Marsh to anchor massive new downtown development

A local developer plans to build a Marsh grocery store and hundreds of apartments in a massive project that would replace a block and a half of surface parking lots in the northwest quadrant of downtown Indianapolis.

The plan by Flaherty & Collins Properties calls for 487 apartments, the grocery store, a parking garage and additional retail space on properties bounded by Michigan Street, Capitol Avenue, Vermont Street and Indiana Avenue.

Much of the land needed for the development—dubbed "Block 400"—is owned by locally based OneAmerica Financial Partners Inc., which uses it for employee parking. To make way for the development, the city would foot the roughly $13 million cost of building a 930-space parking garage for OneAmerica at the northwest corner of Illinois and New York streets.

The total cost of the development, including the city's contribution from tax-increment financing district revenues, will be about $85 million. The deal will not include a property-tax abatement.

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard, Marsh Supermarkets CEO Joe Kelley and officials with Flaherty & Collins announced details of the project at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.

The new grocery store would be a welcome amenity for the neighborhood and nearby IUPUI campus, and it represents a significant milestone for the Fishers-based supermarket chain. It would be the first new Marsh store since 2004.

Marsh also will continue to operate its location in the Lockerbie neighborhood, a top performer for the chain.

The first step in the project would be to build the OneAmerica parking garage, which would include a skywalk across New York Street to the OneAmerica Tower.

Flaherty's plans call for two mixed-use buildings and a parking garage. The Marsh store would be built at the southwest corner of Michigan Street and Capitol Avenue.

Also included in the project is a triangle-shaped parcel bordered by Indiana Avenue, Senate Avenue and Michigan Street where Flaherty had planned a second phase of the Cosmopolitan on the Canal, the company's $33-million mixed-use project immediately to the north.

A groundbreaking for the new project is scheduled for the summer.

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Visit the Property Lines blog for more about the project, including a rendering.