World-class challenge

But that inheritance has
turned into a financial albatross around the university’s neck. It’s
grappling with how to pay for their upkeep and the improvements
necessary to keep the facilities-and the city-in the hunt for
high-profile sporting events.

In
addition to determining the long-term future of the Natatorium, Michael
A. Carroll Track & Soccer Stadium and Indianapolis Tennis Center,
IUPUI is also contemplating the future of its growing men’s and women’s
basketball programs. Those teams play in a 1,215-seat gymnasium that
many high schools would consider inadequate.

IUPUI Chancellor
Charles Bantz and his top lieutenants-along with officials for Indiana
University in Bloomington-have been huddling for the last nine months
working on a campus master plan, which is set to be complete by January.
   
David
King, of Washington, D.C.-based SmithGroup/JJR, was hired to serve as
IU’s new master planner and is overseeing preparation of comprehensive
master plans for all seven campuses, including IUPUI.
   
“We’re
looking at a lot of long-term issues: transportation, housing, and the
medical center,” said Roger Schmenner, Bantz’s chief of staff. “The
school’s athletic facilities will certainly be a part of the plan.”
   
Local
sports officials said if IUPUI and its collaborators don’t come up with
a plan soon, the city will start losing some of the big-time sporting
events that have become its trademark and a major source of tourism and
national and international exposure.
   
“Within the next year,
there needs to be a clear signal that something will be done,” said
Indiana Sports Corp. President Susan Williams, who also serves on an
IUPUI master plan advisory committee. “We’re at risk right now for
losing events if something doesn’t get done. We keep trying to overcome
that, but I’d say we’re at the pinnacle of that risk factor, especially
with the Natatorium.”
   
A newly proposed NCAA swimming
festival-which could draw more than 25,000 contestants and spectators
for a multi-day event-is among the events that could be at risk.
   
The
NCAA is considering bringing its men’s and women’s Division I, II and
III championships together for one big festival of swimming, and the
IUPUI Natatorium is a leading candidate to be the permanent site of the
annual event beginning in 2011-but only if the facility is upgraded.
   
Improving
the water and air quality in the pool and its surroundings is critical,
and upgrading spectator seating areas, press accommodations and
telecommunications infrastructure are also paramount at the Natatorium
and track and soccer stadium.
   
But Schmenner admits that’s just the start. Another $18 million, he said, is needed in upkeep and upgrades for the Natatorium and track and soccer stadium, both of which were built in 1982.
   
When
it comes to its sports facilities, IUPUI is eager to partner with
members of the mayor’s office, Indiana Sports Corp., Indiana Convention
& Visitors Association, companies or local foundations to formulate
a plan.
   
“We’re in the business of seeking out partners,” said Schmenner, who’s in charge of the facilities’ upkeep and planning.
   
While
IUPUI officials are eager for ideas and money, they are reluctant to
surrender control of the venues, local sports business experts said.

Benefactors must pay  
While
Schmenner thinks the trio of sports facilities has helped enhance
campus life and helped the school with student attraction and
retention, there’s little doubt the city and its businesses have
derived millions of dollars in benefits from the events that have been
hosted here. That’s a point IUPUI officials intend to hammer home.
   
“We think these facilities are assets for all of us,” Schmenner said.
   
Doug
Logan, the new CEO of USA Track & Field, said the track at IUPUI is
one of the primary reasons his organization is headquartered in
Indianapolis. He said despite needed upgrades, the track remains one of
the top five in the U.S., and if maintained, will continue to draw
international events to Indianapolis.
   
“That track and the other facilities here are part of a marvelous heritage in this city,” Logan said.
   
The price tag to continue that heritage is larger than IUPUI can afford alone, Schmenner said.
   
“We
have some tremendous needs,” Schmenner said. “We have 18 different
schools here. We have lots of different things happening, and we have
to address all of them.”
   
Since 1996, IUPUI has paid for $5.8
million in repairs and renovations to the Natatorium and track and
soccer stadium. This year, IUPUI has $2.2 million earmarked to upgrade
the roof, locker rooms, class rooms, labs and more at the Natatorium,
which also houses the university’s school of physical education and
tourism management.
  
