Marta Moody helped build connections 'all over the place'
'Happy trails to the late planner'
MUNCIE — Marta Moody, who died earlier this year, spent her career as a low-paid public servant striving to help make Muncie more attractive, interconnected, walkable and bicycle friendly.
The long-time director of the city-county plan commission forged ahead in the face of resistance from various short-sighted, narrow-minded politicians and other influential people, some of whom were friends.
Moody was incredibly underpaid ($48,765 at the time of her unexpected death from heart failure at age 71) compared to her peers in other Indiana cities.
But I’m told by those close to her that she wasn’t in it for the money, that she didn’t complain about her salary (“Marta always went along with the flow”), and that she was more concerned about her staff’s pay than her own.
One associate recalled that Moody always led “from the middle” and added that “she should have been a Quaker,” alluding to her peacemaking efforts during heated land-use conflicts.
She was involved in many of the community’s biggest controversies, such as factory farms, wind farms, solar farms, trail construction, roundabouts, hazardous waste, billboards, student rentals, adult bookstores and the community’s appearance.
It’s important to recall some examples of the roadblocks that held her back:
Decades ago, one county commissioner said of attempts to enact development standards — including landscaping regulations — on commercial corridors, “We’re not Carmel.”
As a consequence of that mentality, McGalliard Road, which had replaced downtown as Muncie’s new Main Street, continues to this day to resemble a cheap, ugly strip shopping center from one end of the city to the other.
In the 1990s, Ball State urban planning experts, whose recommendations were ignored, called the automobile-oriented McGalliard —studded with billboards and pole signs, strung with overhead power lines, lacking sidewalks and fronted with parking lots — “Anywhere, USA.”
Big-box stores had their way on McGalliard as another county commissioner opposed requiring Walmart, Lowe's and others to plant trees in parking lots, saying they would hamper snow removal.
A real estate agent on the plan commission defended the honky-tonk commercial strip, saying, “I love McGalliard.”
Things are slowly improving, but McGalliard still exhibits low standards and a lack of community pride as well as making a poor first impression to visitors thinking of living here, investing here, or sending their kids to school here.
Also many years ago, a city-county engineer opposed requiring sidewalks in new subdivisions, stating, “We can’t take care of the sidewalks we have.” When the Morrison Road Trail was built in parks-deprived northwest Muncie in more recent years, the same engineer mocked it as “the sidewalk to nowhere.”
But even more recently, thanks to the foresight of bike-pedestrian-network planners including Moody, the Morrison Road trail became connected to the Riverside Avenue trail; the Riverside trail is connected to the McGalliard trail; the McGalliard trail is connected to the Tillotson Avenue trail, and the Tillotson trail is connected to the Bethel Avenue trail.
Those miles of trails/sidepaths link together residential neighborhoods, college-student apartments, Ball State’s campus, Walmart and Lowe’s, restaurants, motels, pharmacies, and other retail and office spaces.
Anti-trail sentiment here started in the 1990s with the 62-mile Cardinal Greenway, the longest rail-trail in Indiana and a 2018 inductee into the national Rail-Trail Hall of Fame.
Trail opposition continued in recent years when critics of the Riverside Trail included a former city controller and a longtime leader of the Muncie Action Plan. One protester who didn’t even live near the trail voiced concern that trails seemed to be popping up unexpectedly all over Muncie and Delaware County.
Moody and other officials cited a 2019 bicycle and pedestrian plan as well as other studies, master plans and action plans going back two decades that documented "long and widespread" public support for trails in Muncie.
“We are building connections all over the place,” Moody told me in 2016, after reconstruction of Neely Avenue, including bike lanes and a median, between Ball State and the Minnetrista Museum & Gardens.
"The goal is connectivity," she had said a year earlier, after reconstruction of Martin Street between The Village commercial district near BSU and the White River Greenway. "We are slowly building that connectivity."
Both routes, Neely and Martin, lead to downtown, the heart of the city.
It took a couple of decades, but the city finally enacted development standards for McGalliard and other commercial corridors about 10 years ago. By then, the south side, working with BSU faculty, already had convinced the city to adopt an ordinance regulating new development on South Madison Street and on 29th Street, where a new Walmart was built with trees in and around the parking lot.
