A local developer has significantly scaled back plans for a massive apartment complex near Nora Plaza on Indianapolis’ north side, but its newest proposal will still replace an aging office park with more than 250 housing units.
Indianapolis developer T.M. Crowley & Associates received preliminary city approval Nov. 13 to build a 256-unit apartment complex with more than 30,000 square feet of commercial space at 1010 E. 86th St., a parcel wedged between Nora Plaza and the Nora Branch of the Indianapolis Public Library. The site will include two mixed-use buildings, a six-story and a three-story structure, with room for restaurants, offices and other uses.
The proposal features about half as many units as the developer’s initial plans in 2024, and a 686-space parking garage has been nixed. Instead, the development will include twice as much commercial space as initially planned and more than 400 surface parking spaces.
T.M. Crowley and an attorney representing the firm did not respond to a request for comment about why the plans changed so significantly.
“There were some changes that needed to be made after all the specifications were vetted last year, resulting in a little more commercial space, a little less residential space and no longer being able to do the parking garage,” Joseph Calderon, a Barnes & Thornburg attorney representing the developer, said during a Nov. 13 Metropolitan Development Commission hearing examiner meeting.
Aging office park to be razed as Nora rebuilds
To make way for the development, the developer will demolish the Winterton office park, built out in the 1960s, and two adjacent single-family homes on Guilford Avenue.
Matt Winston, president of the Nora-Northside Community Council, said the neighborhood generally supports the planned apartments because the office park has been underused for the past decade. It’s unclear whether an on-site dental office included in the new proposal will be the future home of the Winterton’s most popular tenant, Monon Family Dental.
The new housing will sit across 86th Street from the Notch at Nora Apartments, a roughly 180-unit complex along the Monon Trail that replaced an old hardware store in 2020. The community council opposed that development, saying it lacked parking spaces and would add too much dense housing to a generally car-centric area.
A north side resident for nearly 50 years, Winston said he welcomes the prospect of hundreds of new faces who may love the Nora area and decide to buy homes nearby.
He noted that Nora’s first big wave of growth centered on Nora Plaza in the 1950s. Now the 32,000-person neighborhood needs some renovations, and the plaza remains a focal point.
“Nora has aged, and now we’ve gone from development to redevelopment,” Winston said. “And I’m looking forward to Nora being redeveloped into the powerhouse that it had been in the past and hopefully that it will continue to be.”
Email Indianapolis City Hall Reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @jordantsmith09
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Near Indy’s Nora Plaza, developer to raze office park to build mixed-use apartments
Reporting by Jordan Smith, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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