ISC’s Williams thinks a plan needs to be
devised to help the university capture more of the economic activity
the venues create.
   
“These facilities help fill a lot of hotel
rooms, sell a lot of meals and bring in a lot of other money that goes
someplace else, and doesn’t come back to the facilities,” Williams
said. “A lot of the money generated from things like parking, catering,
concession sales, and the list goes on, is simply going elsewhere.”
   
Williams
suggests creating a self-sustaining, not-for-profit entity to operate
the Natatorium and track and soccer stadium. It would be run like a
business and pump revenue back into the facilities.

Support, but no cash, from city
IUPUI officials didn’t waste any time reaching out to new mayor Greg Ballard, who has offered his support, but not yet offered to throw any tax money toward the effort.
   
“I
think these facilities promote and propel Indianapolis into a top-tier
community for athletic events,” said Nick Webber, deputy mayor of
economic development. “It helps cement our reputation for sports and
puts emphasis on the heart of downtown. … To the degree we can support
them, we will support them.”
   
But with Ballard in the midst of
citywide budget cuts, IUPUI officials wonder how much of a financial
commitment the Republican mayor is willing to make.
   
“It’s too
early to say what specific help the city might offer,” Webber said.
“But we definitely want to help IUPUI think through their challenges.”
   
It’s
time to replace strategy sessions and loosely knitted alliances with
action, said Milton Thompson, president of Grand Slam Cos. and longtime
ISC board member who was involved in the planning of some of the
venues.
   
“It’s time for the university and city officials along
with sanctioning bodies to come together in a very real way to make
sure this city doesn’t lose what we’ve worked so hard to build,”
Thompson said.
   
Collaboration played a big role in the facilities being built.
   
In
the late 1970s and early 1980s, city officials helped acquire land and
paid for clean up and site preparation, then, along with university
officials, led the effort to raise money from the federal government,
Lilly Endowment and other private sources to build the sports
facilities.
   
IUPUI was hung with paying for maintenance and
upgrades. The university passed upkeep of the Indianapolis Tennis
Center on to the tournament that leases the facility, but has taken on
the expense of the Natatorium and track and soccer stadium itself. Some
school officials quietly complain that it is an expense the school
can’t afford.

Tennis anyone?
The Indianapolis Tennis Center, which was constructed in 1979, needs $8 million to $12 million in upgrades, but IUPUI has little
use for the stadium court that is the centerpiece of the annual
Indianapolis Tennis Championships, an ATP Tour stop. So the university
has put that project on the back burner. IUPUI’s tennis teams primarily
use the outlying courts just west of the stadium.
   
“The tennis
center is wonderful for our city, and we are its custodian, but it is
not something that is critical to our sports programs,” Schmenner said.
“We’re happy at this time to host it on our land, but the historical
arrangement has been for the tennis tournament to maintain the
facility.”
   
There has been speculation that IUPUI wants to use
the land the tennis center occupies for a convocation center that could
double as a home for the growing men’s and women’s basketball programs,
but Schmenner said there’s no such plan in the works. However, plans to
make IUPUI bigger don’t include adding to its 509-acre campus, so its
existing footprint will have to be used “more intensely,” he said.

Welcome to the Jungle
University
officials are studying where they might locate a new basketball venue
and convocation center, Schmenner said, and observers think the site of
the tennis center is a natural choice.
   
The uncertainty of the
Indianapolis Tennis Championships, which has endured a serious
attendance downturn in recent years, only serves to cloud the picture.
The tennis tournament’s current five-year agreement to hold the
tournament at the IUPUI tennis center runs through 2010.
   
IUPUI
men’s and women’s basketball teams practice and play in a gym,
nicknamed The Jungle, on the north end of the Natatorium. Schmenner
said if the school’s basketball program continues to grow in
popularity, The Jungle will soon become inadequate. IUPUI began
competing in the NCAA’s largest division in 1997.
   
“We would
love to have a convocation center to hold things like basketball games
and graduations,” Schmenner said. “When we’re going to get it, and how
we’re going to do it, is not clear.”