Building and renting around The Fashion Mall has long been a luxury. Like a Brooks Brothers suit, it was once for an exclusive crowd: high-end retailers. During the last seven years, however, swanky hotels (Ironworks), luxury apartments (Quarry), and ostentatious offices (River North) have bought in – a total of $250 million in investments. So what exactly happened in 2011? Wes Podell, senior vice president of development at PK Partners, says a decades-long vision for the area finally came to fruition. His company set records with the sale of the River Crossing office buildings just before the recession. Not surprisingly, a cavalcade of developers swooped in after the economy recovered. The area’s position near the city’s northern suburbs became even more advantageous as the population grew in affluent Hamilton and Boone counties. Today, Keystone at the Crossing rents are among the highest in the city. Which raises the question: How can anyone afford to do business there? Here, a few examples of how much tenants have to sell to pay the bills.
Ironworks
When Hendricks opened the Ironworks building on 86th Street in 2012, it reportedly sought $30 per square foot from its business tenants in rent. At that rate, the Ruth’s Chris Steak House on the first floor has to peddle more than 9,800 ribeyes to pay what would amount to $532,125 per year in today’s dollars.
9200 Keystone Crossing
Yellow Pages Group can’t phone it in to meet its lease obligations at 9200 Keystone Crossing. Based on the average rent for area office buildings, the space runs the company about $263,000 per year. According to Dennis Fromholzer, a market analyst with CRM Associates, a typical customer spends $3,000 a year on ads in the phone book, meaning the company would need 88 clients to keep its cubicles.
The Fashion Mall
Simon Property Group won’t say how much retailers pay on average for primo space at The Fashion Mall, but a lawsuit filed by the company revealed it charged at least one tenant $68 per square foot to keep the doors open in 2012. At that rate, after inflation, Indiana’s sole Microsoft Store would need to sell about 550 Surface tablets to make what would be $439,000 a year in rent.
Originally published in Indianapolis Monthly, 2018. Republished here for archival and portfolio purposes.