INDIANAPOLIS has been auditioning for the Super Bowl for a long

GAME ON
INDIANAPOLIS has been
auditioning for the Super Bowl
for a long time. Now this
lively, walkable Midwestern
city is ready for the
spotlight — cold and all.
BY EVAN WEST
WHEN THE LIGHTS GO DOWN: The city skyline
and canal, part of a refurbished downtown
that now keeps office workers from heading
to the suburbs right at 5 p.m.
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put more than half a million square feet under a roof — perfect for banquets, parties
and the league’s signature NFL Experience
attraction. Accommodations? The city had
close to 6,000 downtown hotel rooms, and
the ink was drying on a deal to build a soaring, 1,000-room JW Marriott hotel just a
few blocks from the stadium. Travel? The
brand-new Indianapolis International Airport, with nonstop service to 34 destinations,
had opened operations to rave reviews.
Everything, it seemed, was in place. Then
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Miles and company flipped to the page labeled “Championship Golf Courses.” Pause.
Central Indiana has lots of nice golf courses
— several by renowned course designer Pete
Dye. Indianapolis is a great place to golf —
from May to October. But the Super Bowl
is in February, when the average high temperature is 40 degrees. The committee members looked around at one another. “How
do we answer that?” Miles wondered. With
a proverbial shrug of the shoulders, they
dutifully listed each of the region’s top-tier
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championship­golf courses. Then, beside
each course, in the space marked “price,”
they wrote “free of charge.”
“We thought that was pretty funny,” Miles
says.
Although the Indianapolis Super Bowl
Committee was working on behalf of a
­climate-challenged city in a small media
market in the middle of Middle America,
they were still confident — glib, even. For
one, they had precedent on their side. Detroit — even more miserable in February
than Indianapolis, in terms of the weather
— had won the big prize in 1982 and again
more recently in 2006. And games given to
Houston and Phoenix suggested that NFL
owners were willing to make good on a kind
of unspoken, gentleman’s understanding:
Cities that ponied up public funds for pro
football stadiums would be richly rewarded.
In fact, Indianapolis’ bid for the 2011 game,
seen as a strong dark-horse contender the
year before, likely fell short only because an
even more lavish sporting palace in Arlington, Texas, stole the show.
But Indianapolis had more than NFL history on its side. While it might have been a
surprise to everyone else when the NFL announced that Indianapolis would host Super
BABY, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE: But it’s cozy inside.
Lucas Oil Stadium provides an indoor Super
Parking is super cheap
Bowl experience.
Eiteljorg Museum of American
at Circle Centre.
Indians and Western Art
St. Elmo Steak House
ARTIFACT: WILL VAN OVERBEEK/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY/CORBIS;
ALL OTHERS: COURTESY INDIANAPOLIS CONVENTION & VISITORS ASSOCIATION
A
few years ago, city leaders in Indianapolis were looking
over a bundle of forms from the National Football League.
It was a request for bids to host Super Bowl XLVI, and
the stakes were high: If they answered the questionnaire correctly,
the city might win a chance to put on the biggest show in American
sport — and bask in the warm spotlight of the nation’s highest-rated
media extravaganza.
Mark Miles, then president of the committee handling the Indianapolis bid, liked their chances. Seats? Lucas Oil Stadium, completed downtown in 2008 at a cost of more than $700 million, was
