INDIANAPOLIS — John Marshall High School was the last new high school Indianapolis Public Schools ever built, but it has been abandoned for six years. It will remain vacant after the city of Indianapolis decided not to buy the building.
Indianapolis had planned to purchase the John Marshall campus for $750,000 and hand it off to a non-profit so it could become a community center. The Department of Metropolitan Development decided to pull out of the deal because it estimated it would cost $18 million to repair the building.
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“Upon further investigation and due diligence, it just became clear that it was more of a burden than originally thought,” said Lucas Gonzalez of the Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development. “It’s unfortunate that it could not get off the ground, but at the end of the day, we have to work within the confines of what’s actually possible.”
The high school opened at the corner of 38th Street and Mitthoefer Road in 1967, but closed in 1986. It later re-opened and transitioned into a middle school before it closed for good in 2018.
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Indianapolis Public Schools executive director of operation strategy Zach Mulholland said IPS will reopen bids for the building on November 20. He said there will be minimal restrictions for developers, which includes the option to demolish the high school.
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“We really want to cast a wide net, so we really want to see what interest is out there,” Mulholland said. “We want it to it be something that for the next 50 years continues to be an asset and a resource for bringing some investment into that community.”
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The John Marshall campus is not subject to the Indiana law where charter schools have the first option to buy the building for $1. That is because all charter school systems declined to buy the building when it first hit the market.
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