Downtown soccer stadium fate rests on recovery of cemetery remains

INDIANAPOLIS — As the mayor’s administration shops for a city-county councilor willing to put his or her name on Joe Hogsett’s proposal to create a special taxing district for a second downtown Indy soccer stadium site, sources indicate that uncertainty over the recovery of cemetery remains on the property of a previously favored location may sink that deal.

Hogsett told FOX59/CBS4 that he has a councilor lined up to introduce a Professional Sports Development Area special taxing district on the mayor’s preferred site at the current Indianapolis Heliport.

“Yes, I do believe that we have a sponsor and that will be revealed at some later point in time,” said Hogsett, one day before the Friday deadline for the PSDA proposal to be included on the May 13 City County Council agenda in an attempt to bring Major League Soccer to Indianapolis.

The Heliport site is an alternative to the preferred location of the owner of the Indy 11 United Soccer League team at the former Diamond Chain factory property on Kentucky Avenue.

Indy 11 owner Ersal Ozdemir has unsuccessfully pursued an MLS franchise while planning for the imagined $1.5 billion stadium/mixed-use project for several years.

His purchase of the 20-acre site on the southwest side of downtown along the banks of the White River came with a caveat: that the developer also recovers the remains of hundreds of 19 ^th and 20th-century Indianapolis residents buried in one of four cemeteries on the site collectively known as Greenlawn Cemetery.

Ozdemir sold a one-acre strip of land to the city so that it might link a planned bridge over the White River from the west side to Henry Street along the south property border to Kentucky Avenue.

Sources indicate the city has budgeted $12 million to recover more than an estimated 650 remains buried in that strip of land.

The Diamond Chain property has, over the years, been plowed and paved over to host industrial sites and a baseball field as officials may not yet have a clear picture of how many sets of remains must be recovered before stadium construction could begin.

Earlier today, FOX59/CBS4 requested the following information from the Keystone Group, Ozdemir’s development company clearing the Diamond Chain site:

“Does Keystone Group have an update of recovery of remains at the Indy 11 stadium site? How many recoveries? Current status of the possession of those remains? How many more remains need to be recovered? What is the time table?”

Hours later this response was received:

“Keystone Group has committed to sharing any findings when the lawful process and scientific analysis has been completed, as it is the expertly recommended method to provide the highest level of privacy and respect. We are in development of a website to educate the community on the complex history of the former site of Diamond Chain. The website will also include expert insight on processes used. Keystone is committed to honoring and memorializing any discoveries made and will seek community input and involvement to honor anything left by previous ownership”.

The challenge of recovering the remains in a timely and fiscally responsible manner played a role in Hogsett’s decision to hear out an alternate ownership group conversation led by Tom Glick, a professional sports marketing executive who brought an MLS expansion team to Charlotte, North Carolina, and also served as president of the Carolina Panthers of the NFL.

”They want a wonderful venue in order to play MLS level soccer and they also want a strong cohesive collaborative local ownership team,” said Hogsett. “I think the local ownership is excited.”

Hogsett said he has not been in direct contact with the potential ownership group.

”Now I have not been engaged in conversations,” said Hogsett. “An individual named Tom Glick, whose name is now well known, is helping coordinate the creation of a local ownership team and, at least in my brief conversations with Tom, it sounds like it’s going very well.”

Hogsett met with MLS Commissioner Don Garber in New York City last month to bring him up to speed on Indy’s desire to host a top-level American soccer team with a specially built stadium seating 25,000 fans.

”I will tell you that in the hour-and-a-half that I met with the Commissioner and his executive VP and his chief of staff, those ideas were top of mind. They are interested in local leadership who is in a position of economic feasibility and who would be hands-on in developing a team and working with the city in building a state-of-the-art soccer-specific stadium.”

FOX59/CBS4 asked Hogsett if the Simon family, owners of the Indiana Pacers with a 41-year-long successful track record of NBA play in Indianapolis and a history of private investment leveraging public funding to enhance facilities and build their own entertainment and venue developments, would be the likely frontrunners of such a local MLS ownership group.

“I can’t comment on that because I haven’t been involved in the recruitment of local ownership,” said Hogsett.

The Heliport location Hogsett envisions as a possible soccer stadium and special taxing district site lies just east of Gainbridge Fieldhouse, home of the Pacers, and their practice facility on Delaware Street in downtown’s southeast quadrant, a location ripe for development with the anticipated destruction of the former Marion County Sheriffs office and jail and the pending redevelopments of both the City Market and the former City Hall on Alabama and Market streets.

”We want MLS to come to Indianapolis, just pure and simple, and in order to do that, you really have to provide Major League Soccer with several different options,” said the mayor. “One size doesn’t fit all. The PSDA, the one that currently exists and the one that’s been proposed, have different assets within their districts that they could draw revenue from. The truth is that the (newly) proposed PSDA probably has a little bit better of a revenue flow simply because of the projects that are already up and being built in that PSDA which are not included in the (Keystone Group) original.”

Also missing from the proposed Heliport site, which must be decommissioned by the Indianapolis Airport Authority for the mayor’s plan to work, is the potential of thousands of sets of human remains that must be recovered and relocated before construction can begin.

Sources indicate that the recent discovery of a mummified body in a casket at the Keystone Group site led to the remains being temporarily transferred to the Marion County Coroner Office before being returned to the possession of the developer as confirmed to FOX59/CBS4 by the coroner.

”I think that there are very real concerns by the community as a whole about how those issues are going to be mediated and overcome if, if Diamond Chain is the site that is selected for the building of the stadium,” said Hogsett. “Those are very real concerns, Russ, and I can only speak with some degree of certainty as to the one acre that the City owns. That one acre, we have reason to believe, has a lot of remains, skeletal remains, that we will go above and beyond the state’s requirements to make sure that the extent we run into them when Henry Street is extended and the bridge is being built that they are being dealt with with the sacredness that they deserve.”

With an estimated MLS franchise fee in excess of $500 million to become the league’s 31 ^st team, Ozdemir announced he has lined up the ownership participation of Fort Wayne entrepreneur Chuck Surack, the billionaire owner of Sweetwater, a musical instrument and pro audio company.

Glick, representing the as-yet-unnamed second ownership group, met with City-County Council democrats this week as the Hogsett administration has also been involved in talks with councilors to convince them to support the mayor’s alternate site taxing district.

”I think those conversations have been reasonably well received and we are optimistic that the council will pass the new PSDA option when it comes before them later next month,” said Hogsett.

The City faces a June 30 deadline to present one professional sports development area, designed to capture taxes and return them to the municipality to retire construction bonds, to the Indiana House Budget Committee for state approval.

Late Thursday afternoon, the IBJ reported that a company affiliated with the Simon family paid $10.5 million for a five-acre parking lot within the footprint of the site where Mayor Hogsett wants to build a soccer stadium.

A spokesman representing the Simons sent the following statement to FOX59/CBS4:

“ Pacers Sports & Entertainment utilizes the parking lot regularly for employee parking and operational uses for events at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. When they became aware last summer that the property might be for sale I was asked to contact the owner and began discussions, culminating in its purchase by a Simon family affiliate. The transaction predated soccer, and the property will continue to be used for parking, Gainbridge Fieldhouse operational uses, and potential future development .”

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