General
11/01/2007
City now can eliminate community eyesore; create new economic development opportunity
11/01/2007
New tool added to City’s crime fighting arsenal with use of innovative DNA collection device
10/18/2007
Alleyways to be repaved between 2nd and Emerson;
portion of Park Grove to receive street improvements
portion of Park Grove to receive street improvements
11/09/2006
10/27/2006
10/23/2006
04/25/2006
“Tear Down This Wall”
10/29/2005
First Two of Eight Projects To Draw Businesses, Residents Would Enhance Roadways
Emerson Avenue
09/21/2006
Officials, residents remember history, start preparing for centennial observation.
09/18/2006
City officials unveiled this "new front door" to the city.
09/16/2006
08/31/2006
04/25/2006
04/25/2006
04/25/2006
Emerson Avenue Project
04/23/2006
04/19/2006
New Gateway Entrance Generates Excitement for Downtown Beech Grove
03/27/2006
$7 Million Project Will Include Demolition of Barrier Often Blamed for Commercial Decline
Greenway
03/02/2010
Greenway. Has been delayed a bit because of new plan to relocate Lick Creek. If we get approval (permit) to relocate the creek, this will be the preferred plan.
11/29/2007
Transportation Enhancement Grant will help fund Phase 1 of the four-mile trail
10/26/2006
Hornets' Net
01/05/2009
Beech Grove, IN – December 3, 2008 – Kicking off the first (mesh) wireless program of its kind offered by a Hoosier community, the City of Beech Grove launched Hornets’ Net today, providing Beech Grove residents, businesses, and visitors with the ability to be connected anywhere within City limits.
07/23/2007
Beech Grove selects Federal Signal
broadband wireless network for its Digital City initiative
broadband wireless network for its Digital City initiative
02/23/2007
Instant Connectivity, Broadband Speeds to Be Available Throughout Growing City
05/04/2006
Main Street
10/30/2006
Beech Grove firm's 3-D animation lets clients show off the ins and outs of products on the Web
10/26/2006
09/06/2006
City Turning 100
09/21/2006
Beech Grove Mayor Joe Wright beamed with pride as he looked at unusual decorations leaning against a wall across from his desk: two sledgehammers.
The tools were used to kick-start the April demolition of a concrete wall along the west side of Emerson Avenue that for 33 years stood as a physical -- and psychological -- barrier to Main Street and downtown Beech Grove.
"They're just something to remind me of what we've accomplished," Wright said last week. "Some mayors have scissors. I have sledgehammers."
The wall now gone, Beech Grove is slugging away at the future as it looks back on 100 years of history that transformed 4.3 square miles of Marion County farmland into a city forged by the iron of the nation's railroad icons.
As the city's annual fall festival wrapped up last week, all eyes were set on Nov. 12 -- the 100th anniversary of Beech Grove's incorporation as a town.
Wright, who has lived in Beech Grove his entire 47 years, is excited about the city's future, starting with the gateway project along Emerson Avenue.
The 3-foot-high wall will be replaced as part of a $7 million refurbishing project. Plans include repaving Emerson and adding lighting, green space and four 30-foot ornamental structures -- two of which, on either side of Main Street, will be called the Centennial Towers.
"People will drive on Emerson Avenue that will never enter our city until they see the gateway at Main Street," Wright said. "We've eliminated the wall . . . and opened that area up so it's a more fluid traffic flow on Emerson."
A concrete wall along Emerson's eastern border that abuts Amtrak's Beech Grove Maintenance Shops will be painted and topped with wrought iron fencing and planters.
It's all part of the administration's "Better, Brighter, Beech Grove" initiative aimed at revitalizing the city of 14,000 residents.
"It consists of a lot of redevelopment efforts with the very specific purpose of bringing back our identity and making Beech Grove what it should be: a place where people really enjoy being," Wright said.
Trail, wireless are in works
While the orange construction barrels and heavy equipment focus attention on Emerson Avenue, other projects also are under way.
Work on the first phase of a 4.2-mile pedestrian trail is expected to begin early next year. The initial phase would stretch from the 13th Avenue Bridge at Sarah T. Bolton Park to South Grove Park.
A $500,000 wireless Internet initiative, called the City Digital Project, will offer high-speed Internet service to residents and business owners alike. The trails and technology could distinguish Beech Grove.
"We're becoming competitive," Wright said. "We have to be attractive. We have to be competitive. We just want to keep expanding on what's good and fix things that can be better."
The Internet was a long way from being invented when the Big Four Railroad opened its repair shop -- the current Amtrak facility -- at the turn of the 19th century. In fact, Beech Grove owes its very existence to the railroads.
"The reason they started the actual town and laid out the first streets was to have housing for the employees," said Michele E. Patterson, a reference and technical services librarian for the Beech Grove Library and secretary of the Beech Grove Historical Society.
Before the railroads, Beech Grove was mostly farmland. And Churchman Avenue? It began as the personal road from Fletcher Bank in Downtown Indianapolis to the home of bank employee F.M. Churchman.
"I have heard it was a toll road," Patterson said, "so if you were coming to visit him, you had to pay a toll."
