If you own commercial property inside downtown Indianapolis's Mile Square, your spring 2026 tax bill carried a line item that didn't exist two years ago: the Economic Enhancement District (EED) fee. The 2026 spring installment that came due May 11 marked year two of the fee, and with the repeal fight over and the program running at full speed, it's worth understanding exactly what you're paying, why apartment towers and homeowners next door aren't, and why this particular charge ignores the circuit breaker caps that protect the rest of your bill.
What the EED is
The Economic Enhancement District covers roughly the original Mile Square — the downtown core bounded by East, West, North, and South streets — and assesses a fee on commercial property owners inside it to fund supplemental downtown services. The City-County Council created the district in late 2023 after the General Assembly authorized it, and a nine-member EED board contracts with Downtown Indy Inc. to deliver the services.
Per the district's official program materials, the money funds:
- Cleaning ambassadors — litter removal, graffiti abatement, power washing
- Safety ambassadors and public safety technology
- Street-level outreach to people experiencing homelessness
- Operations support for a low-barrier homeless shelter
- Landscaping, beautification, and business development support
The district's annual budget is capped at $5.5 million by statute. The first-year budget proposed by Downtown Indy Inc. and the EED board came in under that cap, at roughly $4.5 million per WTHR and IBJ reporting, with cleaning the single largest line.
Who pays, and how much
The fee is assessed as a percentage of gross assessed value — before deductions — on commercial parcels in the district. The statute caps the rate at 0.168% of gross AV, and the district has levied at essentially that ceiling; IBJ's coverage rounds it to 0.17% and pegs expected collections at up to about $4.65 million per year.
Worked example: a Mile Square office building with a gross assessed value of $10 million pays roughly $16,800 a year in EED fees, split across the spring and fall installments. A $2 million retail parcel pays around $3,360.
Who does not pay is where the politics live:
| Property type | EED fee status |
|---|---|
| Office, retail, hotel, parking, other commercial | Pays 0.168% of gross AV |
| Apartment buildings | Excluded — may voluntarily opt in |
| Owner-occupied homes (homestead deduction) | Excluded — may voluntarily opt in |
| Government and exempt parcels | Not assessed |
That carve-out wasn't the original design. The council's 2023 ordinance assessed apartment buildings at the percentage rate and charged single-family homeowners a flat $250 per year. After downtown apartment owners objected, state lawmakers took the issue up in the 2024 session — a bill to repeal the district outright got a Statehouse hearing — and the compromise that emerged kept the district alive but converted apartments and homestead properties to opt-in status. Repeal efforts since have gone nowhere; the district survived and billed its second year without serious challenge.
Note
So a downtown condo owner with a homestead deduction pays nothing unless they volunteer, while the office building across the street pays the full freight on gross AV. If you've seen older coverage citing the $250 homeowner charge, that was the pre-amendment design — it is not on 2025 or 2026 bills unless the owner opted in.
How to spot it on your bill
The EED fee does not appear in the tax rate tables. It shows up on the TS-1 statement in the special assessments section — the same area where solid waste fees, Barrett Law assessments, and conservancy district charges appear — typically labeled as an economic enhancement district fee with its own dollar amount, separate from your property tax subtotal.
Three things to verify if you own in or near the district:
- Boundary accuracy. The district line follows East, West, North, and South streets. If your parcel sits outside the Mile Square and you're seeing the charge, that's an error worth a call to the treasurer (317-327-4444) — confirm your parcel's location in the AribaTax property lookup first.
- The math. Multiply your gross AV (from your Form 11 or record card) by 0.00168. The annual fee shouldn't exceed that product. Remember it's gross AV — abatements and deductions that reduce your taxable value generally don't reduce the EED base the same way, which is why the fee can feel outsized relative to a heavily abated parcel's actual tax.
- Classification. If your building is an apartment property and you didn't opt in, you shouldn't be billed the percentage fee. Mixed-use parcels are worth a close look — how the assessor splits the commercial and residential AV determines the fee base.
A fee, not a tax — and why that matters
The EED charge is legally a fee/special assessment, not a property tax, and the distinction has teeth:
- No circuit breaker protection. Indiana's 1%/2%/3% caps limit property tax as a share of gross AV. Special assessments sit outside the cap math entirely. A commercial building already pinned at its 3% cap pays the EED fee fully on top — the cap absorbs none of it.
- It rides assessment increases without a rate hearing. Because the fee is a fixed percentage of gross AV, every dollar of assessment growth downtown raises EED collections automatically until the $5.5 million budget cap binds.
- Appealing your assessment cuts the fee too. The flip side: the EED base is your assessed value, so a successful Form 130 appeal lowers both the tax and the fee. With downtown office values still soft — our Mile Square commercial recovery report tracked the AV declines by building class — owners who appealed got relief on both lines. The June 15, 2026 appeal deadline for this year's Form 11 values is five days away.
Tip
Office owners: the EED fee strengthens your appeal economics. Every $1 million of AV reduction on a Mile Square commercial parcel is worth roughly $1,680 a year in EED fees in addition to the property tax savings at the 3% cap rate. If vacancy and income evidence support a lower value, the combined savings often justify the appeal effort even on marginal cases. File the Form 130 by June 15 — the filing checklist walks through it.
Is it working? The year-two question
The honest answer is that year two is when the district's value proposition gets tested. Supporters point to visible ambassador presence, expanded cleaning coverage, and the low-barrier shelter funding as exactly what the fee was sold to do. Skeptics — including the owners who testified for repeal — argue downtown's largest property taxpayers are paying a second time for services the city's general fund should cover, in a market where office assessments have been falling and conversions are pulling office space off the market entirely.
There's an irony in the structure worth watching: the fee exempts the property type downtown is gaining (apartments) and leans on the type it's losing (offices). As office buildings convert to residential use — and qualifying conversions exit the fee base or shrink it — the EED's collections increasingly depend on a smaller pool of commercial AV. Whether the board adjusts the rate, the legislature revisits the exemptions, or collections simply drift below budget is a question for the 2027 cycle.
What Mile Square owners should do now
- Pull your spring 2026 TS-1 and find the EED line in the special assessments section.
- Check the math against 0.168% of your gross AV, and check the boundary if the charge looks wrong.
- Decide on a Form 130 by June 15. The fee makes assessment appeals more valuable downtown, not less.
- Budget for the fall installment — the second half of the fee comes due November 10, 2026.
- Track the EED board's annual budget hearings if you want input on how the money is spent; the budget goes through the EED board and council review each year.