Eight years ago, Stephanie Marshall moved into Brendon Park, the neighborhood her husband grew up in on the northeast side of Indy. They were looking for a good place to raise their two sons.
“There is a sense of pride and ownership in Brendon Park,” she said. “And people were doing really well. It was a very family-centric, inviting environment.”
She didn’t know what the Brendon Park Civic Association was, but decided to check it out when she got a letter in the mail. It was election season for the association’s board, and after Marshall pitched herself as a candidate to her neighbors, she was named vice president.
Now, she’s president of the BPCA. She led the Lawrence Township neighborhood of about 420 homes in planning a music festival and an annual yard contest. She also got a grant from the Indianapolis Neighborhood Resource Center to fund a new stone entryway to Brendon Park.
On top of that, Marshall is a girls basketball coach at Sidener Academy, where her oldest son goes to school. But the thing taking up a lot of her time right now is getting her neighbors together to share their concerns about the redevelopment of Devington Plaza, a strip mall area a 5 minute drive away from her neighborhood.
The area is mostly abandoned, and a developer, BWI, plans to make the area into housing. Some of the new apartments would qualify as affordable and some would be at market rate. To do that, the lot’s zoning would have to be changed to residential, but that’s been delayed again and again.
But Brendon Park neighbors have different ideas. On Feb. 19, they packed into the cafeteria of Cathedral High School to listen to Marshall’s plan to make the area a community hub.
Marshall and her neighbors came together to create the Devington Redevelopment Task Force, and they want to see the area become a community hub. She calls their vision for it “Devington as a destination,” and it includes a grocery store, a senior living facility and a health and wellness complex.
“There’s not one person who has lived in this area for over a few decades that doesn’t have a core memory of Devington Plaza and spending their time there,” Marshall said in an interview with Mirror Indy. “We want to see that happen again, we want to reinvent our core memories in that space because it has been so centric to all of the neighborhoods.”
In the Devington Redevelopment Task Force Facebook group, neighbors share their favorite memories in a chat, like their first job at Baskin Robbins, their go-to guy at Kenny’s Barbershop and getting the best orange chicken from Dragon Inn.
Marshall worked with Daryl Williams-Dotson, an architect from WDI Architecture, to create a plan for the space. At the town hall, neighbors passed out petitions and surveys, so they could share their opinion with the city and their City-County Councilor Keith Graves.
Speaking in front of the crowd, Marshall wore a shirt with the words, “Your voice speaks volumes,” on the pocket. She does this community advocacy work to be a role model for her kids.
“They need to see that their parents are doing something bigger than something just for themselves,” she said.
Over the weekend, she won United Way’s Volunteer of the Year award for her work.
“If you don't advocate for your needs, if you don't speak up, if you don't reach out to your City-County councilors, your elected officials, and stay on them – then you may look up one day in your neighborhood and it’s not what you thought it would be. It's not what you desire,” she said.
How to attend a Brendon Park Civic Association meeting
The meetings happen twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. About 60-70 people show up.
To get involved in the Brendon Park Civic Association, you have to live in the neighborhood and pay dues, which are $40 per year. Because it’s a civic association and not a homeowner’s association, dues are not mandated. Brendon Park’s website says the dues are used for maintenance and neighborhood programs.
Brendon Park also sometimes has meetings with surrounding neighborhoods that include Millersville at Fall Creek, Brendonwood, Brendonridge and Brendonshire.
Stephanie Marshall’s goals for Brendon Park
Along with her vision for Devington Plaza, Marshall wants to make sure residents take care of the neighborhood — and each other. On the second Saturday of each month from April to October, they do a community clean-up and pick up litter. They also do “Love Thy Neighbor” events, like one in 2023 when they did yard work for an older neighbor who had recently lost his wife. Every year, they do an annual yard contest.
“It's just the small things that matter to the residents of Brendon Park, and I'm very, very proud to be a resident there,” Marshall said.
Next year, she’ll be back to organizing the Brendon Park music festival. The neighborhood uses the money raised from the festival for scholarships for seniors in high school, whether they want to go to college or pursue a trade. So far, they’ve given out two scholarships.
Mirror Indy reporter Sophie Young covers services and resources. Contact her at sophie.young@mirrorindy.org.
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