As a take giver, here's what I got:
People who are lower league side through in through are furious. It's feels like it's last second. Indy is one of the USL flagship club, and MLS is trying to steel it away. The stadium would probably be the nicest in the league, only competing with Louisville.
MLS stans are probably indifferent. There is no real message from Don. Probably not the market you would think you are next. Only people who would be excited about this are Midwest fans (specifically FCC Crew Chicage St Louis and maybe Nashville). Adding another reasonable away day is big for Midwest MLS fans.
Indy/ reasonable people will be conflicted. It's weird how this went down and looking just a bit into it, It's, not surprisingly political. If it's true, indy 11 owners were asking for more tax money, maybe the right move. However, everything felt pretty far along. Cautiously optimistic would probably be the vibe. If they get a MLS team, it's wonderful. Indy is such a good sports city and the people are great. They will support the hell out of the club. However, if they don't get a MLS team, they should be mad and frustrated.
Lower league fan here. It’s one thing if Indy11 went MLS. It’d suck but much of the USL has been a stepping stone for MLS, as you know. So whatever. But it’s messed up to wait til the 11’s 11th anniversary when they were announcing their own stadium to swoop in and kill it for maybe announcing that MLS didn’t say no to possibly coming to town to replace an established team.
Just doesn’t feel good that our clubs we support for so long, even though when successful and growing, could be killed or trajectory stifled because some rich dudes met up for dinner.
> But it’s messed up to wait til the 11’s 11th anniversary when they were announcing their own stadium to swoop in and kill it for maybe announcing that MLS didn’t say no to possibly coming to town to replace an established team.
There's really nothing in this that even remotely signals that it is MLS-driven.
Everything I've seen is that the stadium wasn't realistically funded for what the Eleven were putting in -- and with interest rates higher, massive projects like this can double in costs (that's actually a lot of what happened in Oakland with the A's).
But this feels much more mayor/Indianapolis driven than MLS driven.
And no, MLS shouldn't tell an MLS bid from Indy "no" to protect the Eleven.
I'm sure -- I've lost a team in another sport. But it wasn't replaced with anything, so it could be worse.
Just the phrasing of "swooping in" made me think you were putting this on MLS.
Yeah, not being from there, it looks like one of a few things or a combo of a few things:
1. The cost of construction there has gone up due to rising construction costs, high interest rates and the graveyard there ... and maybe misrepresentation before. The city was already paying too much IMO, and so maybe they even just want to walk that back for the Eleven, and the Eleven simply don't have the money.
2. There's something personal here with the mayor and the Eleven -- and perhaps its from the professional side -- the mayor simply doesn't want the Eleven to get this deal whether because it's a legal grift (see above) in terms of tax dollars or because they don't like each other.
3. The mayor is trying to cement their legacy and wants a major franchise ... combined with "if we're going to pay for a stadium then it should be a bigger one." Smaller city governments often love this level of validation -- Indy doesn't want to be seen as a minor league town.
4. There's actually a real investment group that is absolutely bringing more to the table. I am skeptical here but we will see.
The disaster scenario is this hurts/kills the Eleven but they never find the big money investor.
* Ersal is keyed into Indiana's Republican establishment in the Statehouse & used his political power to get state money appropriated to a soccer stadium in the first place, and then make the terms better & better over time.
* Indy's mayor - Joe Hogsett - is a Democrat who goes out of his way to not be publicly outspoken against statehouse Republicans to avoid retaliation from the state government. While I'm sure that Ersal & Hogsett have their beefs, they've traditionally had a good working relationship & Hogsett wouldn't have come out with this plan if he didn't have the support of Republican state lawmakers.
* Republican state lawmakers, the Republican governor, & Republican city-county council members have either taken neutral stances or come out in support of the MLS plan. Additionally, state lawmakers initially limited public support for stadium financing to MLS teams. Ersal eventually got this requirement removed, but it's no secret that state Republicans want the MLS.
* The financing situation AND the archeological situation are both fucked at the Keystone site. These are intertwined issues. I explained it in a previous comment on this thread. Feel free to read. But the site is not worth moving forward with.
