Much like the iconic buzzer-beater in the movie Hoosiers, in which an undersized and overmatched high school basketball team makes history by winning the Indiana state championship, Indianapolis is an underdog of a town that has drained a few game-winners as of late.
But while the Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts and gridiron wizard Peyton Manning could hardly be described as underdogs, and the roar of the Indianapolis 500—the world’s largest single-day sporting event—is anything but unassuming, Indy hasn’t really found itself on the list of inspiring meetings destinations until recently.
“Indianapolis was really ‘Indy No Place’ or ‘Naptown.’ There wasn’t much going on, frankly,” jokes Bobby Plump, the real-life high school basketball hero who iced the state championship in 1954. “The changes that have come about have been drastic—drastic for the better. I have people that come in from large cities that host all kinds of conventions, and all of them are amazed. They say, ‘You know, this is the best-kept secret around.’”
Plump is also the proprietor of Plump’s Last Shot, a restaurant and sports bar in the Broad Ripple district about 10 minutes north of downtown. Sort of a paean to Indiana basketball in a state that is “roundball” crazed, to put it mildly, Plump’s Last Shot is festooned with pictures of various basketball superstars and even boasts its own court. Groups from far and wide venture to the shrine, and Bobby himself will mosey on over on Tuesdays from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. to sign autographs and copies of his book Last of the Small Town Heroes—“It doesn’t take long to read it ’cause I don’t know any big words,” he chides—aside from being available for speaking engagements and facilitating team-building programs.
Plump says Indy really started to take off with the opening of Circle Centre Mall in 1995, which made its downtown a draw for food and shopping, and led to an overall transformation of the city’s core.
“People didn’t want to go downtown,” Plump says of the atmosphere before the transformation. “Fortunately for Indianapolis, they didn’t have to tear it down to make it better—our biggest building was 12 stories high. Now there are people that want to move downtown, and I haven’t heard complaints from the people that come in from a convention standpoint. And the people here have always been nice—it’s a Midwestern thing.”
Indianapolis is also gearing up for a $275 million expansion of the Indiana Convention Center, scheduled for completion in 2010, that will increase its amount of exhibition and meeting space to more than 1.2 million. Other major improvements include an $11 million renovation of the Hyatt Regency Indianapolis and more than $1 billion in upgrades at Indianapolis International Airport, including a new terminal and concourse set to open next year.
While the city has always been a magnet for sports events, the Indy 500 and the fever pitch generated by the Colts championship have only added fuel to the fire.
The Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association, in fact, even leverages the Indy 500 and other major races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“We use our three auto races, because of their allure, [to organize FAM trips for meeting planners],” says Chris Gahl, media relations manager for the ICVA. “If a meeting planner says, ‘I’m planning on bringing 55,000 for an association meeting, how can Indianapolis handle it?’ we’ll say, ‘Come into town when we’re hosting 400,000 and see for yourself.’”
