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The convention and events business that downtown Indianapolis has worked so hard to develop over recent decades has recovered fairly well from the worst days of the pandemic. But there’s a new competitor on the horizon.
Nashville, Tennessee—a fellow NFL city that also has positioned its downtown for tourism—is on the brink of building a new football stadium downtown with a covered roof. As we know in Indianapolis, a stadium with a roof gives your city a lot more flexibility in attracting and staging major events—for sports, concerts and conventions. And Nashville officials have been clear that they’ll be going after events that Indianapolis currently hosts or traditionally is in the hunt to host.
In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, reporter IBJ’s Mickey Shuey tries to gauge the potential impact on Indianapolis of having a tougher competitor for some of the city’s bread-and-butter business.
Click here to find the IBJ Podcast each Monday. You can also subscribe at iTunes, Google Play, Tune In, Spotify and anyplace you find podcasts.
You can also listen to these recent episodes:
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IBJ Podcast: Ben Lytle on navigating coming disruptions in tech, culture
IBJ Podcast: Pete The Planner has a frank message on accepting your future demise
IBJ Podcast: Rahal, Frye on why race teams are investing in Indy now
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Looking for another podcast to try? Check out IBJ’s The Freedom Forum with Angela B. Freeman, a monthly discussion about diversity and inclusion in central Indiana’s business community.
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Nashville will kill us.
There’s a reason why corporations are moving there. We are not investing enough money back into our downtown infrastructure such as side walks,
curbs, cleanliness, and landscaping. This all influences the walkable areas that
are so important to our tourism and convention business.
Look at how the Citcle Center Mall entrances and mall parking lot have deteriorated. They look abandoned, dirty, and unkept.
Homeless are all over in that area sleeping on the sidewalks. Relieving themselvesin the stairwells
The walkable area around our hotels and convention center look terrible.
We are not putting enough money back into that area because we don’t have
the money.
We are financing Mr. Isray entirely to much. Jim Irsay said he wants to be in the
middle of the pack financially. The middle of the pack is a metro area the size Minneapolis/St. Paul. Population around 3.7 million now.
Indy’s metro population is around 2.1 million. A huge revenue difference that
Indy is financing, but can not afford.
Nashville is up & coming growing much faster. It will be very difficult to compete.
But not an insurmountable task.
Our professional sports teams should not and can not continue to expect the taxpayers to continue subsidizing them at the expense of neglecting our downtown.infustructire.
I have family & friends that would rather drive the distance to enjoy a weekend in downtown Nashville than one night in downtown Indy. To me, that speaks volumes as to what Nashville has to offer and that is without a new stadium.
Indy has fallen and needs to change, there may still be time if the commitment from the so-called leaders would get to work and stop coddling and hand-holding all that ruins the once city I saw come from NAP Town to the vibrant city of INDY.
Sharon M.
You identified the problem. We don’t have leaders coming together from
the private sector with vision or boldness for our downtown as we used to.
When I first moved here private sector leadership worked actively with the
mayor to grow and develop our downtown. Now all we have are
government beauracies operating independently without the passion and
commitment that are previous leadership had.