Dave Damin’s home in the Holy Cross neighborhood is just blocks from Downtown, but it never seemed that close — until now.

Massive ramps to I-65 and I-70 effectively cut off his Near-Eastside neighborhood from Downtown offices, restaurants, bars and boutiques.

On Thursday, neighborhood and business leaders celebrated as city officials declared the demolition of those ramps and the creation of a new Market Street thoroughfare completed after more than a year of construction.

“Just the open vista is a big change,” Damin said. “When people drive through and see an area, the visual is very important.”

The Market Street on-ramp was built in the 1970s to serve Market Square Arena but remained after that venue was torn down eight years ago.

Concrete soared into the air for what seemed like blocks, making a shadowy tunnel of Market Street, whose most prominent feature was the Marion County Jail’s Arrestee Processing Center.

Today, though, the sidewalks are wider, and the neighborhood is visible from Downtown and vice versa.

“What a difference,” Mayor Greg Ballard said at a ribbon-cutting Thursday. “Where concrete used to rise up into the sky, now we see neighborhoods and businesses to the east and our beautiful Downtown to the west.”

The $22 million project included building a new interchange at Washington Street to replace the Market Street interstate exit, demolishing the old ramp system and sprucing up Market Street.

Pat Dubach, president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, said the new corridor between his neighborhood and Downtown is a symbolic reconnecting of the parts of the city.

“From our vantage point, it’s been a correction of things done in the past that really cut us from Downtown,” he said. “What we see is really a connection of redevelopment on both sides.”

Dubach said that with a walkable street into Downtown, businesses may be drawn to the neighborhood.

City officials touted not just the economic development benefits, but also the aesthetic aspects and the safety of making the street more open and visible.

Tamara Zahn, president of Indianapolis Downtown Inc., said it would be a plus for Downtown and the neighborhoods east of it.

“This really has been such a momentum for the Eastside,” she said. “There’s no stopping the Eastside neighborhoods and what they are about to accomplish.”