I am fascinated by land use and the role public and private property owners play in land-use entitlements. There is a delicate balance between private property rights and the interests of the larger community. Zoning plays an important role in preserving and protecting private property values. Zoning can also result in disappointments for neighborhoods. Often political and economic development forces act like an invisible hand to subvert the interests of neighborhoods and even the Planning Department in land use. We will soon learn for example wheather the Ropkey property owned by Kite will be redeveloped in a manner which complements our community or alters it negatively.
These photos compare the way the area has developed to the way it could have developed if fate had played its cards differently.
After the Woodstock Country Club fire in the 1914, the board briefly considered a site on Moore Road for rebuilding, according to the late Madeline Fortune Elder. That site today is the Elder’s Traders Point Farm. (Members led by J.K. Lilly and Benjamin Harrison selected a site on Crawfordsville Road that is now the Country Club of Indianapolis.) When J.K. Lilly donated his 3500 acre Eagle’s Crest estate to Purdue University in the 1950s, they briefly proposed it as a site for a particle accelerator that went to Illinois and is now known as the Fermi Lab. When a gravel pit at West 86th and I-465 came on the market in the 1980s, it was briefly considered by Sunshine Promotions as a site for an outdoor amphitheater. This venue is now located in Hamilton County and is known as the Verizon Music Center. When Pike Township Public Schools considered purchasing a site at the northwest corner of West 86th Street and Moore Road for a middle school in 2005, Sheila Fortune stepped in and acquired the site for organic farming. When the Colts came to town in the 1980s they needed a site for a training facility and the city proposed a park-owned site south of West 56th Street. The Parks Department stepped in and insisted any transfer of city-owned parks land be swapped with other city-owned land. A site between West 79th Street and Interstate 65 was identified and the city terminated the mineral rights agreement with Allied Aggregates enabling the parcel to become a nature preserve. The Traders Point Creamery farmland was designated in the 1970s as a site for a neighborhood park. A 35 acre parcel at West 79th Street and Marsh Road was briefly considered by Traders Point Christian Church in 2003. After a zoning defeat on that site the church acquired 100 acres on Indianapolis Road in Boone County. Obviously things could have been much different.