INDIANAPOLIS — Has the once heralded downtown site for a new soccer stadium for the Indy Eleven become an expensive problem for its owner, Keystone Group? At issue is the human remains discovered on the property because it originally was the city’s first formal burial ground.
For that and other reasons, Mayor Joe Hogsett prefers a different site and ownership group.
Hogsett convinced the City-County Council to approve a special tax district to help fund a stadium site that includes the current city heliport. The Mayor has also publicly offered to purchase the Keystone site, where much work has already been done.
Gone is the former Diamond Chain factory. Much of the property has been prepared for construction, and for four months, archeological work was done on the site, recovering human remains and artifacts.
A report submitted to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources notes that remains were found in 90 discovered burial shafts and that other remains were also unearthed on the property.
This is a challenge the city of Indianapolis also faces. It owns a one-acre sliver of what used to be the first burial site, Greenlawn Cemetery.
The Hogsett Administration plans to use the property to build a bridge to extend Henry Street south across the White River to Harding Avenue. It’s part of the White River Innovation District.
Eunice Trotter, director of the Black Heritage Preservation Program at Indiana Landmarks, tells FOX59, “We estimate about 650 sites in the city’s portion of that cemetery, and that could be a substantial undercount.”
Trotter is also on the Community Advisory Group for the city project and notes $12 million is earmarked for the exhumation and reburial of remains on that one acre.
She wonders if Keystone has the resources to do a similarly thorough job on its much larger portion of the cemetery property, ”Does the developer have the financial heft to do what needs to be done at that site? Now, if you think about it, $12-million for a little over an acre. So, if you’re looking at twenty additional acres or so then you can kind of estimate the figures that we’re talking about.”
FOX59 reached out to Keystone for comment but have not yet heard back.
Trotter is also working with the Community Advisory Group to seek information. Documentation of burials at Greenlawn has been difficult to find, and Trotter hopes people with ancestors laid to rest at the cemetery will reach out, “We just need leads. If a person knows that great-grandpa died in Indy and was buried at Greenlawn, all we need is a name. From that name, we can begin doing the research that needs to be done.”
You can read more about the Henry Street Bridge project and the effort to track down people with relatives buried at Greenlawn on this website.