Before it’s too late, anyone who appreciates Indianapolis history should visit the cool century-old Downtown brick alley between Massachusetts and College avenues. It will be demolished in the next few days. In its place will be the new Cultural Trail, funded by a suburban apartment developer and featuring corporate branding, rich-donor plaques and IKEA-style lighting throughout. All of this was approved several months ago by a flummoxed Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission, which was bamboozled by a slick sales pitch that pitted history vs. handicapped access.

This was a false choice, however. The Cultural Trail could easily have taken a different route, but the decorators who are running this initiative had already made up their minds to destroy this historic city asset.

This same section of the Cultural Trail will also forever snarl vehicular traffic at the intersection of College and Massachusetts avenues by removing a full lane from College Avenue. This throttling of a major thoroughfare also could have been avoided by wiser route selection, but Cultural Trail planners took the easiest path for themselves. Meanwhile, the city traffic grid is denuded, one intersection at a time, one lane at a time, and previous plans for College Avenue to be two-way down to Fountain Square are now rendered impossible.

The meandering suburban-style pedestrian plaza that is the Cultural Trail should not be allowed to further destroy our functional urban traffic grid. Have the traffic engineers in Indianapolis been completely trumped by these decorators?

Richard Sullivan

Indianapolis