Source: Courtesy of Indy Eleven / other
The City of Indianapolis is offering to buy the site of the former Greenlawn Cemetery, where Ersal Ozdemir, founder and owner of real estate development company Keystone Group, had plans to build the new Indy Eleven stadium.
Developers of Indy Eleven’s planned soccer stadium have found remains of nearly 100 people buried in the former Greenlawn Cemetery. The burial sites on the property date back to the 1800s.
The Greenlawn Cemetery, which is located in the southwest corner of downtown, was Indianapolis’ first public cemetery and is currently slated for the mixed-use project known as Eleven Park.
In a letter obtained by IndyStar, Chief Deputy Mayor and Chief of Staff Daniel Parker writes that the city paid $2 million under a pre-development agreement for one-acre of the site last year for the Henry Street bridge project and is now interested in purchasing the remainder of the property at fair market value.
In the letter, Parker also claimed the city wants to “right the wrongs committed more than a century ago when the resting place of Indianapolis’ first residents were erased from the map and paved.”
The city had backed Ozdemir’s project until earlier this year, when Mayor Joe Hogsett announced plans to work with another group hoping to land a Major League Soccer team to Indianapolis and build a new stadium at a different site.
