MCKINLEY NEIGHBORHOOD
2024-2025
Muncie, IN
A Long-Term Partnership in Infrastructure and Place.
Before the Mandate: A Neighborhood Already Under Strain (Pre-2008)
Long before any federal requirement entered the picture, the McKinley neighborhood was already carrying multiple forms of stress.
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Visible housing abandonment
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High rental concentration
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Disproportionately active emergency services
The neighborhood also sat in a precarious position, both physically and symbolically, between Muncie Central High School and the White River at the northern edge of downtown, protected by aging levee infrastructure and combined sewers that would unleash catastrophe if and when it failed.
At the same time, the McKinley neighborhood had been identified several times in public input sessions as one of the worst three locations in the city to live. This perception was supported by extremely depressed property resale prices.
As a result, instead of bringing potential executives, doctors, and recruits through Muncie’s historic downtown pathways, realtors would bypass Walnut due to the McKinley Neighborhood’s distress. Instead, they’d drive prospective residents down Wheeling Avenue, quickly point out the high school, and then turn around and leave.
“Real estate agents didn’t want anyone to see the McKinley area because there was little to show,” says Phil Tevis, FlatLand Resources owner. “The Community needed a plan to reverse that perception, but there was no catalyst to start it.”
Think Differently than the Engineers (2010–2012)
At the same time Muncie was facing the sewer separation mandate, a new federal mandate was assigned through FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers as a result of the fallout from Hurricane Katrina: Upgrade deficiencies in flood protection levees adjacent to the river.
This meant that Muncie’s McKinley neighborhood was no longer just responsible for sewer separation. It also had to address its deficient levee.
As the basis of design reports and feasibility studies moved the project forward (largely within engineering frameworks), Muncie’s Sanitary District brought FlatLand Resources into the project with an explicit directive: Think differently than the engineers.
Two Questions that Shifted the Entire Project (2012–2015)
Once on the design teams, FlatLand thought differently than the engineers by asking two important questions.
Question #1: How much is the sewer separation project?
Question #2: If it’s going to cost the city millions of dollars to separate, does this infrastructure problem have a different economic solution?
The answers came quietly, through data rather than debate.
Ball State students conducting the Scout Muncie project documented abandoned housing across the city, revealing a heavy concentration in McKinley. At the same time, cost estimates for sewer separation sharpened: roughly $2–$2.3M for the neighborhood.
That dollar amount opened everyone up to a different line of inquiry, and more data followed.
Windshield surveys, tax records, and owner-occupancy analysis showed a stark mismatch between the project’s original plan and the long-term implications: While the neighborhood contained roughly 200 homes, perhaps only 12–15 of them owner-occupied, at least 40 of them completely abandoned and another 40 were in unsafe but occupied conditions.
If the city were to complete sewer separation and reconnect every house with a new sewer tap on every house in the neighborhood (abandoned and occupied), the cost would be $5,000 to $12,000 per connection.
Question #1 now had an answer: If the city paid to separate the sewers and reconnected the sewer line to every home in the McKinley neighborhood, the re-connection costs alone could be upwards of $250,000.
“Nearly 50 percent of the homes in the neighborhood were abandoned or in onstream distress,” says Phil Tevis. “Reconnecting failing housing stock by statute didn’t seem to make sense.”
Phil and his team knew that the engineers’ job was clear: separate the sewer. But after spending more than two decades in these types of community development projects, they also knew that investing long-term infrastructure into collapsing housing stock would lock the McKinley neighborhood into decline rather than reverse it.
The sewer needed to be separated, but because they had been tasked to think differently than the engineers, FlatLand went back to asking Question #2: Is there a different economic solution?
Two situations helped shape the answer:
Situation #1: The Muncie School System – Facing a financial crisis, the high schools were consolidated into Muncie Central, and eventually, the public school system became managed by Ball State University.
Situation #2: The McKinley Neighborhood – Community leaders, along with community input, decided that the McKinley Neighborhood should be thought of as a “Live-Learn” neighborhood.
This meant that if the city’s future depended on education, recruitment, and perception, then the condition of the McKinley neighborhood surrounding Muncie Central High School mattered far beyond its tax base.
EXPLORE
BEFORE
The Catalyst: A 20-Year, $180M Project (2008)
In 2008, the Muncie Sanitary District formally adopted a Long Term Control Plan to eliminate Combined Sewer Overflows that discharge raw sewage into the White River and Buck Creek. The plan set forth a 20 year project estimated to cost $180M. The project would impact 84 miles of Muncie streets.
Because a sewers’s typical lifecycle is about 100 years, federal and state environmental agencies required compliance for sewer separations. But the Muncie Sanitary District didn’t just want to fix the sewer. They also wanted to find a way to separate the sewer and improve the quality-of-place where allowed by the sewer separation statutes.
