Sports Teams Really Can Save a City

The American press is obsessed with stories of failure, disaster, catastrophe, and decay. As a result, it rarely pays close attention to success. But just as failure teaches people what not to do, success provides models for emulation.

The largest municipal failure of the past three decades is Detroit. The home of the auto industry and Motown Records took a steep slide in bankruptcy – its services nonexistent, its culture an embarrassing juxtaposition of its former self. Dissections of Detroit’s decline will abound in the next few months and years. Studies of a similarly sized city to its south – Indianapolis – will be harder to find, and that means America will have missed a crucial lesson in urban revitalization, economic development, and smart, effective politics.

Indianapolis is the opposite of Detroit.

In the 1960s, visitors and all but the most loyal residents gave it the nickname "Nap Town." The joke being that the only thing to do in Indianapolis is take a nap. There were two dining options in the entire downtown section of the city, and most office buildings were empty – long abandoned for other parts of the state or country where a human pulse was reachable somewhere in a five-mile radius.

The city’s lone claim to fame – its solitary attraction – was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway; the host of the Indy 500. Fred Glass, former Indiana University Athletic Director, said that during the 60s, Indianapolis was a "racetrack in the middle of a cornfield."

Now, Indianapolis is still the host of the Indy 500, but it is also home to an NBA team, an NFL franchise, a minor baseball team, 200 restaurants, 300 retail shops, 28 museums and galleries, and 12 performing arts theaters. All of these entertainment venues and service businesses attract a growing market of Indiana visitors and out-of-state tourists. Annual attendance at downtown leisure attractions has increased 84 percent since 1994, while major businesses and educational institutions have taken notice and responded with money and labor.

Dozens of major corporations have made downtown Indianapolis their headquarters, Indiana-University-Purdue-Univsity-Indianapolis and Butler University have both consistently grown, in physical space and student population, in the past two decades, and the small, Midwest city has earned the surprising reputation as a "tech hotbed," in the words of industry publication, Digital Relevance. Indianapolis now has, in its city limits, 70 tech firms.

The New York Times praised Indianapolis' "thriving culture scene," while the Los Angeles Times called the success of its revitalization project, "breathtaking."

The unemployment rates in Indiana and Indianapolis are lower than the national average, and both the state and city have sizable budget surpluses.

The obvious question, then, especially in the face of unmitigated fiscal devastation in Detroit, Cleveland, and many other smaller Midwest cities, is how did they do it?

The Indianapolis plan for resurrection required much more than prayer. Beginning in the 1970s, under a visionary, Republican Mayor – William Hudnut – and Otis Bowen, a cooperative and moderate Republican Governor, Indianapolis sought to become the sports capital of the Midwest, a flytrap for business investment, and a tourist destination.