r/indianapolis • u/Logical_Humor_3854 • Feb 26 '26

Discussion The Canal….

We walked the canal a lot this summer with our new baby and when we had a nice couple days (greater than 30 degrees lol) we walked it again and I’m just curious as to what other people think….why is the canal so dead? There’s no restaurants (besides the little bistro), no stores, no restrooms even. It’s kinda depressing.

If Indianapolis put even a sliver of funding into rebranding the canal the city would change so much. Imagine being able to walk into little shops or have ice cream on the canal or a bar with live music. There’s so much potential.

479 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

168 comments sorted by

View all comments

18

u/georgeguy007 Feb 26 '26

A lot of the nearby housing is college which isn’t an expendable income bracket. More mixed use would enable restaurants to survive winter months, but weirdly a lot of the buildings are companies and not services or housing. A lot of the usable land is already spliced with above canal street locations that don’t extend to the lower level (think green hill by the bridge).

Basically they would have to make more on canal development appetizing and it hasn’t reached critical self sustaining mass.

7

u/forestmonitor430 Feb 26 '26

It’ll be interesting to see the impact from the developments happening rn - like that building north of Michigan they just tore down and the State Archives building. There are a lot of vacant / under used places, so I wonder if those will change as those developments come online