The Eras Economics (Taylor's Version) with Leonard Hoops of Visit Indy

and betting the mortgage that the Taylor Swift on the ground direct economic impact will be far greater than NBA Alla no way mini version of the sphere in Las Vegas uh that could be coming to Indie Indy's bucket is getting really full and I think it's going to spill over really soon what something the world needs to know about Indiana from South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between this is get in the show focused on the hooer state and the incredible stories happening here today I'm Nate spangle founder of git Indiana and I will be your host for today's conversation today I'm joined by

Leonard hoops and with the last name Hoops you might sound like he works for the NCAA but Leonard is actually the president and CEO of visit Indie under his leadership Indie has been named the number one convention city in the United States by USA Today and recognized in other top travel Publications if you didn't know there's some pretty cool stuff going on here in The Circle City and visit Indy's job is to attract visitors to Indianapolis today we're going to be talking about the economic impact of the Taylor Swift show coming up in November we're going to talk about just visiting these impact and like

the amazing events they've helped amplify over the past year and what the future holds I was thinking the next year or two but before we started recording Leonard's talking about what the decade has to hold so uh I'm super excited to dive in Leonard welcome to get in hey thanks Nate it's great to be here and it's great to talk Indie oh I love it I mean obviously I'm an Indianapolis resident it's going to be fun to dive in and I think what Taylor Swift got announced a year and some change ago um and it's kind of like oh it's out in 2024 it's crazy

that it's already here like it feels like I blinked and like all a sudden you know the the show is here and I'm excited to dive in and I don't know if hooers really understand the like I know people are like the swifties and they're like they are DieHard fans but just like what this concert is going to mean for the city of Indianapolis and Central Indiana in general so you want to just give us um a brief recap of how we got here like how does Taylor Swift pick out of all the other cities how do they end up picking um Indianapolis and what's

that process look like yeah so there's an interesting backstory there we missed out on the first round of concert dates and it was because we were too busy uh in terms of our Lucas Oil Stadium uh dates that were booked when they were first looking at dates we didn't have availability for her and so when she talked about extending her tour to a few more cities and there aren't many more that she added uh we are the last North we are the last city in the United States the last North American city maybe the last City in the tour period is going to be Toronto

right after us but it's New Orleans Indie then Toronto and Dunn as I understand it and so uh you know if you don't get get to see in Indie you probably aren't going to get to see this particular uh tour so in in uh in 2023 early in the year Eric newberger Andy Malin the people who run Lucas stadium and the and the Capal Improvement board you know were aware that the Taylor was looking at potentially adding dates and uh we had some availability and a whole bunch of folks But Eric really led the effort but including visit Indie end up throwing in some resources

for example we we did some a video with pton Manning where pton Manning made a very specific uh request to Taylor to to bring uh uh her tour to The House That pton Built Lucas o stadium and it was a it's a great video it's like it's one of these videos that we only get to use it for that one purpose and then we don't get to to show it again for anybody uh but it it was obviously compelling to Taylor uh the dates all worked out and here we are the sheriff asked for a favor you you follow through on that yeah you know

and pton it was a very Payton video so it they arear friends and you know and and so it it was meaningful uh and impactful and uh I think a lot of cities tried to get on that last list and we managed to make it yeah and I I just don't know if people understand like all the work that goes in and we're going to dive into this a little bit of like getting these event like like it's not just like easy to get an All-Star game or a Taylor scrip show or like all these crazy cool things that have been happening in the last

couple years and I'm excited to dive into that later I think one interesting stat about the Taylor Swift show it's like when when I think of other concerts it's like oh they come to Indie so that uh people in Indiana maybe a couple of the surrounding states get to enjoy this but I saw a stat says 87% of the people attending Taylor Swift show are from uh from out of the state so people are try like I mean what's the capacity of the show like how many tickets are sold uh somewhere in the mid 60s I think okay so that's 180,000 maybe let's say 200,000

we're estimating 200,000 people CU there'll be people who show up who think they can get in and won't uh but there probably will be over the course of the weekend 200,000 visitors oh my gosh yeah that's 200,000 with the tickets and all the stuff uh three nights and um but 87% of that so I don't know I'm not a math guy I'm not going to do public math on the podcast but like do the math 87% of those are coming from outside of Indiana that was 175,000 of those 200,000 yeah what it boils down to is they can do ticket zip code analysis you know

see where those tickets were bought and the vast majority and this is not uncommon whether you're buying tickets to New Orleans or Toronto or another city uh internationally uh most people getting these tickets are just trying to get to the closest city they can get to or any City because this has been such a high demand ticket and so it doesn't surprise us that it's uh you know even more than normal because most concerts uh the bigname concerts the Rolling Stones types of things will draw a fairly wide audience but Taylor is one is a unique uh animal in itself the ARs tour oh my

gosh I've like seen like looking through comments and stuff it's like people are coming from far away to see especially if it ends up being right the last uh United States show like of the aist Tor that's it'll be a it'll be a spectacle I'm sure that downtown's going to be absolutely insane um I had a fun question for you can you guess what the most expensive ticket right now is going for front front row VIP Saturday night show well I I'll go opposite of that right now and tell you the least expensive which most people would consider very expensive I I went looking the

other day uh to see if I wanted to just buy two what was the lowest price I could get for two there were lower prices for a single individual ticket but for two minimum $494 that was a pop or for both no for the pair okay so so so nearly five grand for a pair of tickets that were in the 600 level row 14 behind the stage you don't even get to see it yeah so you're basically just getting in the building five grand get the for the obstru for a pair of people yeah yeah that's absur people are going to pay that so so

you tell me what the most expensive one is uh the most expensive one I just looked this morning one ticket singular singular 17,94wh out there has a pair of tickets for Leonard and I to go check out Taylor Swift maybe that's not obstructed view I'd be uh I'd be interested well I'm I I hate to tell you this but we have a suite uh but uh we we've already invited convention clients ects were trying to book and then so the first and second nights we have customers coming uh who would generally b b big group Dy and then the third night is sort of the

the local community VIP it's a 31 person Suite so I think we probably have had three or 400 requests for you know 93 tickets like hey remember like three years ago you said if I ever needed tickets to show it's like all those are com hey like I was talking to someone from uh from Lucas Oil and they were like the cool piece when you're a sweet holder is you get all those at face value so I mean maybe it was like like two 300 400 bucks a ticket or whatever for that and it's like but you can't resell them that's the other piece I

