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In 1980 when the White River Park Development Commission began assembling the acreage that would someday be White River State Park, the Beveridge Paper Co. stood at 107 W. Washington St. with its foundations deep in the banks of the White River.
Beveridge was the sole surviving paper mill of five that sprung up in the area on the river's banks around West Washington Street in the late 1800s.
The park commission's acquisition of the mill, which uses 100,000 gallons of water from the river daily to make its high-grade poster board, looked like it would require the most intensive negotiations of any parcel in the proposed 265-acre park site.
To move the plant and its guts -- "thousands of tons" worth of machinery and holding tanks -- would be a massive, six-month undertaking, said Richard Tarr, Beveridge president. It would cost.
Sensing this and acknowledging the existence of other big, east-side-of-the-river plants -- the Acme-Evans Co. flour mill and Indianapolis Power & Light Co. steam-generating station -- the commission concentrated its land-acquisition efforts to the west, where its plans were more focused anyway.
Today, six years later, the park commission owns all but six acres of its proposed 265-acre site; Beveridge's 4 acres and 250,000-square-foot plant are among the non-park-owned tracts. The mill, which employs 150 people, still drinks in water from the river and churns out its high-quality poster board, which is used primarily for printing posters and for point-of-purchase advertising displays.
And it looks like Beveridge will remain for at least a few years, as the commission's plans for the east bank remain unsettled (see IBJ, Sept. 29-Oct. 5). Those plans, which include the development...