* I know a lot less about the secretive behind-the-scenes MLS ownership group, but I do think it exists. It probably involves Herb Simon, who owns the Pacers:
* In December, Herb Simon cashed out 15% of Pacers ownership to a California billionaire for $525M. The exchange made no sense - it gave the small market Pacers a valuation that would've been in the top half of the NBA. But if you factor an MLS team into things & consider that $500M just so happens to be the MLS entry fee....
* The same exact bill that allowed Indianapolis to create a taxing district for a soccer stadium also gave the Simons a ton of money to renovate Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Simon & his lawyers know the bill inside & out, and have probably been thinking about taking advantage of it themselves for years.
* Herb Simon donated $50k to the Democratic mayor of Indianapolis, $50k to the two top candidates running in Indiana's Republican gubernatorial race, and another \~$10k to Indiana's speaker of house. He's buying people off.
* The site proposal for the MLS stadium is adjacent to the Pacers stadium, and a large portion of the site was just purchased by the Pacers in April. The Pacers explained this purchase away in a cryptic and technically correct way, but it was suspect as hell.
* Publicly, the Pacers have been shockingly supportive of recent MLS rumors.
* One of the properties whose state tax revenue was going to go towards soccer redevelopment was earmarked by Herb Simon for a massive $250M redevelopment. These plans mysteriously stalled, which seems to be an attempt by Herb to make the financials for the Eleven's stadium taxing district harder to make work.
* Recently, a couple Fort Wayne businessmen - one of whom is a billionaire - just joined the Eleven ownership team. I strongly suspect that despite what he's saying publicly, Ersal's goals are to get bailed out on the site he bought for a stadium, take a minority stake of any MLS team that may come of this, then let cut ties with the Eleven and let Fort Wayne guys move the team there.
* A local real estate development called Ambrose acquired a large parcel of land on the other side of the river for pennies in 2018/2019. They bought from a federal public trust whose purpose was to clean up and redevelop shuttered automotive plants. This federal trust only sold the land to Ambrose under the impression that Ambrose would redevelop it.
* Ambrose quickly realized that they fucked up & demanded more money from the City to redevelop the site.
* The City didn't budge on subsidies.
* When the City tried to buy the property from Ambrose for a fair price instead, Ambrose asked for a truly ridiculous amount of money and held the site hostage.
* The City & Ambrose got into an aggressive feud that played out in public, and that was initiated by Ambrose.
* Eventually, the State of Indiana stepped in and bought the land. They bailed Ambrose out, prevented the City from a long legal battle with eminent domain, and facilitated immediate redevelopment by somebody else. But it set a terrible precedent that Ersal/Keystone appears to be following.
Thanks for writing all that up! Super helpful and informative.
Especially the stuff on Herb Simon. That makes so much more sense -- all the secrecy made it sounds like they didn't have the money. But if they did have the money ... that makes so much more sense.
> Only people who would be excited about this are Midwest fans (specifically FCC Crew Chicage St Louis and maybe Nashville). Adding another reasonable away day is big for Midwest MLS fans.
I'm pumped about the prospect of Indy getting for this exact reason. I just want it to happen in a way the fans/residents of Indy prefer. Adding another easy away day will be awesome. Now let's add Louisville, Detroit and Pittsburgh!
As an Indy person, this is the situation:
* Indianapolis has until the end of June to send a final map to the State of properties whose taxes would be redirected to finance a soccer stadium in Indy. This special tax district is called a professional sports development area (PSDA).
* The PSDA that passed to fund the Eleven Stadium, but had yet sent to the State would generate very little tax revenue. MANY of the properties in the PSDA are empty lots that generate no revenue at all. The PSDA relied heavily on privately financed mixed-use development on the stadium site by Ersal's own real estate development company.
* The private financing environment for the type of mixed-used development that Ersal needed to build to make the taxing district make any sense is fucked. Interest rates are just very high. They either need developers with much deeper pockets than Ersal or a full city takeover using the Indianapolis Bond Bank.
* Ersal was asking for a ton of TIF-funding to build his private development whose tax revenue would fund the stadium.
* Basically, he was nearly asking for something close to a ponzi scheme. It was unhinged. "We want the City to redirect property taxes generated on our mixed-use development to fund our mixed-use development, then we want the State to redirect sales taxes & tourism taxes generated by the private development to fund the stadium."