was like oh man if I had a sweet I would just like play for the whole Suite in one show but it's like no you you got to use them and bring up there and all that fun stuff um I would love to talk about the impact right it's obviously we have you know the ticket sales Lucas Oil like we see how a concert makes money but how does the city like all the the impact that this is going to bring to to our entire city I'd love to talk about that and like dive into like what stats you guys are seeing how big of

an impact is this actually going to make yeah well I'm on the board of an organization called the US Travel Association and uh you know and so this is a board that's got people from the major Hotel Brands Airlines major destinations Indie and you know San Francisco and States like Florida Etc long story short uh we had a board meeting this summer where there was an economist uh who gives kind of a forecast for the industry and he specifically had a section in his presentation on Taylor Swift and the reason he did was that that the city's Taylor has come to have literally created a

measurable economic impact is is realized that like the federal uh economic data levels uh it was just phenomenal the fact that she comes in for you know three shows at a time generally in these cities uh and the number of people who come in from out of town really truly moves the needle you're talking about a couple hundred million dollar economic impact uh you're talking about something that is the equivalent of getting a Super Bowl or an NBA Allstar or a final four okay put that in perspective it's like well we just had allar weekend what was the economic impact of of allar weekend like

if you had to say rough number it brought you know uh they had a more recent report that I don't have the numbers off the top of my head but I remember their original estimates were somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 million and it exceeded that as I understand now now that number includes things like media value of of of the publicity of getting it so the actual in Market spend is less I would uh be very comfortable in betting the mortgage that the tlor Swift on the ground direct economic impact will be far greater than NBA All-Star no way yeah that is CRA okay

so economic if you had to guess what is what the economist say like hey she comes to a city and it brings x amount of like like what's the number yeah I I think there will actually be spend in the market of something on the on the magnitude of of 250 million or more of actual in Market spending well I mean think about if 87% of people are coming from out of the state so they're probably staying you know so like think about all the hotel State you have 175 ,000 people whatever it is coming in from that's a lot of H every room is

going to be sold out certainly downtown probably in Maran County uh you you've got most cases two night minimums uh we have some incredible statistics like uh uh you know short-term rentals are up 207% for that weekend year-over-year Airbnb my house yeah we uh Airbnb searches is up seven 7,000 per year-over year for Indianapolis yeah for for Indianapolis for that particular weekend so people have obviously been looking at that 7,000 up for like the the normal first weekend in November I don't know if everyone's like you know I really want to go to Indianapolis right now it's Taylor not exactly our high season so so

that's the other kind of thing to really note is that you know had she come at another time of the year when Gen Con might be here or whatever uh you know then you're not necessarily seeing a huge incremental boost you're getting still a boost of course if Taylor's concerts come into town it's going to be bigger than just about anything else you can do but when you do it that first weekend of November I mean come on that's that's uh that's like a gift from heaven right there oh yeah well I think that it's um I mean I was I was accidentally in Houston

the one of the nights of Taylor show like I was like done I don't know I was down there and it was nuts like I'm just trying to go to like Shake Shack and get like dinner or whatever and it's everywhere I look it's like sparkles and this and that and the and it was like holy smokes what's going on so when you think of like the other is there other stuff happening like am I going to come in for the fireman's convention and like accidentally like be overrun by Taylor Swift guys girls you know off the top of my head I don't think we

have a huge uh huge conventions going on then in part because um it's a tougher time of the year to sell to start with um I have to go back and look at that to be honest with you but I do know that there's a lot of folks activating their spaces in different ways you know they're keeping the uh the Old World gonders open uh for that weekend um uh on the on the Canal Walk oh yeah yeah I got so you can still do the gonders uh and I think they're going to do some sort of like eras sing along that the gonders will

do uh there's is a um uh a pre-concert tailgate at the Indiana State Museum which is I think already sold out for the first and the second uh there's a Swifty parte uh at the world's large our world's largest Children's Museum from uh November 1st to 4th uh there are swifties at the zoo at White River State Park uh so you know a lot of our bigger attractions are doing really specific things tied into that we've got folks like you know Ash and Elm has a cider uh that's going to be uh focused around the Aras tour and um there's just a lot of different

things that I think Indie is looking to do there's some really interesting packages I I suspect this has already been sold but the Alexander Hotel has a special suite number 1313 where they are providing a lucky fan and 13 friends to stay in the penthouse suite um I guess there'll be some sleeping bags because I don't know how you get you know 14 people up there but uh it includes you know roundt trip SUV transfers and and farewell brunch and and all sorts things like that so those are like great like like kudos to those marketing departments for really capturing the moment cuz and I

think that's what's so special it's like you could have whoever the sellout artist thing Allstar Weekend all the but it's not like like I don't know that's just so unique and like they know their clientele really well there like the 1313 like that's super cool the the one thing about Indie you know I I spent uh I guess 17 years before I got to Indie in three other cities in in San Jose Sacramento and San Francisco and the west coast is that there is no Community like this one in terms of gearing up for big events getting excited about it customizing things for big events

you know the eclipse was a good example right we that was another gift from God literally uh and uh because you you can't you know you can't buy yourself or negotiate yourself in Eclipse wa you wait you guys didn't go pitch that one it's it's uh you know sometimes you get lucky sometimes you make your own luck and other times you get truly lucky and the eclipse you know you had things like totally clips of the art at newfields and you had uh you know I love a good party with NASA at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and and there were things like that times 10

all over town but that's a very classic Indie thing to do is whether it's an eclipse or Taylor Swift Aras tore oh I love that and from talking with like the team of on Taylor's side it's like what or maybe just in general like what do you usually get the vibe from these artists or conferences or whatever when they consider coming to Indie because obviously we talked about it and it's like you got to keep like going up the ranks to get bigger and bigger things you know like you talked about the American Dental Association coming uh cuz you had them when you were in

San Francisco and they were like yeah you know hold off a little bit and now they're coming to Indie yeah when I was in my San Francisco job they were my regular client every four years or so and when I first got to India I was like hey I'm in India now we got a cool convention center and all these connected skywalks to our hotels and uh these guys are headquartered out of Chicago and they generally when they meet in the midwest they meet in Chicago and their answer to me at the time back in 2011 was don't call us we'll call you uh right

and we've all heard that for something or another other and for years they didn't call us and then all of a sudden we started building this new signia hotel uh this expansion of the convention center they were doing uh and uh they called us and they were excited about uh a new Midwestern uh destination that they saw as being on the rise for their attendees uh but that you know things like Taylor Swift we' already booked him before we ever booked Taylor but there's a number of things we've done over the years whether it's Super Bowls or final fours or college football playoffs or whatever

the casee might be plus the growth that they seeing where that got them to start thinking that hey maybe India is the next big thing U you know you've seen cities like Austin and Nashville over the last 20 years really emerged I mean when I got in this business Austin was a sleepy college town and nobody went uh to Nashville for a convention if you went to Nashville for a convention it wasn't downtown where they all go now it was at the Opera Land Hotel oh really yeah yeah so now now they've got a big Omni downtown and the Music City Center and the Predators

play there and the Titans play there and so they've done a lot of the things you maybe just a slight step ahead of Indian they've got that nightly music scene that that allows uh you know uh people to have 365 day a year entertainment hey I'm I'm planning the seed here this is going to be my I don't know at what point but it's going to happen and we're going to put in the hooer Hony talk in downtown Indie and I I'm going to run it or be involved with it somehow and it's going to be amazing and it's going to be like a little

