Indy Parks finishing citywide upgrades with $150M infusion. But what’s next, and what about new parks?

This is prime parks season for folks in Indianapolis who want to hit splash pads, climb jungle gyms or just grab some grass in the shade. What they’re finding is dozens of parks with new or improved trails, sports fields, shelters, bathrooms, water features and playgrounds. The Indy Parks Department is nearing the finish of $150 million in upgrades to about a third of its 218 parks, using a huge infusion of funds outside of its typical $6 million annual budget for capital improvements. Some of the projects are wholesale transformations, such as turning Riverside Golf Course into Riverside Adventure Park. Some are more modest but perform the essential service of providing safe and modern playgrounds for neighborhood kids. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Indy Parks leaders Brittany Crone and Andre Denman discuss the funding and execution of this extraordinary wave of upgrades and how several of the biggest projects came about. They also tackle the question of what comes next, given the size of the annual capital improvements budget. And they discuss the likelihood of creating new parks in a city with some recreation gaps.