In June 2025, a Mirror Indy photographer caught Southport Mayor Jim Cooney on foot on Anniston Drive, delivering the city's own newsletter door to door. Not mailing it. Walking it. That image says more about why South Perry's fall calendar looks the way it does than any list of events could, because sitting inside this Indianapolis neighborhood is a town that runs its own government, separate from the one at the City-County Building downtown.
South Perry is the larger neighborhood, the one real estate listings and school zone maps use to describe the area between U.S. 31 and Interstate 65 on the south side. But at its center sits the City of Southport, one of a handful of Marion County towns that opted out of joining the rest of Indianapolis. When the city and county merged into Unigov in 1969, Southport chose to become an "excluded" city, keeping its own government instead of folding into the consolidated one. That decision, made more than half a century ago, is why South Perry residents this fall are watching two different governments invest in the same few blocks for two entirely different reasons.
A small city sitting inside a bigger neighborhood
Southport still runs its own police department and sets its own zoning, while Indianapolis handles fire coverage for the area. As of the 2020 census, the city counted just 2,123 residents, small enough that a mayor can plausibly deliver his own newsletter and call it a normal Tuesday.
"Southport is in charge of its own destiny," Cooney told Mirror Indy.
That's not a slogan. It's a description of why South Perry gets a hand-built civic calendar and a zoning approval for new housing that a neighborhood twice its size usually can't move on this fast.
What Southport's own city hall put on the calendar
Mirror Indy reported in March 2026 that the City of Southport is running free community events roughly once a month through the end of the year, a level of hands-on programming most Indianapolis neighborhoods don't get because they don't have their own mayor's office writing the checks. For South Perry residents watching Southport's own calendar this fall:
- August 4 — National Night Out already came and went at the start of the month.
- August 22 — Movie in the Park is next, at Southport Park.
- September 19 — Southport Park Beautification Day follows a few weeks later.
The full year also includes an Independence Day parade, live music in the park, and a fall festival, all run out of Southport Park at 6901 Derbyshire Road, next to the Southport Community Center. None of it requires a ticket or a drive downtown. It requires showing up to a park most residents already pass on the way to the grocery store.
The building a town of 2,100 people approved
The bigger story sitting underneath this year's calendar opened last September. The Jacob Apartments, a 93-unit building with studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, is the first new apartment complex built inside Southport's city limits in more than 40 years. Cooney called it "a really big addition to downtown Southport" at the September 11, 2025 grand opening. The building is named for Jacob Smock, the settler who farmed the land that became Southport back in the 1820s.
The building's first residents include Michael Helms, a Southport High School graduate who had been living downtown so he could walk to businesses instead of driving. He moved back to Southport specifically to get that same walkable feel without giving up the smaller scale of the south side, and his new building includes an onsite dog park, where he now walks his dog Gucci instead of driving to one. Cooney has said he hopes the new housing draws younger residents to a city whose population has held roughly flat for decades. That's not a real estate pitch. It's a mayor of a 2,100-person town saying he wants more neighbors, then approving the zoning that makes room for them.
A few blocks away, a much bigger government is remodeling the park
Not everything happening in South Perry this fall traces back to Southport's city hall. A short drive from downtown Southport, Perry Park is a 21-acre Indy Parks property, meaning it belongs to Indianapolis's citywide parks department, not Southport's small municipal government. It does something almost no other park in the system does: it runs an indoor, NHL-sized ice rink with four locker rooms and a concession stand, home ice for the South Stars High School Hockey Club, the South Indy Youth Hockey Association, Total Package Hockey's Center of Excellence Indy, and the Sycamore Ice Skating Club. The rink's season runs from September through April, so it starts back up again next month. Admission runs $5 for kids and $7 for adults, with $3 skate rentals.
Perry Park is also mid-renovation. Construction on its new playground started this spring and is on track to wrap before the year is out, funded through a Lilly Endowment grant of $80 million spread across 42 Indy Parks properties, announced in late 2022. As of fall 2025, Indy Parks reported that more than 90 percent of those grant-funded projects were under construction, awarded, or already complete. Perry Park's outdoor pool and its tennis and basketball courts round out the property. By the time the ice rink opens for the season, the playground next to it should be finished too.
The distinction matters if you're trying to understand how South Perry gets things done. A city council representing 2,123 people can approve a 93-unit building and print a fall festival flyer on its own timeline. Rebuilding a playground with money from a citywide philanthropic grant runs on Indianapolis's much larger bureaucratic clock. Both are happening in the same neighborhood this season. They just don't share a source of funding, a decision-maker, or a mayor.
The corridor that didn't need either government's help
Not everything that makes South Perry feel distinct required a zoning vote or a grant application. Ale Emporium has poured more than 50 beers on tap for years, alongside wings dubbed Hermanaki, a house blend of teriyaki and a secret sauce you won't find on another menu in the city. Mocha Nut keeps a loyal following for its mochas and its 32-ounce cold brew growlers. The Southport Antique Mall anchors the shopping side of the neighborhood, and the East Street retail strip still holds a comic shop, a bike shop, and a florist within walking distance of each other. Down the same stretch, Lincoln Square Pancake House quietly serves some of the better breakfast plates on the south side, and The Clay Oven has held its own with garlic naan and a lunch buffet that keeps vegetarian and omnivore regulars coming back.
These places didn't need a grant or a variance to stick around. They're the fixed points against which everything else this fall, the calendar, the apartment building, the ice rink, gets measured. A small city can approve a new building. A bigger one can rebuild a playground. Neither can manufacture 50 beers on tap and a secret wing sauce. That still comes from the people who've been pouring them for years.
What this adds up to
None of these threads are separate stories. They're one story about scale, and about how two different governments happen to be investing in the same handful of streets at the same time. Southport is small enough that its mayor hand-delivers a newsletter and its city council can approve the first new apartment building in 40 years without much friction. Indianapolis is big enough to run an $80 million parks grant across 42 properties, one of which happens to sit inside the same neighborhood. Most South Perry residents will experience all of it as one fall calendar. It's actually two governments, moving at two different speeds, both landing in the same season.
If you're weighing what a home near downtown Southport is worth in a neighborhood that just added its first new housing stock in decades, the South Perry neighborhood page has current local listings and market context, and our posts on South Perry versus Hill Valley and low-maintenance living options around South Perry go deeper on what different pockets of the neighborhood offer. When you're ready for a straight answer on where your home stands, the Jeff Paxson Team offers a free, no-pressure home valuation, backed by the same hyperlocal read we just walked you through.