Broadway Bar but in in Indianapolis I'm willing this into existence and it's going to be so fun the uh well you know manifesting things sometimes is what hoers do right especially people in Indie do we're the city that built a football stadium with no team uh you know we're we're we're a city that approved a Convention Center expansion in September of 2020 uh in the height of the pandemic before vaccines were even a thing or the you know there was any sense that this thing would truly end uh and we were approving a couple hundred million doll Convention Center expansion in September of 2020 by

unanimous 25 to zero vote I mean where do you get bipartisan votes of 25 to Zer on any topic anymore yeah well they were like hey you know what people are going to want to get back in person at some point whether it's next year five years whatever it is so and we said that and some people were skeptical of that they said hey this paradigm shift a permanent Paradigm Shift it's never coming back we're all going to be you know doing this kind of social distancing you'll never Shake anybody's hands again and I looked at people like are you crazy that's not how human

beings work The Human Condition is such that that we like to gather and there's no better place to gather than Indie and the 2024 year is a great example of that yeah and it's been a crazy year right so you think early on in the year was it February was also weekend right so you had All-Star Weekend the eclipse swim trials National Eucharistic conference like all Congress like all these amazing things happened this year take me back let's just do a little quick recap of like how do you feel like things went what was feedback from these organizations as they came and hosted their event

in Indianapolis yeah any one of the things you just mentioned would be a great year if you mixed in your regular business and one of those things that's a really good solid year and then you get all of them uh you so you go back to February and we did have uh the NBA Allstar weekend which was tremendous I got to ask any cool stories like were you just like in a yeah I was at the top floor of whatever like chopping it up with whoever you know uh it it's funny you get a bit jaded sometimes as much as I love this job um

I think this is my seventh or eighth NBA All-Star game because we started going to them 10 years ago getting ready to to prepare a bid so you go and you Scout other destinations and I've been to you know in Toronto when it was neg3 wind chill and I've been to New Orleans when you know Pitbull's throwing a big outdoor party and and uh things like that and so I I don't know uh in some ways it's less fun when you host it as an individual because you got work to do uh I mean you you're working when you're on the road and and and

trying to observe everything too but you're really there as more of a a participant right you're not the host you don't have clients all over the place you got to take care of and and and things like that and so I probably had less of that I mean there was a there was a party on the U I think it was the Thursday night before of all-star weekend that Mr Simon held uh at commission row uh the restaurant that's right there by gamebridge and that was a who's who of You Name It Sports politics entertainment my wife and I were walking around going boy you

this is like being at the you know whatever the Vanity Fair party at the Oscars or something like that it was just a really incredible uh combination of of successful people in in business and in politics and in entertainment and sports I was going say so so commission row that was one were there any other cool like activations or popups that like are not typical we like oh my gosh yeah we turned well I thought the city as a whole uh looked great right I mean we had that weird one night of snow on the Friday um and and and as Indie does we we

managed it well but there was a lot of you know uh storefronts that have been empty since the pandemic that uh were turned into uh popup shops or or coffee shops that just for that week um and um art was put up everywhere there was all sorts of public art uh that were installed uh so the job that the the host committee uh did and the Arts community did to get Indie to look you know we were in our Sunday Best for that weekend heck yeah I love that okay so we we make it through Allstar Weekend then it was Eclipse yeah I mean you

had combine in between there and and we should never take combine for granted because for the last five six years now every city uh that has got a do stadium has wanted to get the combine for themselves uh they see it as a you know uh something like a draft or a Super Bowl type of Hosting thing and what makes Indie special with the combine is that a lot of what the teams are actually looking for is really reliable health information and we have a partnership with IU Health uh that is really tough to replicate in other cities so it's not just a matter of

like putting out a 40- yard track in your stadium and and getting them some hotel rooms it's it's really tricky to do that uh so you had combine you had first second rounds of NCA basketball uh then we get the eclipse uh which and talk to me about that just like yeah well the eclipse um you know any city that was going to be in the in the direct path of the eclipse in in the path of totality as they call it uh was going to have a good week but we had a better week than almost everybody else we were the most searched for

and the highest booked uh Airbnb within the path and there were cities like Austin in St Louis and some other cities like that Cleveland I think Buffalo they're in that path as well and we smoked them so well how do you even prepare like no one know was like so Allstar Weekend Super Bowl all those things happen you know and it's like oh we can just call up Ronnie hosted super bow no one's hosted an eclipse watch party or done anything like that like how do you even start to like plan for that yeah so we probably started planning for it like Indie does earlier

than most uh we we had a website for the eclipse in Indy uh up on our you know web page and and some additional information that we kept building out on at least two years before the eclipse was I would have L to like be in that like me it's like some some like intern pops you know in 2024 we're going to have a total solar there's a run and joke I mean there were myself and then uh some of our marketing team who uh who work for the CMO the CMO was kind of like really and uh you you probably know Chris G and

uh and Chris was we were like get this side up people are going to be excited about this and even my own board here was like why do people want to see come see the sun blocked out uh and it is quite you know I I don't know where you were that day I was actually in Austin oh okay I was on a bachelor party down there and we like stayed one extra day orever you experienced it down there so I was down there and I was like what I was like definitely a hater like oh my gosh what are we doing here like whatever

and and then it was crazy yeah and we got lucky right the weather uh there's all this speculation about will you be cloudy or not cloudy and we had perfect conditions on our Eclipse so you just can't draw up an eclipse day better and but what what made you into unique again is is you had things like the Art Museum and the Children's Museum and White River State Park and many many others having very specific custom programming and so people were coming in right people were coming in on on Saturday for an that was what a Monday or Tuesday I can't remember it was early

