What’s Next?
What’s Next for Super Bowl XLVI transformed much of the world’s opinion of the former “Indiana-No-Place,” but the chair of the Super Bowl Host Committee says there’s much more work to be done. Could the “Indy Way” become a template for other cities? of downtown Indianapolis over the last 40 years is a narrative of self-determination, of a committed civic sector ambitious enough to believe they could make the mile-square into the vital heart of the region. In the late ’60s, downtown was a hollowed-out core, under siege from more attractive suburban retail, with little business activity and just a few hundred hotel rooms. The area that is now Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) was acres of dilapidated neighborhoods and shuttered storefronts. The city had one advantage—our corporate and community activists. In partnership with a string of strong mayors, they went about exploiting opportunities to build a vibrant downtown. They used sports as a catalyst. They supported the growth of the modern IUPUI campus and of White River State Park as an enormous urban renewal project. They also embraced a unique spirit of publicprivate partnership to bring investment of all kinds to downtown Indianapolis. THE STORY
a new challenge. Former Mayor Bill Hudnut once famously proclaimed that Indianapolis couldn’t be a “donut city” with an empty downtown. Today, downtown thrives—the hole in the donut is solid. But now this core is constricted by a concentric circle of blight separating it from our robust suburbs. While we were building up the downtown, [nearby] Center Township lost 67 percent of its population.
TODAY, WE FACE
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| WA BA S H M AGA Z I N E
The same energy and ingenuity that we devoted to building downtown must be applied to the surrounding neighborhoods, four to six miles outward. Failing to address their plight would pose a corrosive threat to the entire region. Here is a threepart prescription to start the rebuilding: First, we must adopt an integrated strategy to reinvent promising urban neighborhoods into interesting places where people want to live. This means transforming housing, physical and social infrastructure, and creating neighborhood-serving commercial districts. We have isolated examples of how this approach can work—the revitalization of Fall Creek Place, the effort underway in the Meadows led by Strategic Capital Partners, and the Near Eastside Legacy partnership between neighborhood groups and the Super Bowl Host Committee. The challenge is scaling up these best practices into a strategy that can be applied to other areas with the right mix of grassroots leadership and market activity. Next, education. Failing schools are a primary reason for the flight of people and capital. We must reverse the status quo in urban education. The neighborhood schools of our future must educate current residents and attract new families to our urban core. There are examples, in Indianapolis and nationally, of inner-city schools that are thriving. These great schools share common characteristics—school-level governance, leadership that embraces innovation and accountability. Our vision for rebuild-
—by Mark Miles ’76
ing our urban core must set schools free to embrace this model and move urgently toward the creation of a broad portfolio of high-performing schools. Mass transit is also a vital priority for rebuilding urban neighborhoods, giving residents the mobility to connect with jobs and their other daily needs. Dense residential and commercial development also grows along rail and bus rapid transit routes, attracting new people, investment and jobs. took a generation, and this transformation will take the same long-term focus. Just as our sports strategy started with a few big wins that coalesced into a plan, we’re seeing progress in neighborhood redevelopment, education reform and transit planning. Decades ago we weren’t prepared to accept this city as a donut with downtown as the void in the middle. Looking forward, we have to broaden our focus to the next ring out by rebuilding and creating a truly prosperous region with a vibrant urban core.
THE EVOLUTION OF DOWNTOWN
Miles is President and CEO of the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership (CICP), and his comments were reprinted from his blog at the CICP Web site www.cincorp.com and were previously published in the
Indianapolis Business Journal.