Coordinated Efforts

I’m not a huge sports fan, so I never really follow the process of the host city for the Super Bowl. So when Indianapolis was selected, it was my first opportunity to watch the events unfold. I haven’t lived in Indiana for over five years. But during my last year at home I worked in our university’s planning office in downtown Indianapolis, which is when we began working on things related to the stadium. Now that the Super Bowl has passed, I’m beginning to read articles about the public investment of a stadium; basically boiling down the pros and cons to spending a lot of money for little return. Typically I agree on these sort of things. But the way Indianapolis handled the event was completely different. While the city may have used the Super Bowl to sell the idea to the public, they were thinking long term when implementing all the projects.

When the City first announced the new Colts stadium it wasn’t all about “the stadium”. Sure they used the Super Bowl for the publicity side of getting the actual stadium approved. But several things were unfolding at the time. Most notably the site of the stadium would initially expand the urban area of downtown south of the railroad tracks (which made a physical barrier). The downtown Indianapolis plan breaks the city into the four quadrants originally planned back in the 1800’s. The new Colts stadium is located within the southwest quadrant, and has a focus for the tourist portion of downtown. This quadrant includes four sports stadiums, the convention center, the museum district, and the transportation hub; with a residential population being supported by the adjacent university. Thus the new stadium would only strengthen the areas intent, and the new design guidelines being implemented during this time would ensure everything else would fall into place.

In addition to building the stadium, the city created some robust infrastructure plans both citywide and downtown. This included a brand new terminal at the Indianapolis airport, expansion of interstate capacity, and the Indy Connect transit plan. Unfortunately, the Indy Connect was the only plan not pushed through. But, as a side note, it is still being worked and will probably succeed.

Downtown, the city expanded their bike and pedestrian lanes, and interconnected them with the vast system citywide system. Anchoring pedestrian activity downtown, and coinciding with the recent expansion to MegaBus, Greyhound, and Amtrak services to Chicago/Cincinnati/Louisville/Nashville.

So when the Super Bowl was announced, the city went into full swing to continue the urbanization of downtown. One has to remember that ten years ago downtown Indianapolis was considered a small mid-western town, with the notorious nickname of Naptown. Once the Super Bowl was announced, the city had three years to ensure the nickname would not reemergence.  And it did't. 

So the article that relates the stadium building to just one event is way off (in my very humble opinion), because so much more happened; and those investments will continue past the Super Bowl. I’m sure if Indianapolis “made money” from the Super Bowl. However, they made great strides as a city, and were able to showcase it to the world.

Then. I read this article. Oh New Orleans, why… I realize they have upgraded stadium, and have added Champion Square nearby, but otherwise there seems to never be a coordinated effort for major events. Are they planning on having the street cars installed prior to the event? What about projects from the Master Plan which can be expedited – infrastructure, art, programs?  Instead of taking the city’s status of a tourist city for granted, the city needs to start elevating themselves when they get the chance.

After watching the coordinated approach in Indianapolis, it’s disheartening to watch New Orleans keep taking things for granted.