Super Bowl boosts Indy’s image

Indianapolis was once called Naptown and India-No-Place for a reason.

Native son Kurt Vonnegut Jr. referred to it in 1970 as "the 500-mile speedway race, and then 364 days of miniature golf, and then the 500-mile speedway race again." People used to roam city streets on Sundays, picking off pigeons with shotguns as part of "Operation Pigeon-Rid." For decades, there was no reason to stay downtown after dark.

This week, as 150,000 visitors descended on a new, vibrant district before Super Bowl Sunday, even cynics agreed that the city had successfully shed its image as a bastion of boredom in what was once called "flyover country." Hotels, restaurants, theaters and a 3-mile canal walk flank Lucas Oil Stadium and Super Bowl Village. Thousands of residents have moved into downtown apartments and condo complexes are rapidly rising. And visitors have noticed.

"Incredulity is in the air. Naptown is alive and thriving. The urban Super Bowl is a huge success, where everything is in walking distance, and everyone feels the electricity," wrote Dan Bickley of the Arizona Republic.

The transformation was decades in the making, beginning long before city leaders ever dreamed of bidding for the Super Bowl. In the 1970s, then-Mayor Bill Hudnut decided that sports was the ticket to revitalizing the city and putting it on the national map.

It seemed to be a good fit. Indianapolis was the capital of a sports-crazed state that had Notre Dame winning national football championships in the north, Indiana University winning national basketball championships in the south, the Indianapolis 500 in the middle and a high school basketball tournament that created Hoosier Hysteria.

The city had one professional team, the NBA's Indiana Pacers, but it struggled financially; a telethon was staged to sell tickets to ensure the owners didn't move the team.

But, Hudnut said, "we needed an NFL team."

Hudnut, mayor from 1976 to 1992, began attending NFL meetings with other city officials in the late 1970s; in 1978, he traveled to Chicago to meet with Baltimore Colts owner Robert Irsay about moving the team to Indianapolis.

"He wasn't that interested at that time in talking with me," Hudnut said.

The numbers don't surprise Don Ruark, a 78-year-old retiree from Fillmore, Ind., who recalls the city's quiet days when he worked at drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co.

"What's happened here has really been an awakening," Ruark said. "If word hasn't gotten out about Indianapolis, it should."

A Super Bowl had still seemed out of reach to many. The city lost out to Minneapolis for the 1992 game and to Dallas for 2011.

Indiana University athletic director Fred Glass, president of Indianapolis' 2011 bid committee, said the city was given little chance of hosting because it was a small-market city in a cold-weather climate. But the committee agreed this time that decades of transformation had paid off.

Visitors have noticed the transformation, too. After only 24 hours in Indianapolis, Chuck Pinto of Vineland, N.J., was sold on the city's charms.

He and his wife, Sherrie, said they thought Indianapolis was just a little town in the Midwest before arriving there Saturday morning. But since then, he said he's been amazed by how friendly and welcoming people were and how accessible the city was.

"When New York hosts the Super Bowl, I hope we do it as well as Indy," he said.

Steve Seeley of Dana Point, Calif., had always thought of the city as sleepy, but after an evening in the downtown's outdoor Super Bowl Village and beautiful pre-game weather, he said his opinion changed completely.

"I've just had the best time," Seeley said. "There are the nicest people here. I've had nothing but great experiences here — as a Pats fan, the only mean people here are Giants fans."

Despite naysayers who say the game is a one-time gift, city leaders are already thinking about future Super Bowls.

"I'm pretty confident we're going to nail this," Mayor Greg Ballard said. "And people are going to say, ‘Wow, they put this on really, really well. We need to go back there.'"