Meanwhile, McGalliard remains stuck with mostly barren parking lots like the one at the Super 8 motel (next door to IHOP) where the rear ends of 18-wheelers stick out for all to see.
In 2009-10, a strategic plan developed with input from more than 2,000 citizens and known as the Muncie Action Plan identified the desire for updated corridor development standards as an action step under a larger initiative entitled, “Creating Attractive and Desirable Places."
The public ranked McGalliard at the top of the list of most unattractive places in Muncie when the plan was created. The new standards were designed to make McGalliard look more like downtown, Minnetrista and Ball State, places the public said it enjoyed — places with bike racks. One of the concepts is to create a streetscape of buildings on McGalliard rather than a streetscape of parking lots.
Moody’s reputation as “the great compromiser” led to criticism from more than a few people that she was not a forceful-enough advocate for good planning. It wasn’t just Carmel that was way ahead of Muncie in regulating streetscapes. So were many other Indiana cities, such as Bloomington and Noblesville.
“Marta didn’t move too quickly sometimes, but I thought the world of her,” Eric Kelly, a Ball State professor emeritus or urban planning, told me recently by phone. “She was completely self-educated. She went to a lot of conferences and learned from them. Some of us went to socialize and see friends. She did some of that, but she went to learn, and she learned a lot.”
Although Moody died more than a month ago, I still haven’t seen an obituary, from which you always learn something about the deceased that you never knew. I heard she held a degree in sociology from Ball State. She once told me she was from Chesterton, up in the Duneland area of northwest Indiana.
Moody started working at the plan commission in 1979 and became director in 1987.
“We were very fortunate to have her,” Kelly went on. “She understood local politics is how she got her job and never forgot the need to balance planning with politics. There were toes she didn’t want to step on. Overall, she did a very good job. She could have moved a little faster in some cases, but who am I to judge?”
Her role in building connections “all over the place” wasn’t her only contribution.
Moody also:
championed Muncie’s first roundabout.
softened opposition to turning McKinley Avenue on the BSU campus into more of a “complete street,” with frequent and safe crosswalks, a median island, narrower travel lanes, and bus stops. That project served as a tipping point for a more bike-friendly and pedestrian-friendly campus.
convinced county commissioners that bridges need sidewalks, a pedestrian safety feature that traffic engineers often opposed as being too costly.
was instrumental in securing and programming hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid for local transportation improvements, and in keeping projects moving along despite changes in political officeholders.
contributed to the Safe Routes to School and the Muncie Arts and Culture Trail initiatives.
helped Muncie win designation as a Bicycle Friendly Community. More bikeway projects currently in the works include those in the vicinity of Ball State as well as bike lanes on Ind. 32 through the Old West End, downtown and East Central Neighborhood.
was involved in the creation of a comprehensive plan in 2000 and another one in 2022.
(When I asked her two years ago what the 2000 plan had accomplished, Moody cited successes in downtown redevelopment; an extensive pedestrian-bicycle network including White River Greenway; a landscape ordinance to improve the appearance of retail corridors including McGalliard; recreation and conservation zoning to protect Prairie Creek Reservoir against overdevelopment; and steering industrial development to sites like the southside Industria Centre and Park One Business Park at Interstate 69 and Ind. 332).
represented Muncie-Delaware County on the board of directors of the Indianapolis-based Central Indiana Regional Transportation Authority (CIRTA). Public transportation advocates say commuter buses and eventually trains between Muncie and Indianapolis are critical to the economic future of Muncie-Delaware County.
Speaking of maintaining connections “all over the place,” any time I attended a meeting of the Anderson-Muncie Public Transportation Coalition over the years, Moody was always there.
Organized by retired BSU political science professor Roger Hollands, the coalition advocated for commuter bus and commuter rail service between Muncie and Indy.
"We don't want to wither on the vine," Hollands told me in 2016. "We have a great university here and a lot of great resources like the Cardinal Greenway. But we're not really going to be able to grow if we're not effectively connected."
Hollands’ concern was that Muncie would become a “disconnected backwater,” a “low-cost immigrant and retirement colony, or simply abandoned.”
