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As infamous Illinois politician “shoebox” Paul Powell once said, “I can smell the meat acookin.” Have to wonder about all the back room deals going down with this soccer fiasco.
We are a city that once built a football stadium without a team. The city has to have the land together before the MLS is going to pick the city.
Maybe the fiasco is why the city decided to give Ozdemir a chance after he’d failed before. His second failure at landing the MLS is why the city is having to look elsewhere. A downtown soccer stadium also has the potential to land a fair number of concerts and could fill the void when Deer Creek is turned into housing.
It will be interesting this legislative session to see how many Republican roadblocks are thrown in front of the city’s plan by legislators on behalf of Ozdemir and Surack.
Terrible site for a stadium
No worse than the location of the Fieldhouse, the Vic, or LOS.
Much worse
Are you so sure Ozdemir failed, or was it because MLS is simply not going to give out more franchises at this juncture? Whatever, it would be appreciated by us soccer enthusiasts if the Hogsett regime would make clear who the backers would be, and what the further plans might be.
From January 2017:
“Late Monday night, the Eleven confirmed to IndyStar that the team will submit paperwork to Major League Soccer headquarters in New York Tuesday afternoon applying for expansion. Sports Illustrated first reported the news.
Tuesday is the deadline for cities to submit applications for MLS expansion and Eleven owner Ersal Ozdemir plans to personally hand in the paperwork around 1 p.m.
In December, MLS revealed it hoped to expand by four teams. Indianapolis would become the 12th city to apply. Indy’s competition is Charlotte, Cincinnati, Detroit, Nashville, Phoenix, Raleigh, Sacramento, St. Louis, San Antonio, San Diego and Tampa Bay.”
I believe that several of those cities got franchises in the interim as MLS awarded them in 2017 and 2019. Most galling to me is St Louis, which has an absolutely abysmal downtown compared to Indianapolis. They got an arch and a couple blocks around the ballpark and that’s it.
https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/2017/01/30/indy-eleven-apply-mls-expansion/97271092/
I caught this weeks ago.
In addition to the 80-space lot, the Simon-backed holding company also owns the 1,100-space surface parking lot directly south of Maryland Street, acquiring that parcel in late April.
Looks to me like Simon has Hogsett in their back pocket.
Look at the ownership groups of the newest MLS franchises.
San Diego- guy worth $5 billion and an Indian tribe.
St Louis – Taylor family, owners of Enterprise Car Rental, worth $19 billion
Charlotte – David Tepper who owns their NFL franchise. Worth $16 billion.
Austin- the folks who owned the Columbus Crew
Nashville – John Ingram, billionaire
Miami – David Beckham asked for it in his contract
So if I was trying to land an MLS franchise, I’d think a billionaire investor and/or majority owner would be the minimum table stakes. Herb Simon is worth $5 billion. Got another local billionaire in mind?
Simon has the State in their back pocket. In retrospect, the PSDA was clearly designed to be hijacked by a competing MLS group – something that the State wanted the entire time.
Lots of conspiracy and intrigue lurking in these posts, but let the big boys with big ideas (and big money I guess) try and work this out. I say why not this site if they can piece it together? The riverfront site would have been a great idea. If Mr.
Ozdemir still wants to build there — have at it, with soccer or not. He’s already tried and failed to build just southwest of downtown and snag a MLS franchise — goose eggs. He simply does not have the right stuff. Additionally the scope and size of this project and 20,000-seat stadium for anything less than major league soccer team was an overreach and a pipe dream. As for Mr. Surack of Ft. Wayne, the only reason he wants to keep the concrete graveyard known as the downtown heliport open is to fly rich folks back and forth to the track on race day. Otherwise there is minimal if any city-benefit from that desolate property in a downtown dead spot which is now surrounded by new development.
From this article we learned:
1. The city has wanted to acquire this parcel for a while.
2. Simon’s holding company acquired it just a month ago, Nov 5th, for $4.6 million
3. The city is already under contract to buy it from Simon holding co for “up to $4.76 million.”
Unanswered question: Why didn’t the city just buy it in the 1st place?