Mass Ave Next Plan

Mass Ave has become downtown Indianapolis's home for arts, culture, food, shopping, and more. But success brings pressure and without a shared plan, development happens to a district rather than for it. The Mass Ave Next District Vision Plan is a year-long strategic framework process designed to ensure that what makes Mass Ave extraordinary doesn't get lost in what comes next.

Commissioned by the Mass Ave Cultural Arts District (MACAD) in partnership with the Indianapolis Foundation, the plan asks a deceptively simple question: How does a cultural district stay cultural?

The district today is 6,400+ residents strong, a median household income of $87,000, and a 70+% renter population that is overwhelmingly working-age, educated, and white collar — a place optimized for creatives’ consumption but increasingly difficult to afford for the artists, small operators, and independent businesses that built its identity. The vision plan confronts that tension directly.

Our process moves through three phases — Discovery, Opportunity Identification, and Thinking Big — synthesizing spatial analysis, stakeholder input, and community engagement into a framework organized around four strategic themes: Experience & Use, Neighborhood Structure, Mobility, and Catalytic Sites.

But the physical is only half the equation. Running alongside the strategic themes are guiding themes — the sociophysical layer that asks not just how do we get there but what do our decisions say about who we are?