WTHR |Battle brews over Keystone Towers plans

Battle brews over Keystone Towers plans

Mary Milz/Eyewitness News

Indianapolis - The future of a high-rise eyesore is in doubt. As Eyewitness News first reported last week, there's a proposal to turn the Keystone Towers at East 45th and Allisonville into a facility to help veterans.

But a new battle is brewing over who lays claim to the plans. It unfolded as Indianapolis Marion County Emergency Management oversaw a training exercise at the site that included a health and safety inspection of the vacant and blighted buildings, which overlook Fall Creek Parkway.

While the parcel goes on the block in the tax sale next spring, a group called Save our Veterans has talked to city planners about making a deal before then.

Last week, Victor Wakley and Jerry Jacobsen shared their vision of renovating the property into a first-of-its-kind veterans' complex, one that would provide housing, job training and other services for homeless veterans.

"We we have seen what they've gone through and we want to change that. We want to serve them," said Wakley.

"To think it was going on was like being punched in the gut," Brandon Cagle said when he saw the report.

Cagle and Zachery Goss, both veterans, founded Veteran's Property Management, a non-profit aimed at helping homeless vets. They say the idea for turning the Keystone property into a veterans' complex was theirs, not Wakley's.

"We did start this," Cagle said. "We hired Jerry and Victor to help us with our program and low and behold they yanked it out from underneath us in a reconnaissance-like way."

Cagle said he and Goss hired Wakley in July to write grants and serve as a government liaison, but they say instead he stole their ideas and their contacts in violation of a contract he wrote and signed. They plan to file a lawsuit against him.

"They took all of our ideas and have ruined us politically," Goss said.

Wakley said he resigned from the his position because, "We couldn't agree on the approach I was taking. They wanted to take one road and I another."

Wakley says he didn't steal any ideas.

"I specifically went to the city and asked them about this particular property," Wakley said.

"We're trying to develop a property that will bring all these existing services into one location, that's it," Jacobsen added.

City officials who liked the Save our Veterans proposal say they knew nothing of the other group.

A spokesperson for the Department Metropolitan Development said director Maury Plambeck only recalls meeting with Wakley, as does David Wu, the mayor's policy director.

"I'm certainly disappointed to hear about it," Wu said of the two groups' competing claims.

Wu had earlier said the proposal could be a "win-win for the people (the center) would serve as well as the city."

He said the city considered the property a "liability," one that would be more costly to demolish than it's worth. Donating it to a worthy cause would make sense.

But this latest controversy raises questions about a veteran's center.

"It's rough being a little guy and have this happen to you," said Cagle.

"I'm confused about what they want and why they would kill a deal to help fellow veterans," Wakley countered.

Still, both groups vow to move forward, to fight for a property the city has yet to acquire.