Old City Hall got a first new life as Indy’s planning hub. Now it’s getting another new life as part of a $55 million dollar redevelopment that includes a 150-room hotel and contemporary art museum. After renovations, the Hall, dedicated in 1910, will serve as the hotel lobby, and the atrium will be open to the public. It’s also envisioned as a home for arts and cultural organizations. 

City officials unveiled the plans for the Old City Hall project Thursday afternoon.

Until it became the temporary home for the Indy 2020 planning initiative last year, Old City Hall sat empty for a decade. City officials explored many options for its reuse – as the mayor and city offices, as residential space, to house the IMA’s American Art collection, but none panned out – until now.

About a year and a half ago, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Indiana Landmarks held a daylong discussion on the feasibility of its revitalization.

“They said to us, ‘well, here’s what you should do. You should do a boutique hotel, you should do a restaurant, you should have arts and culture education opportunities and you should have some nonprofit office space.’ Well, we followed that advice,” said Adam Thies, director of the Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development.

Old City Hall, at the corner of Alabama and Ohio streets, is in the Market East district of downtown, near a number of flashy, significant building projects, including the new transit center, the Cummins tower and 360 Market Square, on the site of the old Market Square Arena. In all, 58 new construction projects are scheduled for downtown in the next two years. 

See the complete project list.

21c Museum Hotels, based in Louisville, has developed boutique hotels and museums in several other cities, including Cincinnati and Louisville. Company president Craig Greenberg said the project “has everything we look for in a city, in a neighborhood, in a building, and in local partnerships.” Deborah Berke Partners, which is also designing the Cummins site in downtown Indianapolis, is the designer for the Old City Hall project.

Under the agreement, 21c Museum will lease the building from the city.

Financing for the $55 million project will come from a combination of public and private financing. 21c Museum Hotels will invest about $29 million; city incentives include an $11.3 million loan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, an estimated $4 million in historic tax credits, and a $9.1 million loan from the city. Thies said they would use $2 million to $3 million in Downtown TIF funds to provide “a period of stabilization” until the project is operating and generating cash. That loan would be repaid. Some additional funds would come from the Central Indiana Community Foundation.

The project goes before the Metropolitan Development Commission on March 4 and would have to be approved by the City County Council.

It’s scheduled for completion in late 2017 or early 2018.