in the week and staying multiple nights and doing the other things uh the other experiences in addition is that like your when you like you know you're in your board meetings or whatever like how are you measur are you measuring success by number of visitors that sleep in a hotel overnight in Indianapolis like is that like the the leading measure of it's overall economic impact there there is a there's actually a a calculator that we had custom uh built uh by economists uh before I got to in 2013 or 2011 13 years ago uh our coo James Wallace had been working on this and so

when I got there we just kind of implemented it but you can so for example um certain shows like a Gen Con uh you're going to get 70,000 people and most of those 70,000 will stay here for three or four nights whereas another convention you might get 50,000 people but the peak on any one given day might be 20 uh and and so uh the person nights the person days uh is what's the the key driver and then you can tweak these other variables like are they more likely to spend more in a hotel or less are they more likely to spend more on food

and beverage for example uh the firefighters uh and the NFL combine is going to spend more at Harry and izes than FFA is FFA is going to spend a hell of a lot at Subway and uh you know the Pretzel Place you almost think of like yeah you're like uh total value of a customer total value of a visitor and you like multiply number it's like oh well when when corporate comes they're going to be have the card so we're going to like you know go to Harry and Iz but it's like when our when our high schoolers from across the state or across the

country come well I remember years ago they single handly keeping that steak and shake well yeah there's certain certain audiences are going to be focused on on certain you know parts of of the business Community downtown more than others I remember a couple years ago uh that uh the folks at San Elmo told me that one of their best Revenue nights in history was when the national Funeral Directors Association were here because they had they put they had really high bar bills and I thought to myself that makes sense if you're spending you know most of your life uh helping people deal with their grief

when you go out to your convention or you go on vacation you're probably having a stiff one now and again so right that's hilarious and there's so many fun like little nuggets of like oh my gosh I had Steve Lindsay he's the founder or co-owner of the hanger like the pedal bars and all that stuff and he's talking about one night um they had I can't remember the name the guy who won the n500 calls them up and it's like ripping around downtown like stopping into place and it's like there's so many fun little memories of you know just cool things happening downtown I love

and you know we only got to the eclipse at that point because after that as as you noted earlier we also had USA swimming trials we had the national Eucharistic Congress which was the Gathering of Catholics that hadn't been done in the US in something like 80 years it had been in other places internationally but not the US and so you kind of have to guess what's going to happen and our guesstimate was that 50,000 people were going to come and 50,000 people came and and that was without the pope if we had gotten the pope we we had talked about whether he could come

uh and and ultimately uh they weren't able to make that happen but you might have gotten hundreds of thousands gosh had the pope come right you know yeah like I mean when is the last I mean does the pope frequently I don't think I don't think it very much very you know very much anymore but the but that that was there was a procession you know downtown of Catholic Bishops and and other attendees that looked like uh you know it was just a massive Gathering that that flowed through downtown we have it on time lapse and it's amazing to watch well and we kind of

glanced over it but like when you think of swim trials not only did did Indianapolis experience the you know benefit of having all the people and the visitors and and putting on this amazing spectacle but like what was it like something eight nights on NBC and like the way that that all worked and and the like the like marketing of the city like that was awesome it just felt like Indie was like in the main Spotlight there yeah well you know there's so many great things about swimming it was a spectacle to see in person it was a spectacle for people to see on TV

to see you know a a swimming pool of that magnitude in the football stadium and the way it was lit and and and and and designed you know incredible Kudos everybody at lucasol stadium in USA swimming uh in the Indiana Sports Corp uh for what they all uh did to make that happen I I've given some advice to some young people recently about USA swimming in that uh the CEO up until week ago or so is a guy named Tim hinchy and he he recently uh left after seven years of a great run of leading USA swimming Tim hinchi back in the early 2000s was

running Partnerships for the Sacramento Kings NBA team uh also in the early 2000s I was the CMO for visit Sacramento and so Tim and I were friends back then and we get together for a bear every now and again and you know whatever it was and we were just marveling how 20 years later we got to work together on this USA Olympic swimming t and now he's the CEO of USA swimming and I'm the CEO of visit Indie and I always uh you know remind young people that uh relationships if especially if they're genuine uh you don't know where they're going to lead to sometimes

there's a 15 20 year break in them and then all of a sudden you're working on a project like that together yeah that's and that's and in another part of the country right you guys out in Sacramento you end up in Indie and um I was down there for swim trials and I was like I never really I don't think I'd ever been to a swim meet and I was like I don't know what to EXP expect I'm walking in there and it I was blown away it was so cool like it was hype like it's just not what I think about when and I'm

sure not all swim me I'm actually like very positive not all swim meets are hype and like cool like like just the spectacle of that they did an amazing job I know Indie Sports hor is super involved there like Sarah meire and her team like crushed it so much fun yeah there's like multiple levels of attendees of something like that there are people who much like swifties may know every word of every song there are people at USA swimming trials who know every athlete that's competing they know their highlights uh their challenges uh their fans and uh they know all the details and then there's

people who are like there to go I want to see a pool in the stadium and everything in between right and so that's what makes trials like that unique because uh even if you if you're not if you don't have expertise or really have in-depth knowledge of the individual athletes once they're in that final lap or that final turn and they're showing the world record number up on the scoreboard and somebody's close to that and and you know that the top two are going to make the team you get excited even though you don't you don't even know why you just do yeah oh and

when they like you have a lot of you know Indianapolis hooer like type people in there they say so and so from caramel swim club like yeah let's go like that like pretty sure what the girl that made it was like is a senior now yeah it's crazy like oh Alex and Aaron shackle yeah so Carmel had the those seniors Alex and Aaron shackle and she's going to be a a senior in Caramel high school now and like was in the Olympics and the hometown there were some of the younger kids kids in there too who didn't qualify for the team but it was invaluable

experience for when they were go for the trials next time right they'll be ready they'll be they'll be at their Peak athletic performance at that point plus they will have had the experience of being in that environment and and I heard a number of people talking about that uh including Tim hinchy uh the former CEO there about what how what valuable experience that is for some of the folks who are not quite ready at the their speeds aren't where they they quite need to be but they you can't replace the experience you actually get of being through a trial well and I'm talking about sports

it's like I've long heard that Indie is the amateur sports capital of the world and that's I mean that was a plan from I don't know a long time ago 1979 is when the sports commission was for but and I think when people think about oh sports like I'm a fan of sports and I like sports and it's good but I don't know if people necessarily understand like the business behind that and why amateur sports the money and the economic impact so I'd love to just hear your take on how India's since 1979 adopted that and um and brought that Vision to life well I'm

