FROM BROWNFIELD TO GREENFIELD
2024-2025
Muncie, IN
How FlatLand Resources Helped Transform a Contaminated Landscape into a Thriving Corridor
What is Muncie without the Industry? (Mid 1980s)
The Kitselman Trailhead Project is often largely understood through contamination, floodplain constraints, and redevelopment opportunities. But that’s not really where the story should begin.
And it’s certainly not where the story ends.
It all began with a question asked in the late 1990s: How do you connect the White River Greenway to the Cardinal Greenway in a way that actually serves the city and the region?
At the time, two parallel efforts had been underway. The White River Greenway Committee had spent years working to build a trail system along the river, while the Cardinal Greenway was advancing east toward Richmond and north towards Sweetser. Both projects were progressing independently — and both were competing for the same limited local philanthropic resources.
Funders began wondering if rather than supporting two disconnected trail systems and trail organizations, what would it take to combine the efforts into something more durable, more visible, and more impactful?
In charge of overseeing the trail projects since the late 1990s, FlatLand Resources had seen years of steady progress along both the White River Greenway and the Cardinal Greenway. What had become clear, however, was that connecting the trails wouldn’t happen through vision or momentum alone. Instead, community leaders would need to address the conditions no one had yet figured out how to address – contaminated land, floodplain restrictions, aging infrastructure, and overlapping regulatory authority.
The trails needed to merge exactly where those forces converged, and that meant that any attempt to unify the trail systems would have to pass directly through one of the most environmentally compromised and operationally constrained areas in the city.
The story that follows is not about designing around those limitations. It’s about how FlatLand Resources played a role in surfacing them, understanding them, and working through them – one constraint at a time.
Constraint #:
Industrial Land that Couldn’t be Reused
“Urban trail systems work best when they form loops, not there-and-back lines — especially in communities shaped by universities, hospitals, and regional commuters,” says Phil Tevis, founder of FlatLand Resources. “The Kitselman Gateway Project represented the final missing piece that could transform the two greenways into one connected system, forming many loops in the city limits.”
That final connection, however, ran straight through some of the most compromised land in the city.
By the early 2000s, the former Indiana Steel and Wire Company site had effectively collapsed.
Once a functioning industrial employer in the city of Muncie, the company entered bankruptcy by 2003 and left behind a toxic, polluted site.
Industrial processes had contaminated the ground and the ground water, including cyanide below bedrock. As a precaution, for a short period of time, bottled water had to be temporarily supplied to nearby residents while environmental determinations were made.
Rather than becoming a federally designated Superfund site, a previous company that owned the property was obligated to clean the site and entered a voluntary remediation agreement under regulatory oversight. When efforts to reuse the 600,000 square feet of covered factory failed, nearly all structures were demolished except the waste water plant that was left behind to process the contaminated water. What remained was a large, environmentally compromised tract of land – unsuitable for redevelopment and without a clear future – sitting squarely in the path of the city’s most important trail connection and a vital city gateway.
Constraint #2:
A Floodplain that Couldn’t be Engineered Around
When developers stepped in to assume ownership of the polluted site, a second immovable condition quickly surfaced. Working with FEMA and the Army Corps, they confirmed that the property sat within a regulated floodplain.
“The levee on both sides of the river at the Indiana Wire Mill was deficient, and some of the levee was actually the railroad embankment,” says Phil Tevis. “Under most circumstances, flood protection would involve raising the levee. But because of the railroad, bringing it into compliance would have required raising more than 15 miles of track for just one railroad – from Parker City to Yorktown – and that cost would have fallen on the community.”
The scale of that approach made it impractical (not to mention the unlikelihood that the railroad would even allow changes to their property).
Further complicating matters, the Army Corps of Engineers determined that because Muncie’s levees were constructed under a Congressional act, removing or altering the levee would require an act of Congress. Consulting engineers confirmed this assessment.
“We realized there was no practical way to fix the levee itself,” says Phil. “If we wanted to reuse this for recreational, industrial, or commercial purposes, the only viable option was to follow IDEM’s dictate and cap the property east of the river to separate human contact from contamination. Once that was done, we’d be able to build a cutoff levee on the west side of the river and bypass the deficient area – a solution that would save tens of millions of dollars and help us gain a very large floodplain park and greenspace.”
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Constraint #3:
A Dangerous Intersection that No One Could Fix
The intersection at Bunch Road and the SR 32 (East Jackson Street) bridge had long been known as a dangerous blind corner. Poor sightlines, awkward angles, and its proximity to a bridge approach created ongoing safety risks for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians.
Correcting the problem, however, fell into a jurisdictional gap. The Indiana Department of Transportation controlled the bridge and signal, while the City of Muncie controlled Bunch Boulevard – yet neither entity could correct the danger without triggering broader environmental, floodplain, and infrastructure constraints beyond their normal authority or scope.
As a result, no one would accept responsibility for a true fix. Incremental measures could be studied or implemented, but the intersection itself could not be meaningfully improved.