According to the 2022 comprehensive plan, Delaware County jobs held by Delaware County residents has fallen to barely more than 50%. The share of Delaware County residents who commuted to other counties to work rose from 34% in 2002 to 47% in 2018.
“Overall, this points to a growing reliance on commuters by employers in Delaware County — especially for high-skill positions — while more and more Delaware County job-seekers are looking farther afield,” the plan reported.
Moody also was active on a number of other boards, including the Indiana Association of Floodplain and Stormwater Management, of which she was a founding charter member, and the steering committee for the White River Watershed Project, which addressed water pollution.
I’m told that Moody didn’t originally support the Cardinal Greenway, but she more than made up for that stance.
Last October, Ball Brothers Foundation presented its annual Fisher Governance Award to Moody for her contributions to the Cardinal Greenways organization, of which she was then board president. She had served on the board for 20 years, during which the White River Greenway and the Kitselman Trailhead were completed.
“At Cardinal Greenways, we are changing Indiana through neighborhood, community and county connections and we are doing so as one of the rare privately owned and operated trail systems,” Moody was quoted as saying at the time of the award.
After her death, Jud Fisher, CEO of Ball Brothers, stated: “Marta was a tremendously talented and humble public servant. For decades, Marta worked to make improvements in Muncie and Delaware County. She took the ‘long view’ and led with the patient persistence needed to bring complex projects to life. She will be missed for years to come.”
Several years ago, Moody called the $10 million Kitselman Trailhead — on a former toxic waste site on the east end of Muncie — "the most complex project we’ve ever done and maybe one of the most complex in the state."
The"crown jewel" of the project was the 175-foot-long historic bridge relocated over the White River. The bridge connects the multi-county Cardinal Greenway on one side of the river and the local White River Greenway on the other side.
The project also included removal of dams to allow an increase in kayaking, canoeing, fishing, tubing and other recreation; a grand lawn that stairsteps down to the river on one side; on the other side a"plateau park" slopes upward for a view above the river; gateway art; and rehabilitation of the bridge carrying motor vehicles over the river.
The numerous partners and regulatory agencies involved in the project included foundations; the city of Muncie; the state and federal highway departments; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.
Given her contributions to the community, the powers that be should consider paying tribute to Moody for years to to come with a memorial of some type, perhaps designating a section of trail in her name.
Anyone who worked with Moody knew that if there was a roomful of people with differences of opinion, Marta always brought “balance” to the table, Jim Lowe, associate vice president for facilities at BSU, told me.
“She knew how to get it done; she could bring it in,” he said.
Delaware County Commissioner Sherry Riggin was quoted by The Star Press recently as saying Moody was loved by the people with whom she worked and that she did her job without regard to partisanship or politics.
"She didn't care if you were a Republican or Democrat, and people didn't know if she was a Republican or Democrat," Riggin said.
In today’s super-polarized era, maybe that is Moody’s legacy: finding ways to advance, connect and unite the community.
Previously, in Greater Muncie:
Muncie’s future hinges on ‘Getting back to the basics’
Chipotle pole sign axed by zoning board
Ind. 32 through Muncie to get bike lanes, parking, narrower
"It wasn’t just Carmel that was way ahead of Muncie in regulating streetscapes. So were many other Indiana cities, such as Bloomington and Noblesville."
The mere fact that Marta was taken advantage and dying of a heart attack isn't lost on this community member. Neither is the fact our elected officials are dumber than dirt and have been for decades, with sides of political corruption on both sides of the aisles. Toss in the oligarchs who nearly always get their way in big land deals.
One could look at the Kitselman Trail Head, boast about it's importance, while not seeing the running connection of mass confusion in planning along McGalliard and the decades of waste along Main and Walnut after land developers screwed Muncie's Eastside, Downtown, and Southside to benefit McGalliard.
Muncie/DC never met a developer fee or construction improvement (impact fees) we didn't waive -- the name implies cheap, and we perfected it. Most progressive communities fight the WalMart Effect by preventing them - we mastered it by attracting two stores! Very sad for all her efforts.
Good review of Marta’s work and quite dedication to the Delaware community.
Thanks for recognizing her work and impact.
Bill Britton