a state-of-the-art, retractable-roof showplace with nearly 140 luxe
corporate suites. Event space? A planned $275 million expansion
of the Indiana Convention Center, connected to the stadium, would
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If You Go
Blu
240 S. Meridian St.
(317) 955-8585
www.bluindy.com
NCAA Hall of Champions
700 W. Washington St.
(317) 916-4255
www.ncaahallofchampions.org
Circle Centre
49 W. Maryland St.
(317) 681-5615
www.simon.com
NFL Experience
Jan. 27–Feb. 4
Indiana Convention Center
100 S. Capitol Ave.
(866) 849-4635
www.nflexperience.com
Bankers Life Fieldhouse
125 S. Pennsylvania St.
(317) 917-2727
Eiteljorg Museum of American
Indians and Western Art
500 W. Washington St.
(317) 636-9378
www.eiteljorg.org
Harry & Izzy’s
153 S. Illinois St.
(317) 635-9594
www.harryandizzys.com
Ike & Jonesy’s
17 W. Jackson Place
(317) 632-4553
www.ikeandjonesys.com
Indiana State Museum
“Chaos is a Friend of Mine: Cultural
Icons from the Jim Irsay Collection”
Jan. 27–May 1
650 W. Washington St.
(317) 232-1637
www.indianamuseum.org
Indianapolis Zoo
1200 W. Washington St.
(317) 630-2001
www.indyzoo.com
JW Marriott Indianapolis
10 S. West St.
(317) 860-5800
www.marriott.com
The Libertine
38 E. Washington St.
(317) 631-3333
www.libertineindy.com
Lucas Oil Stadium
500 S. Capitol Ave.
(317) 262-8600
www.lucasoilstadium.com
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Slippery Noodle Inn
372 S. Meridian St.
(317) 631-6974
www.slipperynoodle.com
Soldiers and Sailors Monument
and Colonel Eli Lilly Civil War
Museum
1 Monument Circle
(317) 232-7615
www.in.gov/iwm
St. Elmo Steak House and
1933 Lounge
127 S. Illinois St.
(317) 635-0636
www.stelmos.com
Subterra Lounge
250 S. Meridian St.
(317) 472-8600
www.subterralounge.com
Super Bowl Village
Jan. 27–Feb. 5
Georgia Street
(317) 631-2947
www.indianapolissuperbowl.com
Tiki Bob’s Cantina
231 S. Meridian St.
(317) 974-0954
www.facebook.com/tiki.indy
The Ugly Monkey
373 S. Illinois St.
(317) 636-8459
www.theuglymonkey.com
Victory Field
501 W. Maryland St.
(317) 269-3545
www.indyindians.com
White River State Park
West Washington Street and North
West St.
(800) 665-9056
www.inwhiteriver.wrsp.in.gov
CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: HENRYK SADURA/GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY HARRY & IZZY’S;
JOHN BRAGG; COURTESY SLIPPERY NOODLE INN; INDIANAPOLIS MONTHLY; POLINA OSHEROV
Claddagh Irish Pub
234 S. Meridian St.
(317) 822-6274
www.claddaghirishpubs.com
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Bowl XLVI (Indianapo-where?), city boosters couldn’t help but think it was about time.
The fact is, Indianapolis has been auditioning for this main-stage role for a very long
time. “This has been at least two decades
in the making, and we’ve added $3 billion
in new tourism products in the past three
years,” says Morgan Greenlee of the Indi­
anapolis Convention & Visitors Association.
“We’re built to host sporting events of this
size.” And she’s not the only Indy booster
betting that, after Feb. 5, this clean, attract­
ive and surprisingly fun — yes, fun — little
city, something of a hidden gem until now,
will be a secret no longer.
T
he swagger of the Super Bowl Committee (now called the Super Bowl
Host Committee, thank you very much) is
all the more remarkable when you know
something about Indianapolis. Here was a
landlocked railroad stop with no beaches,
no mountains, no casinos, no desert spas
— no glitz, no glamour. And until recently,
Indianapolis had a bad inferiority complex;
those who lived here gave it nicknames
like ­India-no-place and Naptown. People
drove downtown to work in office buildings
in the morning, and then, in the e­ vening,
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they clocked out, shut off the lights and
drove home. Out-of-town visitors came to
Indi­anapolis once a year, in May, for the Indianapolis 500 (still considered the largest
single-day sporting event in the world) and
didn’t return again until the following spring.
But starting in the early 1980s, city leaders hatched a plan to make downtown a leisure destination. Then they began building.