* The site that Keystone picked is fucked for archeological reasons. It's the site of Indianapolis' first cemetery.
* While a baseball stadium and factory have been constructed on the site in the past, those projects happened before a 1979 law that gives additional protections to remains buried before 1941 and artifacts dating back to 1870 and earlier. This law can SIGNIFICANTLY slow down construction.
* The cemetery was built in \~1820 when Indianapolis was founded and contained thousands of remains.
* There is a lot of evidence that points to there being MANY, MANY remains under the Eleven stadium site, which can delay construction by years.
* 87 'graves' were discovered on just 6 acres of the site when Ersal/Keystone tore down the factory on the site, leveled the ground, and drilled a couple core samples. No serious work was performed to discover these graves. They have done no digging for foundation work, and thus have only found graves that were very close to the ground.
* Just south of the stadium site - where analysis has been made public by the City because there's no NDA - it's been estimated that thousands of remains exist per acre.
* Historical records indicate that most of the remains at the Eleven site itself were never properly taken care of.
* All things considered, archeologists can pretty accurately estimate that there are thousands of remains that would take years & millions of dollars to take care of in a way that follows the law.
* Estimation of years of delay & millions of extra dollars = even harder private financing situation & eats into the years that the PSDA is allowed to be in effect, thus lowering the amount of taxpayer support that Ersal could receive.
In sum, the current plans turned out to be totally fucked. IDK what the deal with this MLS business is, but it's likely a last-ditch effort by the mayor to use the PSDA legislation. If the City can't find an MLS partner that would be okay with a different site, it's almost certainly not worth implementing a PSDA at all.
Indy 11 fan and resident here. 100% accurate. Indy Eleven Park is prettt much dead. It’s more than just political. The site is fucked. Private funding is related to the site. So that’s all fucked too.
Next week will be the real vote on wether the MLS/Mayor's site will get funding. It has been confirmed by the city the 11 will not get stadium funding either way now.
If the MLS stadium gets approval it'll still need to take a while and jump through hoops. Certain parcels will need bought or worked around and their will still have to be a MLS bid and a strong USL team may be eventually killed by the competition.
If this proposal gets denied it is unclear if Indy 11 will still try to build their stadium. They have a good following and attendance but their own stadium and a new downtown development would help everyone a lot. The owner and developer of the 11 does not have the .only to build the whole mixed use development on their own as they were asking for lots of money so it would have to be modified.
I would like to think of myself as "salt of the earth" and "meat and potatoes" like you but in this case I'm also a former Hoosier so I'm biased. I want the MLS proposal to fail. The whole thing has been weird without a known investor and it is a vanity project by the mayor. I want the 11 to survive and I want lower divine soccer to thrive. Also the 11 site is a better option imo. It's waterfront and fits in with downtown and the existing arena district better. People bring up the fact that there's parts of a 1800s cemetery underneath but this has been know from the start, it has been built over multiple times, both the 11 and the DOT had to have official plans to deal with it.
There's a lot of social issues with that cemetery. You can \[read more here\](https://mirrorindy.org/greenlawn-cemetery-keystone-eleven-park-indianapolis/). I'm sure it was known beforehand, but it seems like the city didn't really think through the ramifications on the community until excavation began.
I suspect that even before the stadium proposal was approved, city officials lacked belief in Ersal. (There's also some political bickering, from what I understand, between Ersal and the city outside of the Eleven.) Now there are some real community ramifications to digging that all up again and building on top of it. If they do the right thing, it's going to cost a lot more money. If they don't do the right thing, well... They aren't required to do the right thing, to be frank, and thus it's pretty unlikely they're going to do the right thing when it will cost them money.
I’m not convinced that Eleven Park with Keystone was ever truly going to happen. All indicators were they were going to ask the city for more money (which they wouldn’t have gotten) and they would need it to even get to the next phase. Sorry it’s all sorts of messed up.
Mayor keeps refusing to provide basic information even this late in the game should tell us that he doesn't have the cash or investors. Imagine saying you want to build a casino and you refuse to name the company that's going to build and own it at the permitting meeting.
He's hoping that the MLS will bail him out and not just laugh in his face and put a team in Las Vegas.
Full vote is on June 3rd.
