Can Rebranding Revive Indy's Westside?

City leaders will come together on Indianapolis’ Westside, Wednesday, to unveil a series of new sculptures.

The 30-foot tall International Marketplace Gateway markers will be placed at entry points of the city.  They are designed to create a more welcoming arrival and represent the community’s unique ethnic makeup. They also are part of a greater strategy to rebrand that part of town and spark its revival.

On any given day, 150 to 200 people pack inside the India Palace which is filled with the fragrant dishes and the gentle smile of owner Dave Samra.

Samra took over the restaurant in the corner of one of the west side’s shopping centers seven years ago from his brother-in-law and, until recently, business was pretty good.

He blames an uptick in crime for about a 40 percent drop in business the last few years.

"Like a year ago, a couple years ago, we had lots of people breaking the windows, stuff like that," he said. "If people come to eat and somebody stole their laptop or stolen anything from their car, they are not going to come back to that area."

Samra has lost some business, others have lost it all. 

Over the past decade, larger stores like JC Penny and Toys-R-Us closed their doors in that part of town. Their exodus had a ripple effect, hurting traffic to surrounding, smaller businesses.

A once vibrant area for shopping is now scattered with vacancies and run down store fronts, which, Director of Public Safety Troy Riggs explains often is a starting point for bigger issues.

"That's the old broken windows philosophy," said Riggs.  "If you have broken windows or high weeds, that it looks like people don't value that area."

And violent crime hasn’t helped either, especially by the Lafayette Square Mall, which was once a centerpiece for shopping here.

The more than one million-square-foot facility is now littered with abandoned stores.

Last year, three people were shot by the mall in a month span, including one fatally.

And later in the year, again by the mall, one person was shot and two others were stabbed.

Ryan Hunt, a Senior Economic Analyst for Indianapolis, says the Westside is not necessarily worse than other parts of the city, but has an image problem.

"If people are afraid to go there, whether that's justified or not, then they will continue to be and they won't tell their friends and neighbors to go there, either," said Hunt.

To repair the image, the city is rebranding the community using an economic tool provided by the state. In 2004, the legislature passed a law allowing each county to designate a Community Revitalization Enhancement District, or CRED.

Up to $750,000 in local taxes are set aside for the district instead of going to the state. Marion County picked the diverse, but hard-hit, Westside for the CRED and began calling the area the International Marketplace.

The woman leading the transformation is Mary Clark, Director of the International Marketplace Coalition. 

The nonprofit works to attract and sustain development and business on the Westside because Clark says the health of that section of the city is important for Indianapolis’ overall growth.

And to strengthen the Westside limb, the coalition is building on its ethnic diversity.

"This is who we are now.  We are international and we have something to be proud of here," said Clark.  "We are people of blues and yellows and purples and greens.  I know I'm naming flag colors, but that's who we are.  We are not just red, white, and blue anymore."

The area is a melting pot of cultures where residents speak 70 different languages and the shops and restaurants offer unique tastes from their native countries.

You can find Salvadorian food, Greek cuisine, and dishes from Ethiopia.

In 2011, the area was recognized by The New York Times as a place where the world comes to eat.

Teresa Aponte Torres does. She goes to Guanajuanto Mexican grocery store and restaurant to buy food she can’t find anywhere else in Indianapolis.

"This is aloe," she said while walking around the store.  "Yucca.  Yucca is a dried vegetable from the Caribbean.  I grew up in the Caribbean so I remember eating those with a lot of squash."

Aponte Torres has lived in Indiana for almost 25 years, but being able to buy ingredients for dishes from her native country Puerto Rico helps her connect with her heritage.

"I came one time here and they had the Goya brand.  I grew up with it and I got emotional," she said.  

And once visitors start coming to the Westside and experiencing places like Guanajuanto, Clark believes they will keep coming back to see what else the area has to offer.

"Perception is 90 percent of reality I guess," she said.  "We are working really hard to change that perception."

And despite India Palace's 40 percent drop in business over the past few years, Samra shares Clark’s optimism.

“I hope if they can keep working on it, the International Marketplace, and the police can try to stop those crimes (with) more patrols, I can see if probably a year or two years, this are is going to be successful, again.”

And in a state that calls itself the Crossroads of America, this section of Indiana’s largest city hopes to connect Hoosiers to the world.