Mass Ave to gain streetscape upgrades

A plan is moving ahead to replace eight trash containers on Mass Ave, add three more recycling bins and replace as many as 35 bulbs on the historic-style street lights, following a $27,164 grant from the Massachusetts Avenue Community Development Corp.

Susan Vogt, deputy director of Riley Area Development Corp., said the Mass Ave streetscape improvement effort has also been boosted by the Central Indiana Community Foundation, which matched a $3,000 contribution from the Mass Ave Merchants Association.

Further, the city’s Department of Public Works has committed $9,693 for trash container replacement and bulb replacement.

The budget being managed by the Mass Ave Streetscape Committee currently calls for the installation of one piece of temporary public art – by an Indiana woman artist. The $5,000 stipend comes from money left over from a Women in the Arts Festival conducted several years ago on the East End of Mass Ave. The installation, for two years, will be made in memory of the festival’s director, the late Kathleen McDermott, who also operated an East End jewelry shop.

The total 2008-09 streetscape budget of $91,867 includes donations from Ice Miller for planting and Keystone Construction for trash cans. The total includes in-kind donations of $24,334.

It also includes $17,280 from Riley Area Development Corp., which funded all of 2008’s landscape maintenance program because of the lack of outside funding. This year, about three-fourths of the $14,380 landscape maintenance budget comes from the Mass Ave Community Development Corp. donation.

The streetscape plan also calls for the moving of three Mass Ave flags which were formerly located at the intersection of 10th and Bellefontaine streets, at the East End of Mass Ave. Those flags were displaced by the Indianapolis Cultural Trail project. They will probably be moved to the corner of Mass and College avenues.