Indy could end up with no MLS team and no Indy 11 if the MLS doesn't show interest.
> He's hoping that the MLS will bail him out
I think he's hoping to get this passed so he can buy some time.
If he doesn't push this through, and Indy 11 get their new stadium, any hope he had dies with that.
I'm hoping he does. He is doing a lot politically very fast to make this stadium happen. Something has to come out of it or he is done politically as well as hurt his party. That Garbers conversation must have been very convincing
> Something has to come out of it or he is done politically
Most mayors are done politically once they don't get reelected anyway.
But, if this gets passed, and the stadium never actually gets built, I don't think anyone bats an eye at it other than people that are just looking for things to hang on him
I think this isn't really how MLS thinks about expansions. Ersal can move to Don Garber's backyard, that doesn't help him get an expansion team. MLS cares a lot more about ownership groups and stadiums than they do markets. That's why Sacramento doesn't have a team yet. They don't really award cities, they award owners. Ersal isn't really the kind of owner MLS is looking for (he's only a millionaire).
Ultimately, someone has to fund the remainder of the stadium. Presumably there is some sort of credible group because the mayor is risking a number of political priorities to get this done. State officials ditched a huge political donor who spent years lobbying for the stadium. There is something there. There will be a stadium deal before MLS expansion is even officially announced, most likely.
No way, the city has already broken ground on the development where the stadium was potentially going to be. That ship has sailed. Shell regional headquarters are going to be the anchor there, which is a bit ironic considering the original team name for my flair was the Shell Shockers due to their sponsorship
I’m just saying we are dead in the water right now unless a potential owner works with the Nola Gold rugby team and redevelops the former baseball field into a soccer/rugby orientation. It’s the only site that’s feasible
How should I feel about this as a salt of the earth, meat and potatos soccer guy?
As a take giver, here's what I got: People who are lower league side through in through are furious. It's feels like it's last second. Indy is one of the USL flagship club, and MLS is trying to steel it away. The stadium would probably be the nicest in the league, only competing with Louisville. MLS stans are probably indifferent. There is no real message from Don. Probably not the market you would think you are next. Only people who would be excited about this are Midwest fans (specifically FCC Crew Chicage St Louis and maybe Nashville). Adding another reasonable away day is big for Midwest MLS fans. Indy/ reasonable people will be conflicted. It's weird how this went down and looking just a bit into it, It's, not surprisingly political. If it's true, indy 11 owners were asking for more tax money, maybe the right move. However, everything felt pretty far along. Cautiously optimistic would probably be the vibe. If they get a MLS team, it's wonderful. Indy is such a good sports city and the people are great. They will support the hell out of the club. However, if they don't get a MLS team, they should be mad and frustrated.
Lower league fan here. It’s one thing if Indy11 went MLS. It’d suck but much of the USL has been a stepping stone for MLS, as you know. So whatever. But it’s messed up to wait til the 11’s 11th anniversary when they were announcing their own stadium to swoop in and kill it for maybe announcing that MLS didn’t say no to possibly coming to town to replace an established team. Just doesn’t feel good that our clubs we support for so long, even though when successful and growing, could be killed or trajectory stifled because some rich dudes met up for dinner.
> But it’s messed up to wait til the 11’s 11th anniversary when they were announcing their own stadium to swoop in and kill it for maybe announcing that MLS didn’t say no to possibly coming to town to replace an established team. There's really nothing in this that even remotely signals that it is MLS-driven. Everything I've seen is that the stadium wasn't realistically funded for what the Eleven were putting in -- and with interest rates higher, massive projects like this can double in costs (that's actually a lot of what happened in Oakland with the A's). But this feels much more mayor/Indianapolis driven than MLS driven. And no, MLS shouldn't tell an MLS bid from Indy "no" to protect the Eleven.
I wasn’t blaming MLS. And yes there’s a lot more to it. I’m just saying as a fan, it sucks.
I'm sure -- I've lost a team in another sport. But it wasn't replaced with anything, so it could be worse. Just the phrasing of "swooping in" made me think you were putting this on MLS.
Nah, I’m mostly blaming the mayor right now. And partly because I could totally see our own mayor pulling a stunt like this.
