Indianapolis no longer 'Naptown'
Indianapolis was once called “Naptown” and “India-No-Place” for a reason.
Native son Kurt Vonnegut Jr. referred to it in 1970 as “the 500-mile speedway race, and then 364 days of miniature golf, and then the 500-mile speedway race again.” People used to roam city streets on Sundays, picking off pigeons with shotguns as part of “Operation Pigeon-Rid.” For decades, there was no reason to stay downtown after dark.
This week, as 150,000 visitors descended on a new, vibrant district before Super Bowl Sunday, even cynics agreed that the city had successfully shed its image as a bastion of boredom in what was once called “flyover country.” Hotels, restaurants, theaters and a 3-mile canal walk flank Lucas Oil Stadium and Super Bowl Village. Thousands of residents have moved into downtown apartments and condo complexes are rapidly rising. And visitors have noticed.
“Incredulity is in the air. ‘Naptown’ is alive and thriving. The urban Super Bowl is a huge success, where everything is in walking distance, and everyone feels the electricity,” wrote Dan Bickley of the Arizona Republic.
The transformation was decades in the making, beginning long before city leaders ever dreamed of bidding for the Super Bowl. In the 1970s, then-Mayor Bill Hudnut decided that sports was the ticket to revitalizing the city and putting it on the national map.
In 1982, the city began construction on a $77.5 million stadium without any guarantee it would ever house an NFL team.
“It would have been regarded as folly and as a white elephant if we had not been able to acquire a team,” said Hudnut, now a professor of professional studies in real estate at Georgetown University. “But I knew what we were doing was right. I wanted to make Indianapolis a major league city. In order to do that, you had to have major league sports.”
The city lured the Colts from Baltimore in 1984, a year after making a presentation to NFL owners to gain some interest in an expansion team.
Irsay, meanwhile, had thought of moving the Colts from Baltimore to cities including Phoenix, Memphis, Jacksonville and Indy. City officials began negotiating with Irsay in secret in 1984. Just weeks later, with Maryland lawmakers threatening to use eminent domain to keep the team in the state, the Colts sneaked out of Baltimore in the middle of the night and moved to Indianapolis.
“It changed the spirit of the city. People were really excited,” Hudnut said. “It enhanced our image.”
As the city’s sports reputation grew, it gained new life at its heart.
Before the sports renaissance, there were few reasons to stay in the heart of the city after businesses closed. For half a century, the city’s biggest event was the Indianapolis 500, which attracts more than a quarter-million fans each Memorial Day weekend. But there was little nightlife, and even fewer places to stay.
Now, the city that had fewer than 500 hotel rooms downtown in 1970 has more than 6,500, and about a dozen new hotels have opened in the past decade, including a 1,000-room JW Marriott. The number of downtown restaurants and bars has doubled to 300 in the past 10 years, and there are more than 200 shops, according to Indianapolis Downtown Inc., the city’s tourism agency.
Visitors have noticed the transformation, too. After only 24 hours in Indianapolis, Chuck Pinto of Vineland, N.J., was sold on the city’s charms.
He and his wife, Sherrie, said they thought Indianapolis was just a little town in the Midwest before arriving there Saturday morning. But since then, he said he’s been amazed by how friendly and welcoming people were and how accessible the city was.
“When New York hosts the Super Bowl, I hope we do it as well as Indy,” he said.
