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Indianapolis Public Schools has gone back to the drawing board on a redevelopment strategy for John Marshall High School after the city of Indianapolis earlier this year backtracked on its plan to buy the east-side property for a multifaceted community hub.
The school at 10101 E. 38th St. closed in 2018 after being declared surplus inventory by the IPS board. A group called the John Marshall Collaborative worked out a plan that would convert the building into a hub offering educational and training space, support services, transitional housing and retail.
In a proposal endorsed by IPS and community members in 2022, the hub would offer educational programming and employment certification courses from Ivy Tech Community College; a logistics training program and food distributions from Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana; neighborhood-based support services from the Community Alliance of the Far Eastside; a business development space from Next Studios; and wellness programs offered by Eskenazi Health.
The first step in the rehab would be for the city to buy the school once plans were finalized. But the Department of Metropolitan Development quietly withdrew its $725,000 offer to buy the building over the summer after determining repairs and improvements to the building made the project a larger—and more expensive—challenge than originally anticipated.
“Throughout assessment and feasibility planning for the project, it became apparent to all parties that deferred maintenance on the building would be a larger hurdle than originally anticipated and would make the redevelopment as proposed not financially viable,” DMD spokesperson Lucas Gonzalez said in written responses to emailed question from IBJ. “Therefore, the city, the development team and other potential funders chose to not move forward with the project.”
The city and IPS had been working behind the scenes on the proposal for more than a year with IFF Indianapolis—a branch of a Chicago-based not-for-profit focused on community-centered development—and Indianapolis consulting firm Thomas P. Miller and Associates.
The partnership proposed an extensive redevelopment called the John Marshall Opportunity Hub, with the city set to buy the building “on the condition that we saw a financially viable path for the building’s stabilization and day-to-day operations,” Gonzalez said.
Any reuse of the property was expected to be costly. Initial IPS estimates said the site posed at least $17.5 million in repairs and deferred maintenance, including replacement of the HVAC system, most windows and the roof of the school building. A more recent maintenance report from the district, however, pegged the cost far higher—around $44 million.
IBJ first reported on the proposed redevelopment from IFF and Thomas P. Miller in August 2023, along with detailing the potential impact it could have on the far-east side of Indianapolis.
The project was expected to utilize a $1.58 million grant from the Indiana Economic Development Corp., which is still being finalized. Those dollars now are earmarked for other efforts for development on the far-east side of the city, Gonzalez said.
IPS is now looking to offload the building to another buyer that would either reuse the building or complete a full-scale redevelopment of the 40-acre property.
Zach Mulholland, executive director of operations for the district, said IPS does not plan to require that bids for the property incorporate retention of the 350,000-square-foot building.
“At this point, we really want to make sure that in terms of what’s possible at that site that we make that as flexible and open as possible, so that we really get a full view” of available options, he said.
Mulholland said the district is in early discussions with real estate advisers to finalize the process through which bids can be submitted to IPS. That process, which will include the creation of a new website highlighting details about the property, is expected to be completed within the next month.
He said the district hopes to accept bids and proposals on the property before the end of the year. The public process could result in IPS selecting a new owner for the school by late 2024 or early 2025.
“We want to make sure that, as a public institution, we’re doing everything we can to work with our state and local legislators and others to make sure that we’re casting a wide net,” Mulholland said. “We want this to be a transformative project that changes Marion County for the next 50 years. So we want to make sure that we’re doing everything … in a responsible, transparent way.”
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Demolition is the only sensible solution for this old and poor designed albatross!
Amen. Scrape it and build something that generates jobs and taxes on the site.
I agree the building needs to be completely demolished as it doesn’t look like it’s economically feasible to even bring it up to standards.
The other option is to declare is as surplus and give away tax payer assets for $1 to some for profit charter school that only opens up long enough to take possession and then unload the property at a nice profit. At least I think that is why the Republican state legislature set up the law the way they did.