INDIANAPOLIS -- A former east side elementary school that's been closed for nearly a decade will get a new life thanks to $1 million in tax credits secured this week.
The Near East Area Renewal (NEAR) organization secured the credits from the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority to redevelop the vacant IPS School 78 building at the intersection of Vermont Street and Sherman Drive.
The school, which operated as Minnie Hartmann School 78 until it closed in 2009, offers more than 65,000 square feet of space. It's the largest building IPS currently has on the market.
NEAR plans to turn the building into the Minnie Hartmann Center, a "full-spectrum community life center" with 64 units of affordable senior adult housing and full-day child care services.
Above: Plans for the Minnie Hartman Center (courtesy NEAR)
The organization hopes the building will open sometime in 2018.
The building sits just south of the similarly vacant 50-acre lot that formerly housed the RCA/Thomson plant. Its location is just shy of a larger area identified by an RTV6 analysis of homicide data as one of Indy's "Red Zones" – one of two half-square-mile areas that saw the most homicides in 2016.
FULL STORY | Indy's Red Zones: Life in the city's deadliest square mile
NEAR says it plans to keep the Minnie Hartmann name on the building. Hartmann was an "outstanding PTA volunteer" for whom the school building was eventually named.
The $1 million comes in the form of Low Income Housing Tax Credits. NEAR said the credits are the "turning point" of two years of effort on the project.
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