It has been nearly nine months since Irvington Terrace began its "Shop Marsh" initiative. It has been a great success! Over the course of the nine month period, Marsh has seen significantly increased traffic, has improved its offerings based on the requests of neighborhood residents and has given back to the community in various ways. Here are just some of the improvements being made to the Marsh store:

Marsh has donated their entryway wall and we’re working with muralist Carl Leck (http://carlleck.net/), who will take ideas generated by Irvington Community School students in response to the question, “What does community mean to you?”

Marsh has agreed to allow the new Irvington logo banners on their lampposts

Since April 2010, Marsh has:

o   Replaced card readers

o   Replaced magazine racks

o   Added a flower case

o   Added several coolers

o   Added a gluten-free section

o   Replaced shopping carts

o   Continues to carry Trader’s Point organic dairy products

(See the related news story here.)

Over the past year, community members from across Irvington have begun to take a sincere interest in their neighborhood shopping center. Long considered a blight on the neighborhood's characteristic charm, Irvington Plaza is a necessity for the residents of nearby communities. In reponse to the decaying post-war architecture and vacant store fronts of the plaza, a committee was formed. With the aid of Ball State University faculty and students in the graduate program for Historic Preservation, several visionary site plans have been drawn up (see below). More concrete improvement plans are being considered, so stay tuned.

Click the links to view the plans: (Files are large, so please be patient)
Project Overview
Irvington Crossing
Pennsy Place
Irvington Square
Irvington Promenade

Another "thank you" to all of the community members and volunteers who came out on a hot June morning to help cleanup up the Irvington-Pennsy Neighborhood. The team of about 30 people managed to remove dozens of bags of trash from the streets and alleys, clean and weed the gutters and fill in some of the holes in the alleys. Overall, the beautification project was a great success!

In conjunction with the Irvington-Pennsy Cleanup, the students who painted the mural at Washington and Catherwood Streets had their official ribbon cutting ceremony. Great work guys and gals! It looks beautiful.

"Thank you" to everyone who volunteered their time and energy to help cleanup Irvington Terrace. It was another successful event (5 years running!), and we had approximately 40 - 50 residents who came out to help. We also need to extend an enormous "thank you" to Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, Inc. (KIB) for their generous support and organization efforts.

(See the cover story from 2009's cleanup here.)

Our fabulous friends at Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, Inc. (KIB) were a tremendous help once again in supplying us with trees, mulch, soil, tools and manpower during the first leg of our Washington Street Beautification project. All told, we planted more than 30 trees along the commercial stretch between Webster and Ridgeview. It looks great! We had dozens of volunteers from the neighborhood, Home Depot, Raytheon and KIB. Our heartfelt appreciation goes out to everyone who helped.

The second phase of the project will be a mural, designed and painted by the students at Irvington Community High School. The mural will be displayed prominently on the front of the building near Washington and Catherwood.