Q&A: Indy’s new DMD director talks about housing, downtown and more

Newly-named Department of Metropolitan Development Director Megan Vukusich is no stranger to Indianapolis. 

Right out of undergraduate work at Indiana University Bloomington, Vukusich took a job with the Indianapolis Department of Business and Neighborhood Services. There, she said she got a “crash course” on the fundamentals of local government and real estate development before taking on a city planner role in Fishers.

She served first as a city planner, then for nearly three years as the department’s director. Finally, the 30-year-old Indianapolis resident decided it was time to work where she lived.

Vukusich joined the Hogsett administration as deputy director of strategy and planning about six months ago, prior to the departures of then-DMD Director Rusty Carr and former Deputy Mayor Scarlett Andrews late last year.

She’s now taken on the DMD position while getting her master’s degree in data analytics at Butler University.

IBJ spoke with Vukusich a week into her role. Read on for a transcript that has been edited for length and clarity.

When you look at this role as a whole, is there anything that you hope to tackle first?

So there are a lot of things that the department is already working on that are priorities that I want to help support our team in accomplishing those goals. Things that are already underway that the team has set up a really good foundation to tackle—some really important issues for our community—would be affordable housing, homelessness, a downtown resiliency strategy.

We know that the ecosystem of how downtowns function post-COVID looks a little bit different. And so how do we create that resiliency strategy for the state’s capital and making sure that the businesses and the residents here can can thrive?

Those are some of the initiatives that DMD is already doing that I want to make sure that I’m supporting in my role.

IBJ has made a lot of the $9 billion [pipeline of investment] that’s going into downtown, but are there any other areas of the city that you’re excited to see be invested in?

I think downtown has been such a focus just because of the office environment post-COVID. But there’s also a lot of historic structures that need some reinvesting in, so I think that’s been the focus of downtown. But there are other areas, of course, that are a priority. 

When we think about the Castleton area, the Castleton Revitalization Plan, that’s something that’s been a priority for DMD. We have projects all over the city, so DMD, it’s not necessarily just our economic development strategy, but it’s also projects that aren’t receiving maybe incentives that are occurring in all these different areas of the city. …

We have real estate activity that’s happening on the south side, on the east side, on the west side, with the West Washington Corridor Study that we recently completed with Develop Indy.

You’d mentioned affordable housing, and there’s some progress happening on the low-barrier shelter. What are some things that excite you when it comes to permanent supportive or affordable housing in the city? And what are some things that might be challenges?

The construction market, I’ll call it right now, is pretty challenging with interest rates. So when you’re thinking about creating housing out of new construction, there’s just a lot of financial barriers that can prevent that from happening. So that is a big challenge right now, and our resources are a bit constrained in how we can help support that affordable housing in the city. 

Some things that get me excited are some really creative strategies around how to utilize existing structures or existing residential units to fill those vacancies with people who need housing—and specifically to attainable housing.

So there’s what’s called master leasing, which is really a strategy that other communities have used but that we’re also utilizing to make sure that we’re placing people who maybe don’t have homes into homes that exist already in our community.

You spent 6-1/2 years with Fishers, almost seven. What can you take from that role? And there are probably ways in which Fishers and Indianapolis differ when it comes to city planning. How do you view that challenge? 

It’s hard to compare them just because [the cities] so different in their age and then also in their population size. … I learned a lot of leadership skills in that role, just because I came in as a city planner and I took on a management position that was new for me as a young professional.

The fundamentals of city planning, they will be applied differently in both places. It’s a different political environment. It’s a different environment overall.

So I would say, the takeaways from my position at Fishers were how I engage with the community and listening to the community and knowing really what my role is in the larger space of how local government functions.

When you talk about the political environment, how do you anticipate that’ll be different here versus in Fishers?

Well, it’s different than in that it’s just larger. The structure of how the boards and commissions are set up for planning and zoning differ from I would say a small city… versus a larger city like Indianapolis.

 The legislative processes we’re required to follow are different. There’s different rules for Indianapolis versus other areas. It’s different in the size, the types of projects we’re working on, the type of development we’re seeing.

I feel like there’s a lot of excitement in the idea of creating public spaces downtown with the All-Star Game having just happened, and before that, there was the first half of the Spark pilot. How do you hope to continue that strategy? Do you have ideas or ways in which you’re passionate about public spaces specifically?

We have a division with an administrator that oversees the planning and public spaces. It’s Iris Dillon, and she has done an incredible job of partnering with our community partners on the Spark. It was a very successful program last year. We’re excited to continue that this year. We’re investing in the City Market, which is a public space. We’ve got Lugar Plaza, the canal downtown.

So really, just continuing the efforts that she’s already been doing and putting in place and supporting that and seeing how we can make sure that those are all connected to some larger vision for the downtown resiliency strategy.

How do you feel that the directors that came before you have helped lay the groundwork for what you’re going to continue to carry out? 

I’m very fortunate to be walking into a role where my predecessors have created a really strong team. We have such a great team here at Indianapolis and I’m just so fortunate to be a part of this group. 

We’ve got some really major economic development deals and redevelopment activity that are happening downtown, with the Circle Centre Mall redevelopment, and we have the new hotel project. So they really laid the foundation for a lot of work that’s to come, and I’m really excited to be a part of the implementation of those visions.

What made you decide to get your master’s in data analytics?

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to support my recommendations that I’m putting forward to elected officials. And I like to make sure that one, I know what I’m talking about and what I’m saying is backed in fact and information.

I think there’s a lot of decisions that are made using data these days, and I think it’s really important that the people putting forward recommendations to our policymakers and decision makers have a really good understanding of how that data is gathered, how its analyzed, how it’s used. What isn’t included in the data—that’s even more of an important question to ask. And so I just really wanted to be well educated myself, making sure I’m putting myself in a position to know what I’m talking about when I’m putting forward some pretty important policy considerations. That was kind of the “why” behind that program. 

It’s going very well. I’m a numbers person. I’m a stats person, so I really enjoy being able to use my brain in that way while I’m not at work.

I would say with this new position it’s certainly an undertaking. I don’t have a lot of free time, but I’m really enjoying it. And yeah, I’m excited for graduation.

Is there any piece of your previous job with the city of Indianapolis or your job in Fishers that you found to be the most fun or the most fascinating?

I thoroughly enjoy working with a group of people to accomplish a common goal. I get a lot of satisfaction out of that. And so I think working in the public sector, that’s what we get to do every day. … I think just as my time working in local government for a big city and then also midsize city, it’s the community partnerships, that’s the same no matter where you go—if you do it correctly. I think that’s probably what I most enjoy of that work.