The city’s recently minted NBA franchise,
the Pacers, got a new arena (now demolished). On spec, Indianapolis built the Hoosier Dome (also now gone), and soon after,
the erstwhile Baltimore Colts rolled into
town in Mayflower moving trucks. Planners also saw a possible niche in amateur
athletics, and their efforts landed the Pan
American Games in 1987, a mini Olympics,
and, later, the FIBA men’s basketball World
Championships. The city has hosted the
men’s Final Four six times, with another on
the way in 2015, and the NCAA relocated its
national headquarters here in 1999. “There’s
a reason the NCAA likes having the Final
Four here,” Miles says. “Our track record is
that we do them really well.”
That vision of bringing sports to downtown Indianapolis has been an unmitigated
success, enough to merit investments in
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­significant upgrades, namely the Pacers’ new
downtown home, Bankers Life Fieldhouse
— consistently rated among the NBA’s best
arenas — and the aforementioned Lucas Oil
Stadium. And Victory Field (rated the best
minor-league stadium in America by Sports
Illustrated) is a charming, throwback ballpark near Lucas Oil Stadium that keeps the
sporting calendar full all summer. Now, on
nearly any given night of the year, Indy’s tidy
downtown sidewalks teem with sportsgoers,
and the place bustles even after the office
stiffs have driven home for dinner.
But the city has also given people plenty
of reasons other than sports to come downtown. In 1995, Indianapolis-based Simon
Property Group, the biggest mall builder in
the country, opened Circle Centre — nearly
800,000 square feet of indoor retail space
now anchored by Carson Pirie Scott and
crowded with boutiques, gift shops, restaurants and a multiplex theater. (At $1.50 for
three hours, its parking is also some of the
cheapest in any sizable city.) White River
State Park, on the western edge of downtown,
is a campus of cultural attractions, arrayed
around grassy open spaces, attractive landscaping and a canal walk that ties into an
extensive network of art-lined urban trails
GARDENS: RICHARD CUMMINS/CORBIS; GEORGIA STREET: INDIANAPOLIS MONTHLY; OTHERS COURTESY INDIANAPOLIS CONVENTION & VISITORS ASSOCIATION
CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE:
White River Gardens, inside the
Indianapolis Zoo, includes
a glass-enclosed conservatory, a
water garden and a wedding garden;
the Canal Walk; Georgia Street, the
planned site of Super Bowl Village;
a bridge over the Canal Walk allows
for outdoor recreation
NOW YOU KNOW: From 2002 to 2010, the Indianapolis Colts won at least 10 games
every season, making the playoffs each time. That’s not the case this year.
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friendly, casual drinking joints (Claddagh
Irish Pub, Ike & Jonesy’s). The mazelike
Slippery Noodle Inn, opened in 1850 and
billed as the oldest bar in Indiana, books
live blues acts nearly every night of the week.
P
CHIHULY SCULPTURE: COURTESY INDIANAPOLIS CONVENTION & VISITORS ASSOCIATION; OTHERS: RICHARD CUMMINS/LONELY PLANET IMAGES
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:
Illinois Street, site of the city’s
best-known steak house, St. Elmo;
Fireworks of Glass, Dale Chihuly’s
43-foot sculpture of 3,200 individually
blown pieces of glass at the Children’s
Museum of Indianapolis; Union Station
and the Pan American fountain
that crisscross the inner city. It features an
outdoor concert venue, a fine zoo and the
Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and
Western Art (touted as one of the best collections of Western and Native American art in
the United States). Through May 6, another
of the park’s offerings, the Indiana State Museum, is exhibiting Colts owner Jim Irsay’s
remarkably diverse collection of cultural
ephemera, from the original, 120-foot-long
scroll manuscript of Jack Kerouac’s beat
classic On the Road, to Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards’ first ax, to, naturally,
Peyton Manning’s game jersey from Super
Bowl XLI. Every venue and attraction mentioned above — and many more that aren’t
— is located an easily walkable distance from
the city’s iconic and photo-friendly center
point, Monument Circle, where the historic,
towering Soldiers and Sailors Monument
gives tourists spectacular views of Indy’s
compact but attractive skyline and cityscape.