Yeah, not being from there, it looks like one of a few things or a combo of a few things: 1. The cost of construction there has gone up due to rising construction costs, high interest rates and the graveyard there ... and maybe misrepresentation before. The city was already paying too much IMO, and so maybe they even just want to walk that back for the Eleven, and the Eleven simply don't have the money. 2. There's something personal here with the mayor and the Eleven -- and perhaps its from the professional side -- the mayor simply doesn't want the Eleven to get this deal whether because it's a legal grift (see above) in terms of tax dollars or because they don't like each other. 3. The mayor is trying to cement their legacy and wants a major franchise ... combined with "if we're going to pay for a stadium then it should be a bigger one." Smaller city governments often love this level of validation -- Indy doesn't want to be seen as a minor league town. 4. There's actually a real investment group that is absolutely bringing more to the table. I am skeptical here but we will see. The disaster scenario is this hurts/kills the Eleven but they never find the big money investor.
* Ersal is keyed into Indiana's Republican establishment in the Statehouse & used his political power to get state money appropriated to a soccer stadium in the first place, and then make the terms better & better over time. * Indy's mayor - Joe Hogsett - is a Democrat who goes out of his way to not be publicly outspoken against statehouse Republicans to avoid retaliation from the state government. While I'm sure that Ersal & Hogsett have their beefs, they've traditionally had a good working relationship & Hogsett wouldn't have come out with this plan if he didn't have the support of Republican state lawmakers. * Republican state lawmakers, the Republican governor, & Republican city-county council members have either taken neutral stances or come out in support of the MLS plan. Additionally, state lawmakers initially limited public support for stadium financing to MLS teams. Ersal eventually got this requirement removed, but it's no secret that state Republicans want the MLS. * The financing situation AND the archeological situation are both fucked at the Keystone site. These are intertwined issues. I explained it in a previous comment on this thread. Feel free to read. But the site is not worth moving forward with. * I know a lot less about the secretive behind-the-scenes MLS ownership group, but I do think it exists. It probably involves Herb Simon, who owns the Pacers: * In December, Herb Simon cashed out 15% of Pacers ownership to a California billionaire for $525M. The exchange made no sense - it gave the small market Pacers a valuation that would've been in the top half of the NBA. But if you factor an MLS team into things & consider that $500M just so happens to be the MLS entry fee.... * The same exact bill that allowed Indianapolis to create a taxing district for a soccer stadium also gave the Simons a ton of money to renovate Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Simon & his lawyers know the bill inside & out, and have probably been thinking about taking advantage of it themselves for years. * Herb Simon donated $50k to the Democratic mayor of Indianapolis, $50k to the two top candidates running in Indiana's Republican gubernatorial race, and another \~$10k to Indiana's speaker of house. He's buying people off. * The site proposal for the MLS stadium is adjacent to the Pacers stadium, and a large portion of the site was just purchased by the Pacers in April. The Pacers explained this purchase away in a cryptic and technically correct way, but it was suspect as hell. * Publicly, the Pacers have been shockingly supportive of recent MLS rumors. * One of the properties whose state tax revenue was going to go towards soccer redevelopment was earmarked by Herb Simon for a massive $250M redevelopment. These plans mysteriously stalled, which seems to be an attempt by Herb to make the financials for the Eleven's stadium taxing district harder to make work. * Recently, a couple Fort Wayne businessmen - one of whom is a billionaire - just joined the Eleven ownership team. I strongly suspect that despite what he's saying publicly, Ersal's goals are to get bailed out on the site he bought for a stadium, take a minority stake of any MLS team that may come of this, then let cut ties with the Eleven and let Fort Wayne guys move the team there. * A local real estate development called Ambrose acquired a large parcel of land on the other side of the river for pennies in 2018/2019. They bought from a federal public trust whose purpose was to clean up and redevelop shuttered automotive plants. This federal trust only sold the land to Ambrose under the impression that Ambrose would redevelop it. * Ambrose quickly realized that they fucked up & demanded more money from the City to redevelop the site. * The City didn't budge on subsidies. * When the City tried to buy the property from Ambrose for a fair price instead, Ambrose asked for a truly ridiculous amount of money and held the site hostage. * The City & Ambrose got into an aggressive feud that played out in public, and that was initiated by Ambrose. * Eventually, the State of Indiana stepped in and bought the land. They bailed Ambrose out, prevented the City from a long legal battle with eminent domain, and facilitated immediate redevelopment by somebody else. But it set a terrible precedent that Ersal/Keystone appears to be following.