I'm actually going to step back uh one step further and and talk about it General India is a place to gather uh we have been arguably a place that people have been meeting in large mass numbers since the late 1800s uh Colonel Eli Lily who we all know from from uh El Eli Lily Corp uh after the Civil War he um organized reunions of the Grand Army of the Republic and I believe it was 1893 uh is the year that that uh con that essentially convention that reunion peaked they had at least at least 120,000 people in Indianapolis that weekend and uh there are there

there there are reports that there were 300,000 people who went through Union Station the train station uh that weekend we jokingly say sometimes that Indie uh without naming it this inadvertently invented Airbnb because we didn't have housing and accommodations and hotels for that many people and so people were renting out rooms and there were tent cities set up in in order to accommodate so these were Veterans of the Civil War from the union side uh who were gathering uh and you know unfortunately as as they were doing that convention pretty regularly and Indie held it several times but then you know by the early 1900s

a lot of those folks had died and so there's no more reunion much like a high school reunion ends at some point but since the late 1800s we've been in that business visit Indie has been around since 1923 so we've been around for 101 years oh wow I had no idea and in the 20s and 30s Indie was one of the top five convention cities in America now we're back into being somewhere around I would say top 12 or 13 in terms of gross numbers of people who come through our convention CER that's straight just like visitors in the convention center who are like the

top well the top on well well Vegas definitely Orlando uh Chicago Atlanta New Orleans uh they've got the biggest centers they've got you know airlift International airlift I was going to say what's like the grand Jewel of conventions there's a number we have several really great great ones right Gen Con you've got 72,000 people most of whom come every night for four nights there's really a kind of a fifth night uh that uh they call the best four days in gaming but Gen Con attendees have now started showing up on Tuesday night and then they get together on their own on Wednesday and then Thursday

Friday Saturday Sunday is the actual Gen Con so it's kind of become a five-day show uh and you'll see that in the data the data doesn't lie right and so you see that so that's an incredible show FFA is an incredible show uh the Performance Racing industry uh you know these are all ones that we host right these are the ones we you think about like the the V like what's like like or or what's the one that's yeah c yeah yeah the uh the consumer electronic show one of the things I love about this industry for example we hosted the American Physical Therapy Association

many years ago and I have a son with cerebral poy so he has grown he had a birth injury he has grown up with physical and um other therapists uh for his entire life and when so when we hosted AP I was able to tell them I said you know thank you for what you all do they were gathering to learn the latest techniques on physical therapy right and that helps people whether you're a professional athlete or whether you're a kid who has sural policy but when you get to host things in your city that kind of move the ball on whatever that profession is

that's what we do pretty much 52 weeks a year and that's like you know talk about the latest and greatest like consumer electronics like that's really cool but it's like you know I mean that could be 30 40,000 whatever it is for that that's like impactful yeah well and and the thing that we haven't NE necessarily been known for uh we do really well with us Sports obviously we do well with Gen Con gaming show things that are motorport related uh we haven't been known for medical associations uh we've been getting uh there's a there's kind of a big difference and ability in a city

to get nurses versus doctors and the nurses are more prone to come to uh cities like India that are more affordable have a nice campus where they can gather and feel collectively safe in a in a in a downtown setting with skywalks and everything like that the doctors are generally they want to go to New Orleans and they want to go to Orlando and they want to go to San Francisco well all of a sudden we're starting to get the doctors we got American Dental coming next year in 2025 uh Dental is in 26 next year we have the American Academy of oology odology is

the airs nose and throat doctors so you're ent's um and so I I discovered by the way you have to be able to pronounce odology to book oo laryngology so I've gotten to you know used to saying that word pretty so you're in there with the phonetic spelling lar you but I know how to pronounce the word uh we have uh we um you know by the time you air this we will publicly announce that we are going to be hosting uh the American Society of plastic surgeons that is a show again much like the dentist where it was don't call us we'll call you

and then they call us there you go huge thank you to our friends at Greeks Pizzeria since 1968 Greeks have been serving up Delicious Pies all over Indiana from Fort Wayne to Crawfordsville down to Bloomington and everywhere in between Greeks Pizzeria is all over the state you need to go check out the video I posted of Mike Cole now Mike owns the Greeks in zionville he ran the mill race marathon in Columbus and broke the World Record for fastest marathon while holding a pizza it was a spectacle it was super awesome the man crushed it he ran a 3-hour and 15minute Marathon while holding a

pizza that's faster than I run my normal Marathon it was an insane feat to witness give yourself a break from making dinner tonight pull out your phone go to Griggs pizzeria.com and find the store nearest you order a large pepperoni you're going to be a hero for your significant other your kids whoever they are they're going to love you there's a reason they have been in business for 55 years they know what they're doing when it comes to Pizza go check out Greek pizzeria.com I've got a 12-year-old daughter and um she likes to go to water parks and I make this analogy sometimes about uh

in a water park in addition to the big slides and stuff they typically have especially when my my little girl was younger uh they have this playground kind of area and in the playground you know slides and things you can climb and and things and things like that where water's going on everywhere and uh but there's usually like a bucket or a couple of BU ET that are getting filled at a water park and they get Fuller and Fuller and then every 10 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever their timing is they spill over and there are people who run under that spill or they

run away from it and scream indies's bucket is getting really full and I think it's going to spill over really soon and we're starting to see indications of that with the medical groups booking us with you know the big the big sporting events wanting to come back WNBA All-Star game next year is a good example right we just had the men right we just had NBA allar allar game WNBA allstar game there is no hotter City for women's sports than Indianapolis right now and it's largely in part to Caitlyn Clark and the fever and the amazing work they're doing and and not just the amazing

work of like on the court like it helps when you're winning and and doing well making the playoffs going from like I mean they were like the worst team in the conference last year second worst team I think and now they're in the play we're we're solidly in the playoffs now and and competing against former uh you know WNBA Champions at a very high level to the point where maybe it's this year I don't know who knows if we can get high during the playoffs but we're very close to being on on that Elite level uh with Caitlyn and her teammates it's a it's a

very talented Team all the way around wouldn't that just be a story they make a run for the finals and win the whole thing but you just you know sometimes you get lucky uh that is another one where uh she was coming out into the WNBA draft the same year we happen to get the pingpong ball fall our way and you know because you because even if you've got a bad record you're not guaranteed you're going to get that pick and and most years you know are don't have a Caitlyn Clark or Victor web minyama or or Lebron James most years it's often a guess

is it going to be pton versus Ryan Lee for is it you know or whatever and you have to make the right guess but but some years it's so obvious and we just happen to have Caitlyn fall into her lap and oh by the way you know her boyfriend from Iowa who was working for the paces looks like he's going to Butler now um you know was here so it just a lined great for her it aligned great for us and with now little is his little brother now going to play at Butler too like they old I mean the family is slowly I'm telling

