HAMMOND— The city is hoping to bring restaurants, housing, retailers and most importantly— people, back to Hammond's once-bustling downtown.
It will be a busy spring for the downtown corridor, where a bold vision for redevelopment paired with the $50 million of American Rescue Act funding Hammond received have brought the start of several new projects.
"I have never been more confident and excited about the future of downtown Hammond," Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. wrote in the Downtown Hammond Master Plan. "I recognize the potential that downtown Hammond offers to our city and region, especially with the arrival of the South Shore Train."
The transformation of downtown started in 2018 when Hammond hired renown city planner Jeff Speck. A master plan that will provide the framework for the "downtown's renaissance" was released in 2019, McDermott wrote.
"With all of these things going on for us in downtown Hammond, it's going to be a different place," McDermott said at the 2022 State of the City. "I'm not going to tell you that I don't have skeptics on this, because we've seen what's become of downtown Hammond over the last three, four decades, and it's hard for people to appreciate that we can turn this around. But we can turn this around."
Slowing it down
Named after Ernest and Caroline Hohman, who in 1851 bought 39 acres along the Grand Calumet River for a stagecoach stop and later helped found the State Line Slaughterhouse, Hohman Avenue has a long history of both community and commerce.
Snaking through Hammond's downtown, Hohman used to be lined with department stores, movie palaces and hotels. Business first started to leave the downtown in the 1950s when the Woodmar Mall opened.
After decades of increasing vacancy, the city is looking to completely redesign Hohman Avenue, bringing the street down to one travel lane in each direction with a shared bike lane; 40 spaces of angled parking down the center; parallel parking and 8-foot and 11-foot sidewalks on either side; decorative lighting with banner arms; and large, fast-growing trees along curb lines and down the center.
McDermott said the goal is to slow traffic to make shoppers and retailers more relaxed when convening downtown.
"The weakness in downtown Hammond is a couple things; one big things is that it is hard to feel comfortable when you park on one side of Hohman Avenue and you walk across to the business side and there is traffic going 45, 50 miles an hour," McDermott said at the State of the City.
The city has a similar redesign planned for Kennedy Avenue between the 6400 block and the 6900 block in the Hessville neighborhood. The busy roadway will be cut down to two lanes, pushing traffic onto Cline Avenue.
Currently Rimbach Street is swooped, aligning it with Fayette Street. Cars and speed through the intersection without giving the downtown a second look. The city is straightening out the swoop, to make the area safer and more welcoming.
Downtown housing
The Rimbach realignment will also help the city create the "Rimbach Plaza," which will give residents a central gathering place. Located at Rimbach Street and Hohman Avenue, the plaza will be framed by storefronts on three sides with the iconic Rotunda Fountain sculpture in the center.
"I would love to see benches and tables from the surrounding retail spilling onto the plaza and people hanging out and being social outdoors because we haven’t really had that in our downtown," Hammond Director of Economic Development Anne Anderson said.
The plaza will sit in front of Rimbach Square, a 208-unit apartment complex planned for an underutilized parking lot off Hohman.
More housing is planned for the northeast corner of Sibley Street and Hohman Avenue, with the 54-unit Madison Lofts complex. The five-story building is a $15 million project and will include 87,000 square-feet of retail.
The former Bank Calumet building will also undergo a $24 million redesign that will include over 100 residential units and 7,000 square-feet of retail.
All three complexes are set to break ground this year.
"Walkable, urban housing.. will fuel downtown’s revitalization," McDermott wrote in the Downtown Master Plan. "Today’s housing market shows that people want to live in downtowns, as opposed to in the suburbs."
The new downtown residential options will complement the South Shore train West Lake Corridor expansion, which will include a downtown stop, ideal for commuters.
McDermott said the rail project, which extends the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District’s existing rail service from Hammond to Dyer, will transform the downtown area, ultimately making it look more like Chicago with younger residents and more development.
Set to be completed in 2024, the West Lake Expansion will include two Hammond stations: a South Hammond station off of 173rd street and the Hammond Gateway station, located about three blocks west of the city's current South Shore station. The city has also committed to constructing a third downtown station near the federal courthouse once the train is running.
"We have a big investment coming to our city and I think it is going to be transformational," McDermott said at the State of the City.