As you would expect, dining and nightlife have come along to cash in on the
sight-seeing, event-going crowds. You can’t
toss a football in downtown Indianapolis
without hitting a restaurant or bar, and
popular high-end chains, brewpubs and
unique, locally owned independents are all
represented in good measure. One recently
opened indie spot, the Libertine, oozes the
kind of cool you’d find in more urbane cities.
Here, hipsters sip vintage cocktails like old-­
fashioneds while foodies nibble on deviled
eggs with smoked fish and caviar.
Of all the dining options, though, steak
houses are best represented, perhaps appropriately, as this is a meat-and-­potatoes
town. Best known is St. Elmo Steak House.
Opened in 1902 and famous for its famously
hot shrimp cocktail, the brick-walled, wood-­
paneled classic retains quirky turn-of-thecentury traditions such as serving a small
glass of tomato juice with every steak. It’s
a haunt of the city’s power set — and visiting NFL types — and, to meet demand, it
expanded­into the space next door with a
swinging bar called Harry & Izzy’s (coowned by Peyton Manning) and, up top, with
the darkly lit, speakeasy-style 1933 Lounge.
Just south of Monument Circle, the
Wholesale District, a former commercial
area dating to the 1800s, is now a trendy
nightlife hub with sleek ultralounges (Blu,
Subterra Lounge); raucous dance clubs
­p opular with the 20-something set (The
Ugly Monkey, Tiki Bob’s Cantina); and
erhaps in a fit of pique over the fact
that South Florida doesn’t get to host
the big game every year, a Miami Herald columnist recently had a few words to say about
Indianapolis. “The NFL awarded a Super
Bowl to Indianapolis,” he wrote. “And the
idea that sponsors have to be somewhere
warm and fun and sunny got tossed because
Indy is none of those this time of year.” For
all the reasons listed above, Indy’s Super
Bowl planners take strong exception to the
notion that Indy isn’t fun. (And it’s worth
noting that Indianapolis doesn’t have a monopoly on bad weather in February — when
the Colts went to Miami to play for the Lombardi Trophy in 2007, the game was nearly
rained out.) But as for the warm and sunny
part, they’re not arguing. In fact, with a kind
of salty Midwestern pragmatism, they’ve
decided to embrace the detriment. And in
typical Indianapolis fashion, the city has
done so by building something. Georgia
Street, a downtown side street that ran from
Bankers Life Fieldhouse to the convention
center, has been torn up and replaced with
a pedestrian-friendly, open-air plaza that,
when the traveling NFL circus rolls into
town, will become Super Bowl Village. It
will feature a wall-to-wall lineup of food and
booze vendors, merchandise stands, two
concert stages and, for thrill seekers, 650foot zip lines. Outdoor heaters will be liberally dispersed. If the whole getup is eerily
reminiscent of the scene at an Olympic village, that’s because it is. Planners took notes
from the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.
They want downtown Indianapolis to feel
like a spirited cold-weather festival. After
all, if die-hard tailgaters in northern cities
like Green Bay, Buffalo and Cleveland are
any indication, NFL fans don’t mind the cold
as long as there’s a good party.
In any event, most of the downtown
hotels are connected to Lucas Oil Stadium,
the convention center and other attractions
like Circle Centre mall by a series of tunnels
and skywalks, meaning that truly weatheraverse visitors can leave their hotels and
catch the NFL Experience, shop, eat dinner,
have a few drinks and then watch the Super
Bowl all without setting foot outside.
Accordingly, Miles, who now chairs the
local host committee, has a response for that
skeptical Miami columnist — and, for that
matter, for anyone else who might doubt
the feasibility of having a good time in Indianapolis in the dead of winter. “He’s right,
it’s not going to be a place you would come
to in February for the climate, if you want
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the traditional Super Bowl experience that
revolves around golf,” Miles says. “But if you
want to be in the middle of an atmosphere
that creates buzz and fun, then you ought
to be here.”
EVAN WEST is a senior editor at Indianapolis Monthly
magazine. His writing has appeared in Fast Company,
Atlanta Magazine and Wabash Magazine.
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