Constraint #4:
A Failing Bridge that Couldn’t be Replaced in Isolation
The SR 32 bridge was due for replacement, but thanks to floodplain regulations, levee infrastructure, rail lines, and the dangerous intersection on the east side of the river at Bunch Boulevard, the Indiana Department of Transportation did not see this as a straightforward infrastructure upgrade.
While INDOT controlled the bridge structure and signal, the conditions that made the crossing unsafe (poor approach design, limited sight distance, and mismatched elevations) weren’t under INDOT’s control, and replacing the bridge without addressing the surrounding risks gave INDOT reason to pause.
Floodplain standards added another layer of complexity. Because the bridge sat in a regulated floodplain, bridge design change had to involve the Army Corps of Engineers, IDEM, railroads, and local agencies. Even small improvements meant dealing with high levels of regulation and costs.
As a result, the bridge could not be replaced on its own. Any viable solution would have to address the broader system surrounding it.
Using the Constraints to Find a Solution
With a host of constraints that were known and not easily solvable, FlatLand was asked to help the Greenway, the city of Muncie, and the new developer to think through holistic solutions. A breakthrough came with Ball State University's College of Architecture and Planning program (CAP).
Through CAP, world-renowned designers were brought into Muncie during something called Design Week where students were allowed to work and problem-solve alongside local professionals. The goal of Design Week wasn’t about creating pretty designs. It was to identify how to solve real problems that were facing serious constraints.
“We knew all the constraints,” says Phil. “Our job was to provide all the local knowledge, serve as adjunct faculty, and help dial in a plan that would prove feasible and workable.”
That plan clearly pointed to Muncie’s Jackson Street corridor (the future site of the Kitselman Gateway), an area long-seen as an outside burden for the city.
As one of Muncie’s highest daily traffic corridors — with roughly 12,000–17,000 vehicles traveling through every single day — it served as the city’s primary welcome for thousands commuters (many of whom worked in the city’s schools, hospitals, businesses, and organizations). For those travelers, Muncie was where they worked and nothing more. To them, the landscape that greeted them represented the city’s armpit and reinforced a damaging narrative: this place is failing.
At the same time, because the site around the corridor itself was deeply compromised, the land was functionally stranded: From housing to industry, nothing could be built.
It was this exact condition that helped lead Design Week participants, FlatLand Resources, and all project stakeholders to the ultimate solutions.
Solution #1: Remove the road.
The first major decision ran counter to conventional redevelopment logic: remove Bunch Road.
By eliminating an accident-prone intersection and an unnecessary roadway, three positive outcomes were projected: lower maintenance costs, safer traffic conditions, and expanded green space and trail connectivity.
Estimated to save an estimated $150,000–$200,000 in signal infrastructure alone, the outcomes convinced The Indiana Department of Transportation to support the road removal.
Solution #2: Rethink the bridge.
Bridge reconstruction followed the same logic.
With bridge designs modified to meet flood standards, a pedestrian trail could now be designed to pass under the SR 32 blind view crossing, eliminating the need for pedestrians and bike riders to ever need to cross dangerous traffic.
As well, a historic camelback bridge — originally built in Muncie, Indiana, during the late 1800s and placed in Albany, Indiana for more than 100 years — was relocated and reused in order to satisfy federal preservation requirements. Placed within yards of its original birthplace, the historic bridge was given new life and now acts as an artistic and functional connection within the corridor.
Solution #3: Turn brownfield into greenfield.
With the road now gone and a bridge in place, FlatLand could now start addressing the challenge of land use. Because they knew that managing contamination would extend into decades, they (along with city, state, and federal officials) began to consider how the contamination could be managed — without restricting redevelopment opportunities.
Because housing was never on the table, the land was intentionally repositioned for uses compatible within its limits: trails, green space, gateways, and commercial-adjacent activity – work only possible because a road was removed and a floodplain was addressed.
No Longer a Signal of Decline
With the road removed, floodplain addressed, and bridge now in place, the story returns back to the original question: How do you connect the White River Greenway to the Cardinal Greenway in a way that actually serves the city?
By aligning local, state, and federal actors around a shared, constraint-led approach, a polluted and stranded site became the basis for a different model of urban renewal.
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The Sanitary District addressed flood and environmental constraints.
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Transportation agencies improved safety and avoided long-term costs.
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The city gained land control, reduced liabilities, and improved first impressions.
Together, those changes allowed the regional White River Greenway to finally merge with the national Cardinal Greenway, after decades of stalled progress.
Now seen as more than a traffic-throughfare, the new corridor and trail system preserve and celebrate the area’s layered history, using interpretive signage to tell the stories of land – from manufacturing and rail to the Civilian Conservation Corps and racially segregated public spaces. Each year, the now-connected trail system enables more than half a million users to pass through the corridor, and that foot and bike traffic translates into real economic impact — upwards of $25M a year spent on food, fuel, equipment, lodging.
Most importantly, the corridor no longer signals a city in decline. It stabilizes the edge of the city and gives a strong visual indicator that when you drive through Muncie, Indiana, you’re entering a city that values quality of place.
