Lilly workers serve community today - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

Thousands of Eli Lilly employees will be getting out of their offices and fanning out around the city as part of the pharmaceutical company's Global Day of Service Thursday. The State Fairgrounds is one of the locations where volunteers will spend the day making improvements.

You'll see a sea of red shirts - a total of 8,000 Lilly employees - volunteering around the city today. At the Fairgrounds, they'll be picking up trash, painting fences and marking parking spots, giving Fair employees the opportunity to focus on other, bigger projects. 

They'll also be focusing on waterways, cleaning debris from around Fall Creek from Senate Avenue up to 39th Street, and also marking 20,000 storm drains.  Signs will be reminding people that anything that goes into storm drains ends up in our local waterways.

As in past years, the goal of Lilly's day of service is to make substantial improvements in the city. So painting, as volunteers did last year on the east side, and planting flowers and trees are all part of it.

"It's a demonstration of what Indianapolis does really well," said Rod Smith of the Lilly Foundation, "come together on a big project."

Since Lilly is headquartered here, Indianapolis has the highest concentration of volunteers. But a total of 20,000 Lilly employees are working in nearly 40 countries today as part of this day of service. 

What happens today will hopefully have an impact for years to come. Once debris and unwanted weeds gets removed from Fall Creek, David Foresell of Keep Indianapolis Beautiful said workers come back to keep the invasives from growing back around Fall Creek.

A traffic note:  All three northbound lanes from Delaware Street to 38th Street (east side of Fall Creek Parkway) will be closed from 7 a.m. – 12 p.m.

Two northbound lanes from Boulevard Place to Delaware Street (east side of Fall Creek Parkway) will be closed from 12 p.m. – 6 p.m.

The median lane from Morris Street to Southern Avenue (center lane out of the three lanes going in both directions) along Madison Avenue will be closed from 6:30 a.m. – 11 a.m.

The closures were done in conjunction with the Department of Public Works and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. Each department will offer onsite support to ensure a smooth transition for motorists.