you Indie is uh you know uh years ago I was in Sedona for a summer vacation and they talk that they have this Vortex all these vortices you know where this natural energy from the earth emanates or something like that I think Indie is all of a sudden we got like some sort of Vortex thing going because it's all happening whether and you Circle back to the original comment right was like sometimes you make your own luck and sometimes you just get lucky and sometimes you do them both right and I literally just said this story uh yesterday on um I had an interview with

stepen M from or fellowship and I gave the analogy and I'm going to say it again for the listeners but it was like Indie is a well I'll give the whole thing right so it was from Sam par who was founder of the hustle you know awesome entrepreneur he said when you see someone hitchhiking on the side of the road do you stop and pick them up and it's like no I I probably just drive by but when I see someone pushing their car then like more people like join on and help get it to the gas station like Indie like people see people like

you and and all these amazing leaders in the city pushing Indianapolis up this hill and now it's like more people want to join in and help like make Indie this like even like just well not make it I mean it's already a great place but amplify that so that the world knows how great it is there is an ethos here that is not seen in almost anywhere once in a blue moon I'll see I'll go to a place like Singapore and see how their Community has figured out things that uh at Elite levels but as a guy who spent uh 17 years in three major

West Coast cities Indie does things that they would never even think about doing or it's just not natural to that Community like if you had an example of like one way the community has come together like that operates a little bit different than the rest of the world well I I I'll give you an example of some Hotel general managers uh two different ones uh who left the market who reached out to me afterward and saying I didn't realize uh what I left and how different it was uh a very minor example would be uh in San Francisco uh if I had a client in

town looking at the Hilton and the marot as their headquarter hotel for a convention those two more than often than not would not say nice things about the other in order to try to win the business for their own hotel in Indie when we go on side inspections with our clients whether it's the plastic surgeons or the or the dentists or the Gen cons of the world the JW is saying nice things about the Hyatt the hey saying nice things about the Omni the Omni saying nice things about the Weston sometimes our customers like it's like it's odd to them they're not used to that

niceness they're you know I used to joke that when I first got to Indie that when people started holding the door open for me 20 ft away I didn't know what to do with that cuz I was coming from the West Coast right I was like you know normally somebody could be right in front of me and they don't hold the door for you uh and and in Indy you're like you're wanting to speed yourself up because they're going to wait for you and and hold that door I had um Jeff smolan on the podcast uh this was probably a year ago and he was

like you can't be a bad guy in Indie right because the Whole Town's going to know about in two hours right so you talk about you know the Marriott saying nice thing like it makes sense because like uh people truly want like they know that it's going to come back to them in some like if the plastic surgeons go to you know the JW then uh then the the dentists are going to go to the Omni or whatever it is you know you know Mario Rodriguez who runs our airport he's been in a number of cities too he's been in Long Beach he's been in

New Orleans he's been in Florida uh he's had some International stops so he he like like myself have have been in a few different places to get context of what makes any difference and and he he and I talk about it all the time about how unusual it is that this is a community that tends to focus collectively on the good of the community over the good of them El mhm and I think that it's voices like yours like I'm I'm a lifelong Hoosier and like I love Indiana and I like always say it's so great here but it's like some people kind of take

that with a grain of salt because it's like oh well that's all he's ever known and lived and it's like you've been there you've been on the west coast you've been in different places and now you're here and you're like man like when you say it's different like people need to believe that it's different yeah Mario and I talk about this all the time that most hooers who have been here their whole life have no idea it seems to us how good they have it uh because they don't have the context we have the context and so there a lot of folks who love Indie

the most are people who didn't grow up here because uh they appreciate it for what makes it different and uh others made just think of it as not big enough or or or not Elite enough or whatever and that is hard um you know in San Francisco we used one of the things used to frustrate me is I I found the community at times um and I have plenty of great friends there and it's a wonderful City so don't get me wrong on this but there was an arrogance to it but uh it served well in business um Indie has just got too much humility

at times that we just don't uh we just don't pat ourselves on the back or tell people how much we love it people pick up on it if if you're not super proud and and and therefore they don't think of it as Elite unless unless you do that is what I love the most about what I get to do now is the hooers are so humble it's I get to bring people that are doing amazing things on and I get to Hype them up like hey it is awesome that you guys worked to bring Taylor Swift and Allstar Weekend and these amazing events like I

think all in one year like you even said it earlier you're like one of those events would be a great year like the fact that we have four insanely hu I mean we have way more 52 weeks a year you know but like four blue chip events in Indianapolis is insane right um I do want to talk and briefly dive into what's coming down the pipeline right like you're talking about the rest of the decade WNBA All-Star weekend and and some other cool things WWE and what that means for the and I obviously I'm not I'm not a wrestling like you know Super Fan but

I know that that they have some ravenous fans and it's going to be crazy for our city the events that are still on the calendar that are already on the calendar for the rest of the decade are pretty impressive so beginning next year you've got WNBA All-Star game I I'm excited about things like the oologist because if you get a bunch of doctors to town uh and that's kind of our first really major doctor Group Medical Group of that nature um then that potentially leads to more uh we've got um and like I'm just assuming like the the doctors are are spending more money you

know and it's like that's good for our economy like I don't know like you know say FFA or the other like like WBA Allstar is awesome and super cool but it's like I probably bet like a collection of you know 50,000 doctors or whatever are going to run up a higher bill yeah it won't be 50,000 but they will spend a lot of money each each individual one of them in 26 uh the we've got NCAA Final Four uh and we've got it again in 29 and we've got the women's final four in 28 so think about that we've got the men and the women

three times in a four-year span 26 28 29 actually it's a three times in a threee span really from 26 to 29 we'll have regionals and we'll have first and second rounds mixed in there in in the Years leading up to these final fours we've got um how far in advance when you're thinking of something like um a final four like when was that solidified they did the bid cycle going out through 2031 back in I believe 22 21 or 22 they did nine or 10 years in advance yeah yeah well no and that's that's new for them uh and it's new from them uh

because a lot of the Cities including Indie have been saying hey you're you're booking too close in a lot of these conventions who want these dates we can't guess when you know when you're going to put out your bids and so we need to know in uh in 2021 for 20 like the 21 or 22 I can't remember what year it was but it was it was within the last two three years we got the 26 well that was pretty tight right I mean we were holding dates for other groups who wanted those same dates in 26 but we knew we had a chance to