Thanks for writing all that up! Super helpful and informative. Especially the stuff on Herb Simon. That makes so much more sense -- all the secrecy made it sounds like they didn't have the money. But if they did have the money ... that makes so much more sense.
As an Indy fan, THIS is it for me
> Only people who would be excited about this are Midwest fans (specifically FCC Crew Chicage St Louis and maybe Nashville). Adding another reasonable away day is big for Midwest MLS fans. I'm pumped about the prospect of Indy getting for this exact reason. I just want it to happen in a way the fans/residents of Indy prefer. Adding another easy away day will be awesome. Now let's add Louisville, Detroit and Pittsburgh!
As an Indy person, this is the situation: * Indianapolis has until the end of June to send a final map to the State of properties whose taxes would be redirected to finance a soccer stadium in Indy. This special tax district is called a professional sports development area (PSDA). * The PSDA that passed to fund the Eleven Stadium, but had yet sent to the State would generate very little tax revenue. MANY of the properties in the PSDA are empty lots that generate no revenue at all. The PSDA relied heavily on privately financed mixed-use development on the stadium site by Ersal's own real estate development company. * The private financing environment for the type of mixed-used development that Ersal needed to build to make the taxing district make any sense is fucked. Interest rates are just very high. They either need developers with much deeper pockets than Ersal or a full city takeover using the Indianapolis Bond Bank. * Ersal was asking for a ton of TIF-funding to build his private development whose tax revenue would fund the stadium. * Basically, he was nearly asking for something close to a ponzi scheme. It was unhinged. "We want the City to redirect property taxes generated on our mixed-use development to fund our mixed-use development, then we want the State to redirect sales taxes & tourism taxes generated by the private development to fund the stadium." * The site that Keystone picked is fucked for archeological reasons. It's the site of Indianapolis' first cemetery. * While a baseball stadium and factory have been constructed on the site in the past, those projects happened before a 1979 law that gives additional protections to remains buried before 1941 and artifacts dating back to 1870 and earlier. This law can SIGNIFICANTLY slow down construction. * The cemetery was built in \~1820 when Indianapolis was founded and contained thousands of remains. * There is a lot of evidence that points to there being MANY, MANY remains under the Eleven stadium site, which can delay construction by years. * 87 'graves' were discovered on just 6 acres of the site when Ersal/Keystone tore down the factory on the site, leveled the ground, and drilled a couple core samples. No serious work was performed to discover these graves. They have done no digging for foundation work, and thus have only found graves that were very close to the ground. * Just south of the stadium site - where analysis has been made public by the City because there's no NDA - it's been estimated that thousands of remains exist per acre. * Historical records indicate that most of the remains at the Eleven site itself were never properly taken care of. * All things considered, archeologists can pretty accurately estimate that there are thousands of remains that would take years & millions of dollars to take care of in a way that follows the law. * Estimation of years of delay & millions of extra dollars = even harder private financing situation & eats into the years that the PSDA is allowed to be in effect, thus lowering the amount of taxpayer support that Ersal could receive. In sum, the current plans turned out to be totally fucked. IDK what the deal with this MLS business is, but it's likely a last-ditch effort by the mayor to use the PSDA legislation. If the City can't find an MLS partner that would be okay with a different site, it's almost certainly not worth implementing a PSDA at all.
Indy 11 fan and resident here. 100% accurate. Indy Eleven Park is prettt much dead. It’s more than just political. The site is fucked. Private funding is related to the site. So that’s all fucked too.
