Popping the champagne to celebrate their new home It wasn’t even a year ago that David and Natalie Atwell would have laughed at the suggestion that they could be homeowners. After all, their collective income was barely enough to keep them in their 500-square-foot apartment. Then, much to their delighted surprise, they found out […]

Indianapolis, share our joy!  “ArtPlace America announces today the award of a $100,000 grant to the Harrison Center for the Arts (HCA) for the City Gallery. City Gallery was chosen from over 1,200 applications as an exceptional example of creative placemaking.”   ArtPlace America is a collaboration of leading national and regional foundations, banks and […]

  The reason I invest (primarily my time) in my neighborhood is that I am passionate about developing connections with my neighbors.  I grew up in central Iowa where my family lived in three houses on the same street because of such great neighbors. I want that to be the case in our neighborhood -where […]

In the 1970s, the neighborhood now known as Fall Creek Place was informally known as “Dodge City, because of the increased number of shootings; soaring crime rates, rampant drug abuse, and a serious abandoned and deteriorating housing problem contributed to the blight.  At a grassroots level, however, neighbors were working in their own ways to bring about […]

In my family, we have been looking forward to the grand opening of the Cultural Trail for a long time.  We draw a lot of attention as we bike around town: 2 adults (plus a bike trailer carrying a toddler) and 6 children on bikes, my husband leading the way and me bringing up the […]

In 1902, the city of Indianapolis annexed the area currently known as Mapleton-Fall Creek, and a parade of city dwellers began making their way across the new bridges over Fall Creek, away from the increasingly commercial north side of the city, to greener pastures.   Mapleton-Fall Creek was a “suburban” neighborhood, with a little distance from […]