get the final four and we wanted that for the community first but at some point we were risking having nothing having no final four and plus uh you know having the other groups get impatient and saying we're not going to wait for you to give us what's the furthest booked out date like we know in 2033 or whatever it is yeah we have um uh these plastic surgeons are coming in 33 we have the Alcoholics Anonymous uh which is a huge group it's it's upwards of uh 50,000 uh it could be 70,000 in 2034 uh we have a group that I'm not allowed to say

their specific name but it's another major major medical group that we are currently bidding on that we expect to sign the first quarter of next year because they have to vote on it at a board meeting in the first quarter of next year but they are looking at dates in 2036 203 that's 12 years away exactly like what so yeah we do have pretty long lead times on some of these things uh and some of the groups that are meeting now uh like the group that'll meet uh next year in 2026 ASA American Society of Association Executives that's another one I'm excited about because ASE

is often referred to in our industry as the Super Bowl of Association meetings why is that well it's about 5,000 people but of those 5,000 people about 2,000 of them are final decision makers for where to bring their own Association Convention wait so it's like a convention for convention hosts exactly and and and so if You' got 2,000 people who can decide to pick Indie for their future convention when they come here on you know to experience Indie in 2026 if you converge just 10% of those you that's 200 more conventions H that you're going to spread out over your and that's not a high

con conversion rate I think we're going to do better than that and so more often than not uh our biggest challenge is having dates and space to make this work because we have more demand than there are dates and space to fill I that's that's fun um well and then rounding out the decade of like other big things right so you have men and women's basketball uh what else we have going on you got the Wes we've got these medical groups uh the big projects that are opening up in the next couple of years I think this is important to talk about is uh so

you've got Circle Center being completely rethought into a neighborhood so the same developer who developed bottle works Hendrick's development is redeveloping the mall and it won't be a mall anymore it'll it'll have retail but it'll be more of a neighborhood like like a bottle works is where you've got commercial you've got residential people live in like kind of in that area yeah you'll you'll literally live uh there will be places to live what is now Circle Center um when's that going to be done uh that'll start they'll start working on it by the end of next year and be done by uh at least the

South block uh around the late 2020s uh and there are some exciting things uh coming that I wish I could get into today because i' I've been lucky enough to have meetings with them where they've told me about some of the tenants are going to blow your mind like there's one that reminded me and I think I could say it in this way without getting into too much trouble that reminded me of a mini version of the sphere in Las Vegas uh that could be coming to Indie uh that probably will come to Indie you look at what Mr Simon and uh Pacer Sports entertainment

through development company called boxcar are doing an uh ride by gamebridge they want to put in a 4,000 seat entertainment venue that would have regular music you know hopefully seven days a week um and uh a Shinola Hotel Shinola is a big watch brand out of Detroit and they have a they just started in the luxury hotel world and built one in Detroit and and now uh now we looks like we're going to get a Shinola Hotel uh you know uh Keystone has got the Intercontinental Hotel they're getting ready to open later this year uh that is going to be a very high-end uh property

with a rooftop bar right by Monument Circle uh you've got that signy by Hilton 800 hotel rooms opening up in uh Q4 2026 with a Convention Center expansion that includes a 50,000 foot Ballroom so we'll be able to host uh two or more conventions at once right now we generally host one big one and then maybe we'll kind of squeeze in a smaller group or a local group or something like this this will let you host two legitimately uh good siiz uh full conventions at once one headquartered by the JW and and properties kind of along Maryland Street and one headquartered by the sign and

properties lung capital and so we've got all this cool development happening uh the Indie Motor Speedway museum is uh about to reopen I think they they did an $80 million renovation and one of the cool things I have yet to experience it but I know what they were working on is essentially delivering race day 365 days a year so when instead of walking in there and you just get to see a bunch of old cars which some people are like yeah I I know exactly what that engine is and who drove it and Etc the vast majority uh of of visitors aren't of that level

of expertise or interest and so what they want when they go to the IND Motor Speedway and it's September is they want to know what it might have been like in May and so that's they've got virtual reality and other sorts of programming that are going to be completely different uh that are going to let you experience Indie Motor Speedway or race day IND 500 race day uh virtually 365 days a year I love that all right I have I have one question cuz you are the expert of what's going on in Indianapolis what can you tell us about what's going on with the Indie

11 Stadium where's that going to end up at yeah so that's really complicated right because I think uh Keystone had a lovely site until it was discovered uh that um uh the remains of a cemetery The Remains from a cemetery uh had not been completely exed and all of a sudden that site didn't look untenable anymore and in the meantime um there were some folks who approached the mayor and ml from MLS were representing U interests of MLS uh who said hey you know if you can still figure this out and get a stadium uh then there's a good chance that that Indy will get

a team that's the thing it's always like it's a good nothing is set in stone or guaranteed like all this well so the mayor has and his chief of staff Dan Parker and others have been very engaged directly with MLS leadership MLS I think is currently at 2019 teams with a 30th team about to come on San Diego uh they might have room for two more and uh you know so there's there's multiple Avenues into this you could get maybe one of those two more which I think is the path that we're pursuing right now you could also maybe have a team among the current

29 that's not doing so well they may want to relocate to a community that has shown it can support uh sports teams at a high level U that the site near uh gamebridge and the heliport is what they're looking at right now uh it's a wonderful site because you've got a lot of infrastructure there already with parking garage and it's near massav you know just down Alabama Street from massav and some things like that um so it's a lovely location uh and uh I would say that uh that is a complicated bti effort but they my knowledge of what's going on amongst uh the players

is that they are confident we have a we have a better than 50-50 shot of Landing a team uh and building this Stadium uh you know by the end of this decade wow that I mean that's pretty cool and to be able to bring an MLS team here I think that'll just be uh that would be awesome yeah you throw that into the mix and then you throw in Circle Center becoming a neighborhood and you throw in White River State Park is expanding we haven't even talked about that they're adding they're adding another 10 plus acres and uh the old crane Bay from the jam

