Q&A with hotelier Jim Dora on downtown, police work and more

Jim Dora Jr. was born into the hotel business. His father and uncle founded General Hotels Corp. in 1962, and his first job was washing dishes in a hotel kitchen.

From there, the path was laid out. While his cousins went on to found Dora Hotels and Dora Hospitality, Dora worked for General Hotels Corp. for 35 years, eventually becoming president and CEO. At the same time, he’s served as an officer on the IMPD reserve police force and numerous boards that make decisions on Indianapolis tourism and downtown-focused efforts.

Most recently, Dora was appointed by former Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb to serve on the Economic Enhancement District Board. The board governs the newly created downtown tax district and will determine in conjunction with Downtown Indy Inc. how best to maintain the Mile Square using funds from a tax charged to downtown businesses.

In a conversation with IBJ, he explains how his work has shaped his perspective on downtown and offers his thoughts on the controversial city plan to build and operate a hotel. This article has been edited for length and clarity.

You’re a member of the IMPD reserve police force. What has driven your decision to continue doing that work?

Law enforcement is very, very interesting. You get to see a lot of different things that many people don’t experience or don’t wish to experience. It was an opportunity that I was able to pursue and give back to the city in what is a very unique way. It’s kind of been a passion, and I like the opportunity to serve people. It’s been good to know what goes on behind the scenes of the city that not everybody’s up to speed on.

And I say that everybody that I talked to about it, if you have not ridden with your police department on a summer Saturday night, you don’t really know what’s happening across town.

How do your roles as a board member in several downtown-focused and tourism-focused organizations, a member of the police force and a business owner shape your perspective on Indianapolis and downtown specifically?

I think it gives me more of a broad view of really what’s happening. You know, a lot of times the press will report crime that may have occurred as occurring in downtown or just east of downtown or north of downtown, when in all reality that crime is maybe at 38th Street. It’s no less important that we have crime at 38th Street, but it’s not in downtown.

Downtown is generally the safest district in the city. Very few major crimes occur throughout any given year. Property crimes are probably the higher issue in downtown, where, say, cars get broken into or things like that.

People perceive Indianapolis as being an exceptionally safe city, especially with all of the conventions that come to town or return to town year after year. And we don’t want that perception to change.

It seems like you wear a lot of hats. How do you manage your time?

It kind of falls into a flow, and everything generally has a monthly cadence. The Capital Improvement Board is a monthly meeting. The Economic Enhancement District Board is going to be a monthly meeting.

I may be busier than some people, and I’m probably less busy than others. So you just make it all work, and having a fantastic wife who takes care of everything else doesn’t hurt.

She was a stay-at-home mom. She did all of the home details for our kids and getting them to and from school and everything else. So she did fantastic work at that.

How many kids do you have, and how old are they now?

Oh, gosh, they’re grown. My son has just turned 29, my daughter is 27, and they both live in Chicago right now.

Why not Indianapolis?

I think my son will eventually move back to Indy. But they both wanted to go to Chicago, and they’re living in downtown, and what kid wouldn’t like to live in a really big city for a little while? So our mantra at home is, “You’re young, you’re not married, you don’t have kids. Now is the time to do some things that you won’t be able to do when you have other responsibilities.”

When it comes to your talks with other folks who operate hotels, I know the Signia Hotel was pretty controversial when it was first announced that the city would take control. Does it seem like that’s still a conversation, or is it more so, “Let’s wait and see” now that cranes are up in the air and it’s being built?

There’s always concern when a product is coming into the market, and there’s always concern when it’s government-funded competition. I am very much a free-market person, and so if you want to build a hotel and you can pull it out of the ground, that’s great.

But it can be concerning when the government is funding a project that the market is indicating doesn’t necessarily make sense at the time. Now, you also have to try to look a little bit farther forward on that. And so, in speaking with Leonard Hoops and Visit Indy, the entire idea is to activate this south campus of the Convention Center.

You start to have a room count where you can have two overlapping conventions in the Convention Center, and that’s always been a problem of not having enough ballroom space. And a lot of times the conventions don’t necessarily want to intermingle all of their people. They kind of want to have that feel of a separate convention.

[With the increased room count], you can start to do multiple overlapping. If we can overlap like that and drive more conventions into the city, it will lift all boats all the way across.

We have some big groups locked up that do keep coming back. Now we need to fill in those openings with more, smaller conventions, and so this should be good for us. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that it is.

What is it like to see the South Downtown Connectivity Vision Plan come together? That revamp of Georgia Street and the underpasses?

Georgia Street is that connection from the Convention Center down to Gainbridge Fieldhouse, and it makes sense to have it looking sharp and be that cool street that draws people into downtown. We’ve got such a great walkable city that once you get downtown and park, you can go everywhere on foot. It’s terrific that way.

Revamping the underpasses of Illinois, Capitol Avenue and Meridian streets, that’s been a long time coming. It’s a challenge for the city to create something new there. It truly is kind of a dark hole when you’re downtown on a sunny day or at night. It’s not well-lit.

When those are redone and brightly lit 24 hours a day, it’s really going to make a difference, just in the psyche of somebody who’s walking through there. You have to go through one of those to get south of the station, to get to Lucas Oil, to get to the bike trail and everything else.

I’m very happy that it’s going to be worked on. It’ll be painful for us and my business in Union Station in [the Crowne Plaza], but Illinois Street’s [roadwork has] been painful, and we’ll get through it. It’s going to be great when it’s done. When you’ve been downtown for a long time, you have to put up with the construction to get to better times.•