Downtown soccer battle update—stadium design, burial sites, Simon family land

Three weeks ago, we released an episode of the IBJ Podcast explaining the sudden, multilayered and high-pitched battle over building a soccer stadium in downtown Indianapolis. Since then, the drama has taken several turns with fresh revelations about what’s underneath the ground set aside for the stadium complex that developer Keystone Group wants to build and who owns the land the city has identified for another site that Mayor Joe Hogsett’s administration has championed. Meanwhile, a proposal for a taxing district that would cover most of the cost for the latter stadium is wending its way to the City-County Council, with a key committee vote coming on May 28. So we thought this would be a great opportunity to bring you up to date.

IBJ’s Mickey Shuey joins the podcast to discuss his piece in the latest issue of IBJ about what an Indy-based stadium for Major League Soccer—America’s highest professional league—could look like. But first some history: In late April, everything that we had assumed about the future of pro soccer in Indianapolis and the creation of a publicly owned downtown stadium for the Indy Eleven soccer team received a swift kick between the stitches. The owner of the Indy Eleven, who also owns the development firm Keystone Group, accused the city of backing out of negotiations to finalize the stadium deal and support financing for a $1.5 billion mixed-use project that the stadium would anchor. Then Mayor Joe Hogsett announced that the city indeed had halted negotiations, claiming in part that the numbers didn’t add up. Indy Eleven and Keystone representatives disagreed. Hogsett also said the city had been working with an undisclosed group of investors who believed they could bring a Major League Soccer franchise to the city.

Since our last podcast, IBJ broke the story that the Simon family, which owns the Indiana Pacers and Indiana Fever, has purchased a large swath of land where the investor group’s stadium would be located. City-County Council President Vop Osili volunteered to sponsor the proposal for financing the stadium after the councilor for that district refused to do so. On May 28, the same day this podcast debuts, the proposal will be considered by the council’s Rules and Public Policy Committee, which Osili chairs, although a vote to deny the proposal won’t stop it from reaching the City-County Council. And in maybe the biggest revelations yet, both the Hogsett administration and Keystone revealed what they know—or have estimated—about the human remains and gravesites that are buried on the 20-acre site Keystone has been trying to develop.

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