The Sunday Post - July 26, 2026: A New Animal Shelter, Warren Little League, and Two Talks About the East Side
- Michael-Paul Hart
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
A weekly report from Councilor Michael-Paul Hart — Building the Smartest City in America.
Volume 2, Issue 30
A Tour of the New Animal Shelter
This week the Community Affairs Committee, which I serve on, toured the new Indianapolis Animal Care Services shelter at 5001 East Raymond Street on the southeast side.
It is a significant upgrade. The new building is about 61,000 square feet, more than
double the size of the old shelter on Harding Street. It has 234 dog kennels, most of them indoor and outdoor, 80 cat condos with free roam playrooms, and a real medical clinic and lab. The project cost more than $30 million, funded by a $20 million city bond and a $7 million capital campaign from the Friends of Indy Animals.
A bigger building is good news. It is also not the whole story.
During the committee meeting, I asked about the volunteer program and the staff workload, and how this year compares to last. The honest answer is that the shelter is already near capacity, and it depends heavily on volunteers, fosters, and adopters to keep up. A larger facility does not reduce the need for community help. It raises it.
So this is a simple ask, and it starts with volunteering.
The shelter runs on volunteers, people who walk dogs, socialize cats, help at adoption events, and keep the day to day going. If you can give a few hours, Indianapolis Animal Care Services needs you. And if you have room in your home, they also need foster families and adopters. It is one of the most direct ways to help the city, and it is right here on the east side.
You can sign up to volunteer, foster, or adopt through Indianapolis Animal Care Services at indy.gov.
Revitalizing the Warren Township Little League Fields
Indy RBI reached out to me this week, and we had a quick meeting. I want to introduce them to anyone who does not know the program.
RBI stands for Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities. It is a Major League Baseball program, and the Indianapolis chapter has been running since 1996. Registration is $25 for a season, and no child is turned away for cost. In fact, about two thirds of the kids play for free.
The program teaches baseball and softball, and along with them teamwork, discipline, and leadership. Indy RBI is also a partner of the Indianapolis Indians.
They came to me because they had been working with the City on a plan to revitalize
the Warren Township little league fields off Brookville Road, and that conversation had stalled. They asked for my help to get it moving again, and I am glad to do it.
Those fields have a lot of history and a lot of life left in them. Bringing them back, and pairing them with a program like Indy RBI, means more kids on the east side get a safe place to play and a reason to be there.
This is the same idea behind everything I work on. Take something we already have, put it back to work, and let the neighborhood get the benefit.
If you want to learn more about the program, you can find Indy RBI at indyrbi.org.
Chew on This: The Mall, the Data Center, and the Money In Between
On Tuesday I was the guest speaker at the Greater Lawrence Chamber's Chew on This luncheon at Old Oakland Golf Club, sponsored by the Keystone Group.
My talk was called The Mall, the Data Center, and the Money In Between, and it was really about the east side's last fifty years told through two buildings.
First we lost a factory. The Ford and Visteon plant in the Thunderbird District, where generations of east side families built things, went quiet. Then we lost a mall. Washington Square, the place everyone shopped, faded in slow motion. Neither one fell in a single bad year. They just drifted, until one day you looked at the parking lot and understood.
The reason I am hopeful is what is happening now. The old industrial ground is being put back to work with a $2 billion DC BLOX investment, and the mall site is the subject of a serious vision plan. The money moving through the east side right now is the story of the next ten years.
I also said something plainly that I will repeat here. Not every data center is the same deal. I helped stop the Google project because it was the wrong site on the wrong terms. I supported DC BLOX because it supports putting a dead industrial site back to work and routes the investment into the neighborhood. And in Indiana, developers pay for their own transmission and power generation. That cost does not land on your utility bill.
Thank you to the Greater Lawrence Chamber and the Keystone Group for having me.
SmartIndy at Neighbor Power Indy
On Saturday I joined Neighbor Power Indy at the University of Indianapolis, and I gave a presentation on SmartIndy.
For anyone new to it, SmartIndy is a neighborhood driven civic organization that I founded. The idea is straightforward. The people closest to a problem usually understand it best, and their insight should reach the people who write policy and budgets.
SmartIndy works on three pillars. Policy, where we turn real neighborhood needs into council ready ideas. Engagement, where we listen first and build grassroots support. And data, where we use modern tools to track issues in real time. The goal that ties it together is the one you read at the top of this post every week. Building the smartest city in America.
Neighbor Power Indy is built on the same belief, that residents should be equipped to lead in their own neighborhoods. It was the right room for this conversation, and I was glad to be part of it.
If you want to get involved with SmartIndy, visit smartindy.org.
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