How would that actually happen? The Sanitary District knew they’d need to think beyond the boundaries of a regulatory fix.
New Economic Solution, Found (2015 - 2016)
Instead of connecting every house as required by sewer separation, FlatLand proposed an answer that looked more like a strategic equation:
Demolish non-viable housing stock + strategically regain site control + remove the most degraded structures + save money by downsizing the sewer separation project = Change the momentum of the neighborhood’s future.
On paper, the equation looked clear cut. Empty vacant lots would look better perceptively than derelict housing stock, but project leaders expected community resistance. And resistance definitely came – first from the city’s mayor.
For him, eliminating housing and tax revenue (especially in a neighborhood with vulnerable demographics) felt like sure political death.
But FlatLand gathered the numbers.
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The McKinley neighborhood was only generating $30,000 per year in tax revenue from non commercial property.
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The city experienced more ambulance runs in the McKinley neighborhood than in any other area, and
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Freeing up money here allowed more funding to be funneled towards other sewer separation needs.
“We went back to the Muncie Sanitary District,” says Phil. “We asked, ‘Why can’t we knock these houses down? If the future of our community is education with a Live-Learn vision of McKinley, can we make a concerted goal to reduce owner occupied homes on Walnut Street to raise perception of the High School?”
Gradually, a coalition formed across institutions: the Sanitary District, community development leaders, philanthropy, and the city’s school district. There was still no single “strategy,” but collective agreement was emerging: The sewer separation project was no longer a mere regulatory task to be done. It was an economic development initiative that would bring urban renewal.
From Idea to Execution (2018)
When levee reconstruction began in earnest, the reframed logic finally took physical form.
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The aging concrete wall was replaced with an earthen levee that met Army Corps standards.
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Trees were removed per Army Corps standards.
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Homes built too close to the levee were acquired and demolished to make way for a new levee.
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And sewer separation proceeded, informed by long-term viability rather than blanket compliance.
What appeared outwardly as infrastructure work was, in reality, neighborhood restructuring. The goal was not displacement for its own sake, but removal of what could not be viably repurposed.
Quiet Years of Consolidation (2019–2022)
The most consequential work happened without headlines.
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Properties were acquired through tax sales and fair market accusations
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Strategic parcels were assembled
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Attrition did what policy could not, slowly reducing density and stabilizing conditions
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Emergency service calls declined
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Public perception began to shift
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More public greenspace was created
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Property values increased
The groundwork had been successfully laid for future reinvestment – not through a single catalytic project, but through the absence of ongoing crisis.
The Legacy Beneath the Timeline
The McKinley story is not ultimately about sewer separation or levees. It is about refusing to let infrastructure investment operate in isolation from value, perception, and time.
What began as a mandate ended as a connection – linking neighborhoods, schools, trails, and institutions – and having long-term influence on establishing quality of place.
Public Investment & Infrastructure
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A new YMCA has been built in the neighborhood
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Muncie Schools rebuilt the football field and field house
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Columbus Avenue has been completely reconstructed
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A new trail on the levee has been constructed
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Walkability improvements transformed downtown into a place to be, rather than avoid
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Infrastructure now signals confidence in the city’s future rather than neglect
Housing Revitalization & Neighborhood Stability
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Abandoned homes have been demolished and replaced with new homes, public greenspace, and trails
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Homeowner grants have helped residents repaint and reinvest in their houses
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New market-based housing is underway
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Owner-occupied housing is on the rise
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A new four-story, 54-unit market-rate housing development with City gateway park features is being built immediately adjacent to the McKinley neighborhood
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A new four-story, 98-unit senior housing project is being built on a former warehouse site along the Cardinal Greenway, adjacent to new public greenspace
Placemaking, Greenspace & Connectivity
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New public greenspace and trail connections now link the neighborhood to the Cardinal Greenway and riverfront
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A historic iconic pedestrian bridge was re-built on the Cardinal Greenway
Economic Activity & Local Destinations
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Elm Street Brewery has repurposed two commercial properties into a local destination eatery
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Businesses and restaurants have moved into the neighborhood
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The highest concentration of Airbnbs in the central city is located in the McKinley neighborhood
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The resale prices of homes have increased
Policy, Zoning & Development Incentives
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Significant areas of the neighborhood have been rezoned to encourage new infill, mixed-use development
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The entire neighborhood falls within the White River Riverfront District, allowing three-way liquor licenses without purchasing high-cost quota licenses
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A quadrant of the neighborhood near the brewery has been designated a DORA zone (Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area)
Adaptive Reuse & Identity Preservation
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Underutilized and historic structures (including a former church) have been repurposed for new community and commercial uses
FlatLand’s thinking and long-term partnership helped to reshape the way the city approached its aging infrastructure, and as a result, one of Muncie’s oldest historic neighborhoods faces a future defined not by decline, but by the promises of urban renewal.
