Indy seeks proposals for dilapidated Central State Hospital structures
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Indianapolis planners are seeking proposed uses for three buildings on the former campus of Central State Hospital on the city’s west side.
The city announced Friday that it issued a request for proposal in pursuit of adaptive redevelopment proposals for the property that prioritize transit-oriented development and the needs of the campus and neighborhood.
The proposal is for two dilapidated buildings left from the former mental hospital and a soon-to-be vacant facility that formerly housed horses for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Mounted Horse Patrol.
The two Central State Buildings are nicknamed in the RFP as “powerhouse” and “storehouse.”
The powerhouse is at 3000 W. Washington St. It was built in 1886, according to a structural assessment by Indianapolis-based engineering firm Wiss Janney Elstner Associates Inc., and could cost up to $10 million to fully restore. The report lists multiple reasons for the necessary repairs, including a 2023 partial collapse of the structure and a 2016 fire.
The storehouse, at 3302 Kirkbride Way, was built in 1955. It is a 29,220-square foot, L-shaped building on 1.64 acres of land.
The mounted patrol facility is located at 77 Tibbs Ave. A new $1.7 million, 20,000-square-foot facility for the horse patrol on adjacent land is nearly complete.
City documents ask that developers give a minimum purchase offer of $778,250 for the powerhouse, $985,000 for the storehouse, and $1.4 million for the mounted patrol building.
Developer responses are due by Dec. 13 at noon. The Metropolitan Development Commission will open proposals at its public meeting on Dec. 18 at 1 p.m.
Proposals will be reviewed by a committee consisting of Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development staff and community stakeholders. Those deliberations will be confidential, but city officials will announce the selected developer.
Central State Hospital closed in 1994, and the city bought the 150-acre property a decade later. Development began in 2011, when Carmel-based Pedcor Cos. broke ground on the site’s first project: the 144-unit affordable apartment complex called The Steeples, with the help of federal tax credits. Since then, several developers have used the area for affordable and senior housing projects.
Another developer, Indianapolis-based Reverie Estates, converted the hospital’s administration building, constructed in 1938 and now called Central State Mansion, into a mix of micro-offices, creative studios and co-living spaces. Reverie developed the project along with the 1899 event center west of the mansion that originally housed the hospital faculty dining hall.
Central State opened as the Indiana Hospital for the Insane in 1848 and housed more than 2,500 patients at its peak in the 1950s.