Living In Pike.com

I met Dave and Marjorie Koch at Los Rancheros last year. Like me, they were regulars at the Mexican restaurant. After getting to know them I found out they lived in Liberty Creek, both worked for Pike Schools and were Hot Wheels collectors. Seems Dave has 10′s of thousands of the cars and they are taking over their house. (As a Realtor, this caught my ear.) About 2 weeks ago they invited me to the December 15th Indy Hot Wheels Club Christmas Celebration that was going to be held at the Pike Schools Freshman Center. Curiosity and friendship got the best of me and I decided I would make a point to attend.

Arriving there at 11:00 AM it was a site to behold. The entire Freshman Center Cafeteria was full of vendor tables, a race track, a dart game and tables of food for the pitch in. Dave was on stage running the show. Marjorie was behind the food tables getting the lunch buffet ready. Hot Wheel enthusiasts had traveled from as far as Michigan, North Carolina and Terre Haute just for this xmas celebration.

Walking around looking at tables of Hot Wheel cars I saw many priced over $100. There were also many transactions going on. Although the majority of the people there were adults, the kids were not left out. There were kid raffles, Hot Wheel racing and the appearance of Santa.

Dave and Marjorie tell me that Mattel helps these clubs out by letting them purchase limited edition cars for prizes and give a ways. They also bring in a race track for shows. The Indy Hot Wheels Club is the only one that does not have fees for membership. All monies earned by the club come from raffles, a dart game and donations. This show was free to the public.

Thank you Dave and Marjorie!

 

Letter to the editor – The Indianapolis Star
Our View: John Brown, Steve Jones, Isaac Randolph and Ross Reller

The Metropolitan School District of Pike Township is perhaps one of the most diverse in Indiana. The birthplaces of students represent 32 countries. This produces a rich environment that strengthens the educational experience.

Student achievement in most of the Pike schools continues to improve; attendance and graduation rates are well above the national average. The Indiana Department of Education recently awarded its highest rating of exemplary to Pike for 2005-06. Yet, unfounded rumors that occasionally plague all school systems seem to stick when it comes to perceptions about Pike because for some our rich diversity makes the worst seem more believable. And inaccurate perceptions can unfortunately be perpetuated by poor journalistic practices, such as when an Indianapolis Star reporter recently quoted a Pike High School student as saying that he typically witnessed multiple fights in the hallways on a given day. Had the reporter checked with other Pike students, their parents, teachers, school administrators, school board members or community leaders, he would have learned the real facts.

This is what you would find when walking the hallways of Pike High School on any given day: students who are involved in rigorous programs, such as our International Baccalaureate Diploma, or one of our many academic academies. Perhaps you would see performing arts students rehearsing for another award-winning performance, or athletes hard at work training for a winning season, or maybe Science Academy students preparing for national competition in robotics design and construction.

Pike High School offers a rigorous course of study, requiring 48 credits to graduate as opposed to the 40 required by the state. There are 22 options for Advanced Placement coursework. From the graduating class of 2006, 93 percent have gone on to enroll in institutions of higher education.

For the 2005-06 school year, Pike produced a remarkable 21 National Merit finalists, Commended Scholars or National Achievers.

To sum up, Pike Township schools, with all of their rich diversity, offer some of the finest educational and extracurricular opportunities in Central Indiana.

Is everything perfect? Of course not. Sometimes diversity brings challenges along with benefits. But this is life. And our students do not need textbooks to learn about the people of other countries, cultures, races, and religions. They learn this from each other, in student clubs, athletic teams, the lunchroom, the school bus and the hallways. This diversity reflects the real world.

Pike schools are committed to this type of diverse environment while providing the safest schools with the finest educational and extracurricular opportunities. Those are the real facts about Pike.

Brown is the father of a Pike High School student and the vice president of the Pike Township School Board; Jones is a Pike Township resident and a professor at IUPUI; Randolph is the father of a Pike elementary school student and the City-County Council member for District One in Pike Township; and Reller is the father of a Pike High School student and vice president of the Traders Point Association of Neighborhoods.

I was reading an article in the Indy Star last night from Thursday’s edition. It was about Park 100 and its varied tenant mix. Now I am somewhat familiar with Park 100 seeing that I worked in the park for 20 years, live next door to it and usually cut through it on my way to the office. Over the years not only has it taken on commercial and industrial tenants, I have seen churches and schools in the mix. What surprised me about the Star article is that it states that the occupancy rate for Park 100 is 95 percent. I was always under the impression that the rate was much lower. I suppose that if I were a commercial Realtor® I would have known this.

Property taxes help pay for our schools. Park 100 companies pay property taxes for their buildings. It is the same for homes in Pike communities except for one big difference. In any community you will find school children. In Park 100 you find none. There are no houses in Park 100. Park 100 is paying property taxes to help our schools without any children living there. That is like icing on the cake. At 95 percent, an industrial park can’t do much better than that.

Home sales in Pike Township continue to be sluggish. We are still down 17 percent from last year at this time. With 925 houses on the market it is easy for buyers to be choosy. If you are selling your house and it is not in tip top shape, buyers will say “next”. List prices have to be competitive.

David Lereah, National Association or Realtor’s chief economist, said the most obvious effect in the near term will be with home prices. “A year ago we had record home sales and tight supply with buyers bidding over the asking price,” he said. “This year sales are slowing, homes are plentiful and sellers are negotiating. Under these conditions, we’ll probably see prices dip temporarily below year-ago levels as the market works through a build up in housing inventory.”

Don’t forget…A Taste of Pike is this Saturday noon at Intech Park. 71st and I465.

See you there!

I recently heard that Pike Township schools has bought the Crooked Creek Golf Course and Club for a future site for a Middle School. They are presently leasing the land back to the club.

Ike Randolph, City-County Councilor for District 1 (most of Pike Township) had a wide variety of panelists and guests at the Town Hall Meeting. Among the panelist were
Karen Terrell, Pike Township Neighborhood Liaison, Susan Blair, President of Pike Township Residents Association. Also there were representatives from Health and Hospital, Dept. of Public Works and A Taste of Pike. Robert Turner, Director of Public Safety was there to give an overview of disaster preparedness for the city.

Some of the topics of discussion included City Services Consolidation, the Pike Township Comprehensive Plan, Lafayette Square area plans and IPL cutting down trees.

Town Hall Meetings are held twice a year by Ike Randolph.

Check this out!…This morning as I was driving to the office I saw this gas sign.

At first I thought it was $2.49 for regular and a lazy person forgot to flip the sign. The closer I looked the more I could see that it was not a “2″ but a “3″ as the first number. I saw cars driving in to the station, stop a second and then quickly leave. I decided to have a closer look and see what the pump price said. Just as I suspected…$3.49!