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Most of the City-County Council is set to meet behind closed doors Wednesday afternoon with the man behind Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett’s effort to land a Major League Soccer franchise.
The 19-member Democratic caucus is expected to meet with longtime soccer executive Tom Glick this afternoon to listen to his pitch.
Denise Herd, a private communications consultant for the Democratic caucus, confirmed “there is a meeting today between the caucus and Tom Glick,” but did not respond to follow-up questions from IBJ regarding the time and location or who initiated the meeting.
Glick did not respond to messages requesting comment Wednesday. Several councilors, including Majority Leader Maggie Lewis and Council President Vop Osili, also did not return calls or messages about the meeting. And Councilor Brian Mowery, who leads the Republican caucus, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Hogsett administration started talking with Glick in January about securing potential investors for an MLS bid. City officials told IBJ he has been working to pull together an ownership group for the effort, which would likely be required to pay an MLS franchise fee of at least $500 million in addition to shouldering the costs of operating a team and contributing to the stadium construction.
While he’s now managing director of Charlotte, North Carolina-based Rockledge Sports Advisory LLC, a professional-sports-team consulting firm he founded in October, Glick has extensive experience in the soccer world.
He was previously president of Tepper Sports & Entertainment, which owns MLS club Charlotte FC and the NFL’s Carolina Panthers. And he recently worked for Chelsea FC in the United Kingdom. Before his time at Tepper, Glick was president of New York City FC and chief commercial officer of Manchester City.
Glick’s meeting with the caucus comes less than 48 hours after the Democratic caucus met privately with representatives of Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett’s administration Monday night to discuss details of the mayor’s efforts on MLS, including the creation of a new taxing district map to support a stadium development.
That meeting included an overview of the city’s plan to construct a publicly owned and operated soccer stadium on an existing parking lot near Gainbridge Fieldhouse and a portion of the Indianapolis Downtown Heliport property abutting the lot. The proposed taxing map includes more than 120 parcels from which state and local income taxes, food and beverage taxes and several other taxes would be collected to cover debt service tied to the development of a new soccer-specific stadium.
Last month, the Hogsett administration’s warning to the council against meeting with Keystone officials came just two days before Hogsett met with MLS Commissioner Don Garber in New York City. The city had abruptly ended negotiations over the Eleven Park development in March.
In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by IBJ, an attorney for the Hogsett administration warned the caucus against agreeing to holding a meeting with Keystone Group–developer of Eleven Park–warning that doing so might violate the state’s Open Door Law.
That law generally prevents a majority of a government council or committee from meeting privately or without notice, although it allows party caucuses to meet in private, as long as the members do not take official action.
Faegre Drinker attorney Scott Chinn said in the April 20 letter that the earlier private caucus would have allowed the developer—Keystone Group—to circumvent city processes by going to the council directly, before negotiations with the city had been completed.
Chinn, who is representing the city on the MLS negotiations, said that in addition to violating state’s Open Door Law, a caucus meeting with the developer would have amounted to Keystone “skipping ahead in the process to get the formal attention of the Democratic Caucus in order to influence the outcome of arrangements that are not yet ripe.”
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Told ya big investors would step in!
Sounds like two different interpretations of the Open Door Law, it’s ok with the city’s guy but not ok with Keystone.?
Party caucuses are (sadly) allowed, so long as no decisions are made.
Knowing and working with Scott Chinn in the past, he would not attach his name to the process if things were not being done correctly.
These chain of events have exposed city ‘leadership’ for what it is, untrustworthy, incompetent and backstabbing. On the positive side, Keystone has managed to re-load with influential $$$ backers of its own. Considering the ridiculous Hogsett location with allies of Keystone owning the properties, the secretive city cartel will be hard pressed to move forward with their current plans.
I hope Keystone and company succeeds. They may be able to pull it off without city subsidies. It’s reasonable to imagine MLS at the leveled site and the USL franchise going to Ft. Wayne. If successful it would be fun to watch the ceremony without Hogsett on the stage.
Keystone wanted the City on the hook if their financing didn’t pan out rather than a developer-backed bond; virtually all of the risk would be taken on by the City if that were the case. I think the above scenario is exceedingly unlikely. In the interest of taxpayers, the Mayor made the right call. I still have lots of not-great feelings about wooing an MLS team here when we have so many unmet needs, but when it comes to the Eleven the Mayor was right.
I love how people think anything behind close doors is untrustworthy, incompetent, backstabbing, etc. Details come out, meetings and visits come out. But with any major economic development, major investment, jobs announcements, event announcements – with so many variable, stakeholders, laws, policies and taxpayer financials to consider all these types of deals and announcements are ALWAYS kept quiet until all is on paper and good to go. Its just how it is done. Not unique to this administration, city or state. Happen all over.