There are two competing visions for the future of soccer in Indianapolis.
One involves building a soccer stadium and other development atop potentially thousands of human remains — an idea that now appears to be growing politically perilous.
Still, supporters of the $1.5-billion Eleven Park are pleading with city-county councilors to follow through on what they see as a commitment from the city to help finance a 20,000-seat stadium with a proposal that councilors already approved.
“We have an answer,” David Ziemba, president of Indy Eleven support group Brickyard Battalion, told councilors at a committee meeting May 28. “You passed it in December. It’s real. It’s behind me.”
Seated behind Ziemba were dozens of people wearing T-shirts and holding signs that read “BUILD ELEVEN PARK.”
Also sitting among them, though, were others who see the second vision: a soccer stadium not at Eleven Park, but on the east side of downtown.
For them, getting away from Eleven Park and the complicated history of Greenlawn Cemetery also represents the city’s best chance to attract a Major League Soccer expansion club.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” Thomas Geisse, president of the youth organization United Soccer Alliance of Indiana, told councilors. “We need to go for it.”
The contending plans for what could become Indianapolis’ next professional sports stadium played out during a Rules and Public Policy Committee meeting. The heart of the debate was the creation of a taxing district to help finance a soccer stadium near the downtown heliport. Because it was the first opportunity for public comment on any of the recent soccer news, though, the meeting went on for nearly three hours.
This is the second taxing district the council has considered, having previously passed one to do the same thing at Eleven Park.
But Mayor Joe Hogsett changed course, declaring in April that the heliport site gives Indianapolis its best shot at luring MLS.
In the end, councilors voted 6-4 to send the proposal back to the full council with a recommendation to pass it.
One councilor, Democrat Leroy Robinson, abstained from voting because of a conflict of interest. Josh Bain was the only Republican to vote in favor of the proposal, and Maggie Lewis was the lone Democrat to vote against it.
Dan Parker, the mayor’s chief of staff, acknowledged at the meeting that this has been an “uncomfortable process.”
“Yes,” he said, “we pivoted to this proposal very quickly.”
But Parker also laid out the stakes in blunt terms.
Hogsett’s ultimatum: Major League Soccer or nothing
If the council doesn’t approve the second taxing district, Parker said, Hogsett won’t submit the Eleven Park taxing district to the state for approval.
In that scenario, there’s no new stadium and certainly no MLS team.
The ultimatum is the most recent of jabs thrown back and forth between the mayor’s administration and Keystone Group, the developer of Eleven Park.
The company accused Hogsett of walking away from a deal to build Eleven Park, although Hogsett has insisted there was no deal in place — only negotiations. Parker reiterated that stance during the meeting.
“Sometimes,” Parker said, “when you have to say no, it’s difficult.”
One reason the city has backed away from Eleven Park, Parker said, is finances. He said the Eleven Park plan “presented tremendous risk” for the city because of a funding gap.
Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath attorney Scott Chinn, who has been representing the city, told councilors the funding gap could be as large as $243 million.
And while revenue from the Eleven Park taxing district would be heavily dependent on development within the project area and the nearby Elanco campus, Parker said the second taxing district would create a more diverse and reliable stream of taxes.
The map includes Circle Centre Mall, for example, which is slated for $600 million in development to include retail, housing and office space.
Money isn’t the only concern, though.
‘We have an opportunity to do right by history’
Human remains still rest at Greenlawn Cemetery, which included a section designated for some of the city’s earliest Black residents.
And although the exact number is unknown, Leon Bates, who’s part of a group advising the city on the cemetery, told councilors he believed the number could be around 15,000. He got to that estimate by subtracting the number of people reinterred from the cemetery’s capacity, which was about 25,000 people.
Greenlawn is the collective name for four cemeteries, which later were replaced by slaughterhouses, railyards and the Diamond Chain factory.
The city cited human remains last week when it offered to buy the site from Keystone president and CEO Ersal Ozdemir, who also owns Indy Eleven. And Keystone already has uncovered human remains during site work.
Democratic Councilor Ali Brown drew a connection between development on the site and what Brown considers other historic injustices, such as highways that tore through Black neighborhoods.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I can’t continue to harm people in the name of progress.”
And Councilor Carlos Perkins, another Democrat, said there shouldn’t be more disruption at the site. Perkins also said he believes he found burial records for the man who founded the church where he pastors, Bethel Cathedral AME Church.
“We have an opportunity to do right by history and our ancestors,” he said.
Still, Perkins said he was disappointed in the way the mayor’s administration has handled this process. He and other councilors said they still have questions about what comes next — including learning who is part of a mysterious ownership group city officials have alluded to for a future MLS team.
That’s the kind of skepticism Democrat Kristin Jones, who isn’t on the Rules Committee, thought could defeat the mayor’s plan and save Eleven Park.
What’s next?
Jones has been the council’s most vocal critic of Hogsett’s MLS plan. She told reporters this month that she believed the council was behind her in opposing the second tax district.
After the committee meeting, though, Jones acknowledged to Mirror Indy that she may not have as much support as she once thought.
That will be tested as the proposal goes back to the City-County Council for a vote, giving Jones and Eleven Park supporters another chance to derail Hogsett’s plan.
The next scheduled council meeting is 7 p.m. June 3.
If approved, the proposal would then return to the Metropolitan Development Commission for final approval.
According to the state law that enabled the taxing district, the city needs local approvals by June 30. The resolution would then go to the State Budget Committee, which is a group of bipartisan lawmakers and state officials. The committee has 60 days to make a recommendation to the State Budget Agency, which is the governor’s fiscal policy adviser.
Mirror Indy reporter Tyler Fenwick covers economics. Contact him at 317-766-1406 or tyler.fenwick@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @ty_fenwick.
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