic building is whether my smoothie can get me absolutely jacked.
In the dessert/sweet breakfast category, customers can purchase pastries from Leviathan and cookies from Lemon Tree, the baking business Reckard and her mother, Liz, founded in 2011.
The hodgepodge of Lille Bønne’s food and drink offerings amount to what Blum called Danish-influenced, but not an attempt at a direct translation.
“Because we can’t claim any authenticity,” Blum said.
Indeed, none of Lille Bønne’s founders have any Danish heritage. While renovating Lille Bønne, Reckard consulted with Danish American singer-songwriter Anita Lerche, who was recently installed as Indianapolis’ Honorary Consul of Denmark, to better understand the culture of the people who constructed the church.
Historical records suggest only about 300 Danes lived in Indianapolis in the mid-to-late 19th century, making the church crucial as a gathering space for the small immigrant population.
Reckard and Lonnemann tapped Indianapolis-based Bohall Design and Fabrication to maintain as much of the church’s original character as possible, transforming pews into tables, shelves and countertops. The railing of the balcony that overlooks the sanctuary-turned-café space previously served as a communion rail, and a patron sipping coffee at the bar can look down and see the cross-sections of square-cut steel nails not used in construction since the late 1800s. Reckard was adamant that the crack in the plaster beneath the church’s highest window remain unfilled.
“There’s little nuances throughout the building that honor the history and the people who built it,” Lonnemann said.
Though the Holy Rosary-Danish Church Historic District may not be as tightly knit as it was 150 years ago, many of Lille Bønne’s Fletcher Place neighbors had a hand in its creation. In addition to coffee beans, Calvin Fletcher supplied Lille Bønne with secondhand equipment, and co-owner Jeff Litsey gave the staff a crash course in running a coffee program. Chilly Water co-owner Dan Kryzwicki helped construct the community center’s patio, and you’ll find a few of the brewery’s beers in Lille Bønne’s fridges.
In addition to yoga sessions, language courses and arts performances, Reckard plans to bring in experts to hold free classes on subjects like financial planning, car maintenance and how to combat food scarcity. These classes are one way Reckard hopes to benefit her community while managing a for-profit business. While she considers herself staunchly anti-capitalist, Reckard recognizes that it’s a lot easier to provide for your neighbor when you aren’t buried in debt, and renovating a historic building isn’t cheap.
“Money exists,” she said. “Business exists. We cannot escape that system, so how can we make it as ethical and sustainable and helpful as possible?”
There are no crucifixes or hymnals in sight at Lille Bønne. But Reckard, whose family attends a different church downtown, said she appreciates the ways religious institutions can offer a sense of belonging and aid to those in need. In that sense, updates to the bread and wine selection notwithstanding, there’s still communion to be found at the old Danish church.
Lille Bønne is located at 701 E. McCarty St. It is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday.
Contact dining reporter Bradley Hohulin at bhohulin@indystar.com. You can follow him on Instagram @BradleyHohulin and stay up to date with Indy dining news by signing up for the Indylicious newsletter.
Indianapolis, IN
When is 60th annual Indianapolis Strawberry Festival? Date, time, strawberry shortcake prices
This is the holy sanctuary of strawberry shortcake
Ice cream, whipped cream and strawberries top 20,000 homemade shortcakes at the annual Strawberry Festival on Indianapolis’ Monument Circle.
Indianapolis Star
Strawberry shortcake lovers should grab their forks and head to Downtown Indianapolis for the 60th annual Indy Strawberry Festival Thursday.
Strawberry Festival Indiana 2026: When is Indy Strawberry Festival in Downtown Indianapolis?
The Indy Strawberry Festival runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. June 11 or until supplies run out.
Indianapolis Strawberry Festival 2026: Where is the Indy Strawberry Festival?
The Indy Strawberry Festival is held on Monument Circle in Downtown Indianapolis.
2026 Indy Strawberry Festival prices: How much does strawberry shortcake cost at Indianapolis Strawberry Festival?
An Indy Strawberry Festival shortcake costs $10 for “The Works,” a container packed with strawberries, ice cream, homemade shortcakes and whipped topping. Cash and credit cards are accepted. Be prepared to wait in line.
Indy Strawberry Festival origin: How did Indianapolis Strawberry Festival start at Christ Church Cathedral?
Christ Church Cathedral Women will make nearly 20,000 homemade shortcakes, and use 12,000 pounds of strawberries during the festival, where sellouts are not uncommon for the 300-plus volunteers.
According to the festival website, the book “The Little Church on the Circle,” written by Eli Lilly, spoke of Christ Church Cathedral using strawberries to raise money since 1864.
The first official Indy Strawberry Festival began with 100 homemade shortcakes sold on the lawn in 1965.
The women set up their stand on Thursday to make the most of J.C. Penney department store hours. Two hours later, the women had sold every last shortcake.
The event − held annually on the second Thursday in June − helps Christ Church Cathedral raise more than $70,000 each year, where 95% of the profits benefit local, national and international nonprofit outreach groups.
Chris Sims is a trending reporter at Midwest Connect Gannett. Follow him on Twitter: @ChrisFSims.
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