Street of change
Main Street was the ideal location for shops and restaurants because of its proximity to the railroad facility, which hit its peak in the 1940s with up to 6,000 employees. Main Street remains Beech Grove's lifeblood, even as Wal-Mart and Lowe's opened on the city's southern edge.
"I think a lot of people like it here because you get the small-town feel, but yet you're totally surrounded by Indianapolis," Patterson said. "So if you want the bright lights and big-city stuff, you don't have far to go
A fair stretch of Main Street was the setting for the fall festival. As dark clouds threatened to burst on an afternoon last week, teenagers strolled down the thoroughfare. Adults congregated around the food booths and political stands or pushed strollers.
Bill Yocum, 50, and his wife, Carolyn, 47, have seen Main Street's many transformations.
"You had something everywhere, on every block," Bill, a meat cutter at Kroger, said over screams from nearby amusement rides. "We have a lot of vacancies. That's going to happen. But there's stuff coming back in."
Copyright 2006 IndyStar.com. All rights reserved
The tools were used to kick-start the April demolition of a concrete wall along the west side of Emerson Avenue that for 33 years stood as a physical -- and psychological -- barrier to Main Street and downtown Beech Grove.
"They're just something to remind me of what we've accomplished," Wright said last week. "Some mayors have scissors. I have sledgehammers."
The wall now gone, Beech Grove is slugging away at the future as it looks back on 100 years of history that transformed 4.3 square miles of Marion County farmland into a city forged by the iron of the nation's railroad icons.
As the city's annual fall festival wrapped up last week, all eyes were set on Nov. 12 -- the 100th anniversary of Beech Grove's incorporation as a town.
Wright, who has lived in Beech Grove his entire 47 years, is excited about the city's future, starting with the gateway project along Emerson Avenue.
The 3-foot-high wall will be replaced as part of a $7 million refurbishing project. Plans include repaving Emerson and adding lighting, green space and four 30-foot ornamental structures -- two of which, on either side of Main Street, will be called the Centennial Towers.
"People will drive on Emerson Avenue that will never enter our city until they see the gateway at Main Street," Wright said. "We've eliminated the wall . . . and opened that area up so it's a more fluid traffic flow on Emerson."
A concrete wall along Emerson's eastern border that abuts Amtrak's Beech Grove Maintenance Shops will be painted and topped with wrought iron fencing and planters.
It's all part of the administration's "Better, Brighter, Beech Grove" initiative aimed at revitalizing the city of 14,000 residents.
"It consists of a lot of redevelopment efforts with the very specific purpose of bringing back our identity and making Beech Grove what it should be: a place where people really enjoy being," Wright said.
Trail, wireless are in works
While the orange construction barrels and heavy equipment focus attention on Emerson Avenue, other projects also are under way.
Work on the first phase of a 4.2-mile pedestrian trail is expected to begin early next year. The initial phase would stretch from the 13th Avenue Bridge at Sarah T. Bolton Park to South Grove Park.
A $500,000 wireless Internet initiative, called the City Digital Project, will offer high-speed Internet service to residents and business owners alike. The trails and technology could distinguish Beech Grove.
"We're becoming competitive," Wright said. "We have to be attractive. We have to be competitive. We just want to keep expanding on what's good and fix things that can be better."
The Internet was a long way from being invented when the Big Four Railroad opened its repair shop -- the current Amtrak facility -- at the turn of the 19th century. In fact, Beech Grove owes its very existence to the railroads.
"The reason they started the actual town and laid out the first streets was to have housing for the employees," said Michele E. Patterson, a reference and technical services librarian for the Beech Grove Library and secretary of the Beech Grove Historical Society.
Before the railroads, Beech Grove was mostly farmland. And Churchman Avenue? It began as the personal road from Fletcher Bank in Downtown Indianapolis to the home of bank employee F.M. Churchman.
"I have heard it was a toll road," Patterson said, "so if you were coming to visit him, you had to pay a toll."
Street of change
Main Street was the ideal location for shops and restaurants because of its proximity to the railroad facility, which hit its peak in the 1940s with up to 6,000 employees. Main Street remains Beech Grove's lifeblood, even as Wal-Mart and Lowe's opened on the city's southern edge.
"I think a lot of people like it here because you get the small-town feel, but yet you're totally surrounded by Indianapolis," Patterson said. "So if you want the bright lights and big-city stuff, you don't have far to go
A fair stretch of Main Street was the setting for the fall festival. As dark clouds threatened to burst on an afternoon last week, teenagers strolled down the thoroughfare. Adults congregated around the food booths and political stands or pushed strollers.
Bill Yocum, 50, and his wife, Carolyn, 47, have seen Main Street's many transformations.
"You had something everywhere, on every block," Bill, a meat cutter at Kroger, said over screams from nearby amusement rides. "We have a lot of vacancies. That's going to happen. But there's stuff coming back in."
Copyright 2006 IndyStar.com. All rights reserved
Indianapolis Star
By Jason Thomas
(317) 444-2708
jason.thomas@indystar.com