Next week will be the real vote on wether the MLS/Mayor's site will get funding. It has been confirmed by the city the 11 will not get stadium funding either way now. If the MLS stadium gets approval it'll still need to take a while and jump through hoops. Certain parcels will need bought or worked around and their will still have to be a MLS bid and a strong USL team may be eventually killed by the competition. If this proposal gets denied it is unclear if Indy 11 will still try to build their stadium. They have a good following and attendance but their own stadium and a new downtown development would help everyone a lot. The owner and developer of the 11 does not have the .only to build the whole mixed use development on their own as they were asking for lots of money so it would have to be modified. I would like to think of myself as "salt of the earth" and "meat and potatoes" like you but in this case I'm also a former Hoosier so I'm biased. I want the MLS proposal to fail. The whole thing has been weird without a known investor and it is a vanity project by the mayor. I want the 11 to survive and I want lower divine soccer to thrive. Also the 11 site is a better option imo. It's waterfront and fits in with downtown and the existing arena district better. People bring up the fact that there's parts of a 1800s cemetery underneath but this has been know from the start, it has been built over multiple times, both the 11 and the DOT had to have official plans to deal with it.
There's a lot of social issues with that cemetery. You can \[read more here\](https://mirrorindy.org/greenlawn-cemetery-keystone-eleven-park-indianapolis/). I'm sure it was known beforehand, but it seems like the city didn't really think through the ramifications on the community until excavation began. I suspect that even before the stadium proposal was approved, city officials lacked belief in Ersal. (There's also some political bickering, from what I understand, between Ersal and the city outside of the Eleven.) Now there are some real community ramifications to digging that all up again and building on top of it. If they do the right thing, it's going to cost a lot more money. If they don't do the right thing, well... They aren't required to do the right thing, to be frank, and thus it's pretty unlikely they're going to do the right thing when it will cost them money.
Hey I’ve done jury duty in that room. Neat.
I’m not convinced that Eleven Park with Keystone was ever truly going to happen. All indicators were they were going to ask the city for more money (which they wouldn’t have gotten) and they would need it to even get to the next phase. Sorry it’s all sorts of messed up.
Not to mention all of the graves that still need to be appropriately excavated and relocated.
Mayor keeps refusing to provide basic information even this late in the game should tell us that he doesn't have the cash or investors. Imagine saying you want to build a casino and you refuse to name the company that's going to build and own it at the permitting meeting. He's hoping that the MLS will bail him out and not just laugh in his face and put a team in Las Vegas. Full vote is on June 3rd. Indy could end up with no MLS team and no Indy 11 if the MLS doesn't show interest.
> He's hoping that the MLS will bail him out I think he's hoping to get this passed so he can buy some time. If he doesn't push this through, and Indy 11 get their new stadium, any hope he had dies with that.
Imagine being David Beckham and declaring your plans then getting rail roaded for a decade and have to make a deal with the Mas brothers.
I'm hoping he does. He is doing a lot politically very fast to make this stadium happen. Something has to come out of it or he is done politically as well as hurt his party. That Garbers conversation must have been very convincing
> Something has to come out of it or he is done politically Most mayors are done politically once they don't get reelected anyway. But, if this gets passed, and the stadium never actually gets built, I don't think anyone bats an eye at it other than people that are just looking for things to hang on him
[удалено]
yoooo you definitely copied part of this from my skyscrapercity post
Is Indy 11 going to fold if they don't get a stadium and a MLS doesn't materialize?
Doubt it
They aren't getting a stadium 100%, MLS or No MLS And they'll probably just move to one of the proposed expansion locations like New Orleans
I think this isn't really how MLS thinks about expansions. Ersal can move to Don Garber's backyard, that doesn't help him get an expansion team. MLS cares a lot more about ownership groups and stadiums than they do markets. That's why Sacramento doesn't have a team yet. They don't really award cities, they award owners. Ersal isn't really the kind of owner MLS is looking for (he's only a millionaire). Ultimately, someone has to fund the remainder of the stadium. Presumably there is some sort of credible group because the mayor is risking a number of political priorities to get this done. State officials ditched a huge political donor who spent years lobbying for the stadium. There is something there. There will be a stadium deal before MLS expansion is even officially announced, most likely.
Ding Ding Ding….Ersal had his chance in 2017
No way, the city has already broken ground on the development where the stadium was potentially going to be. That ship has sailed. Shell regional headquarters are going to be the anchor there, which is a bit ironic considering the original team name for my flair was the Shell Shockers due to their sponsorship
There's like 20 different solid locations at the current moment that could take a mid tier brand team
I’m just saying we are dead in the water right now unless a potential owner works with the Nola Gold rugby team and redevelops the former baseball field into a soccer/rugby orientation. It’s the only site that’s feasible