INDIANAPOLIS — The clearing of the Eleven Park site on Kentucky Avenue and West Street unearthed human remains from a long-abandoned graveyard. An Indy Eleven supporter group wants the team to build a memorial for the former cemetery near the stadium.
The Brickyard Battalion and treasurer Mike Slocum hope The Keystone Group pays tribute to the site's past as Greenlawn Cemetery.
"As an educator and as a historian, I believe that when you forget your past, you are doomed to repeat it," Slocum said. "We do not want to have any of the past of this site repeated. It should be honored, it should be memorialized, and it should be included in the future of this space."
Keystone revealed in December it discovered human remains on the property. It has not provided any updates on the remains since then.
"I want skeletal remains that are in that site to be properly exhumed and taken care of," Slocum said. "I think there are a lot of people who didn't know that such a large graveyard presence existed there, but they know now."
Local historian Leon Bates studied Greenlawn Cemetery extensively and previously predicted crews would find human remains on the Eleven Park construction site. He now worries about how many remains may have been found.
"If any people were removed from that section in the past, there's just no records to indicate that," Bates said. "Potentially, we could find hundreds, if not thousands of people."
The site and any remains on it may hang in limbo if Indianapolis city officials choose to pursue a new stadium site near the Indianapolis Heliport instead of Eleven Park.
Bates said he approves of Eleven Park and its construction as long as all traces of the former cemetery are removed.
"The cemetery has been destroyed, there's nothing left to preserve," Bates said. "The only thing to do is to remove the human remains."
RELATED VIDEO | Indy Eleven owner discusses future
