Indy's Unique Plan to Leverage the Super Bowl

As Super Bowl week comes to a close, Emily Badger reports on the host city's efforts to use the event as a catalyst for substantive change throughout the city.

1 minute read

February 2, 2012, 1:00 PM PST

By Jonathan Nettler @nettsj


As Badger reports, despite the recession, Indianapolis has taken a much more expansive approach to leveraging its role as host of the Super Bowl than most former host cities.

"Thanks at least in part to the Super Bowl, people in Indianapolis will wake up to the football off-season next week with a newly expanded convention center, a new central civic space, a newly revitalized low-income neighborhood, even a new downtown skyline."

And not all of the development associate with the Super Bowl is located in close proximity to the event. "Indianapolis took that million-dollar Youth Education Town investment from the NFL and used it to help leverage the revitalization of the entire Near Eastside neighborhood. In all, nearly $150 million is being invested into the area, a high-crime, high-foreclosure community marked by cottage-style worker homes for residents who would have in the past gone to factory jobs that no longer exist."

Wednesday, February 1, 2012 in The Atlantic Cities

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