Stamping Plant will be a uh a really cool uh glass venue and uh from what I have seen uh that the White River State Park commission has released to this point uh they're looking at developing uh a beach that you could use you know for kayaks and canoes uh there's a delegation uh that's getting ready to go on a trip to look at uh what places like Boise Idaho have done to their rivers to allow things like uh you can you can you can create like devices and through natural structures uh kind of like surfing in a river uh you know things like that there's

all sorts of uh ways to engage people on the river and it's and it's the most I'm kind of famous for saying this the last 13 years I guess uh that I compare Indie and Paris and and and I make that comparison because at the end of the day Paris is a flat city with a river it's not Denver with the incredible mountains or San Francisco with a Golden Gate Bridge that brings you in from the Pacific Ocean or Miami with beaches it doesn't have any of that it's a flat city with a river in the middle of France uh and it has a 2000-

year Head Start and so that's their one and only Advantage they've developed culture they've developed some really great attraction collected some art yeah but even you know the the Eiffel Tower was panned by the parisians back when it was proposed for the world fair and then it was supposed to torn down immediately after the fair and then they were kind of like oh this is actually kind of cool but if you take if we have a a slide deck we do with folks where we show a picture of Paris without uh the Eiffel Tower we just Photoshop it out and we ask people where is

this and people look at it and they're like I don't know that's you know Flat City whatever that is no there's no Skyline to it and then click uh you bring back in uh the Eiffel Tower people go W damn that's Paris what a difference that one iconic structure could make and so there's a couple of things I think we're missing like that like if you really had like a really cool iconic structure in White River State Park for example that was the first shot that the Goodyear blimp would do for a Monday night football game or an All-Star basketball game just like makes it

you know the Arch in St Louis or whatever exactly where people are like oh that's Indie and I want to see that you know well I just had Jake Oakman on and he was talking about like there were originally plans for some like massive Tower thing that got nexted um that would be that would be interesting like what could you do that's like or like the skyl like even Nashville it's like like that I always call the Batman building their AT&T building you're like ah yeah Nashville I can tell from that right so and we've got Monument Circle but it's surrounded by buildings so you

really can't see it most of the time we've got an incredible uh Indianapolis Motor Speedway which from a drone shot is amazing but doesn't uh you know it's it's off uh 15 20 minutes from the downtown core and so people there's nothing that kind of immediately jumps out to people uh when they get a picture of the Indianapolis Skyline makes them go oh that's Indie mhm well yeah because it's I means the Salesforce Tower and that makes you think is that San Francisco right yeah that doesn't that doesn't mean anything to anybody well okay when you as we wrap up here when you're looking forward

to what you know the rest of the decade's going to bring what are you most excited about one of the things I love about Indies living here I lived most of my life on the west coast I was in the corporate world before those three other jobs and so uh Mo most my context is from that and having a 12-year-old and a 19-year-old um I love the idea of having them growing up in a place where that bucket is about to spill I I get very motivated by being on a team that wants to move the needle as opposed to take care of a brand

that everybody knows like a San Francisco so uh that ethos that we collectively have in this community uh the fact that Sports Corp and downtown Indie and Indie chamber and visit Indie and capital Improvement board and Arts Council and and other Civic organizations like that want to work together uh for the common good like that and we do that on a regular basis that's honestly it's it's more that that nebulous concept of us becoming the next big thing as a community I I I want to be able to I I pretty much know when my last day at visit Indie is going to be because

I I I'm the one staff member that has a contract and my current contract goes through June 1 of 2030 I'll be 65 uh when that contract ends uh I uh I I want to be able to to I'm not one of those people who wants to work to 80 so he's on the clock right I'm on the clock I got I got basically six years I got basically six years I'm a little less than six years to go and uh I want to see us uh absolutely hit that next big thing status and somebody asked me from the Star a while back about you

know uh I forget what the event was but you know do this mean ind's made it and I said you know when we stop asking oursel that that's when we've made it when we stop asking ourselves have we made it we've made it Nashville has stopped asking themselves that Austin has stopped asking itself that but it wasn't more than 20 years ago when I was in both of those cities that they were not that they were uh you know a sleepy College town and a honky tonk and now they are seen as places that you want to live work and play and uh the big

conventions go there and and their perception and the perception of those who then live there uh is totally different and so that's really what I want to see not any one specific event uh I want to see my kids grow up in a place where you feel like you were part of something special over the course of 20 years I'm excited about that too like and there is this just like you go to Austin and like you kind of have that energy you know you go to Nashville and you have that like oh is pretty cool it's like it every year gets a little bit

closer to that and like I love it like I love living here like I have no plans to go anywhere else like I think I think the one difference between all those places in Indianapolis is like for young people in particular it's like you can come in and you can make an impact here and like everyone like you don't just stop wanting to make an you get to be 50 60 you're still wanting to make an impact in your community and that's like the special part about hooers Andy welcomes young middle-aged and older uh to uh contribute to our our Collective success and it's it's

an unusual ethos it's uh it's one thing to talk about it it's another thing to actually behave in that way and that's how Indie behaves I love it well we're to the end of the show I have a few fun segments here at the end where we can kind of go um the first one's our younger years segment this question is brought to you by our friends at or Fellowship they're a great organization here in Indianapolis uh developing the next young Business Leaders across the state they even open up a chapter in Evansville now too so they're just rocking and rolling Leonard what advice would

you give to your 22-year-old self I love the or fellows by the way didn't that isn't that how I met you originally my second ever like monthly meeting you were the the uh the guest speaker and you this guy is talking about comparing Paris to Indianapolis and all this stuff I remember it was six years ago whatever it was and I was just like wow I really like this guy's energy this is cool uh the advice I would give my 22-year-old stealth is stay the course because where I am today is exactly where I would want it to be so I don't have any regrets

uh you know of the overall path to get here so uh but the 22y old would have probably thought I mean that would have been 1987 so I was uh I was just out of college and I was working for a fortune uh I was I was I hadn't quite started working for a one Fortune 120 company but I had no idea what I wanted to do I was a journalism undergrad and originally thought I wanted to be a sports writer because I wanted to get involved in sports and um then I realized after covering some professional sports including going to a Giants game and

being in their Clubhouse and writing up a story and working with the athletes that I might not be cut out for it I was I didn't have a thick enough skin for it I was like what the hell am I going to do with this journalism degree now and I wind up going into the corporate world and then found this world so at 22 I you know if somebody had if my older self had told me hey if you stay the course you'll be fine I would have been really thrilled with that CU I had no clue what was going on then there you go

I love that say the course uh now we get to get into some of my like my lightning round rapid fire questions you're talking about sports it's it's football season who's your favorite Colts player I love Jonathan Taylor going back to when he was even when he was uh a college player playing in the big 10 championship game I I thought boy if the Colts could get their hands on this guy and he's had some injuries and some things like that I want to I want to say it's going to be Anthony Richardson but I haven't gotten to see enough of him the stuff he

can do uh is pretty amazing to watch him um uh where he just flicks the ball and it goes 60 yards but in terms of the ones that I personally met and that I really enjoyed meeting were Kenny Moore Oh yeah and and I was shocked when I met him dude's not much bigger than I am I'm like 57 155 and I felt like he wasn't that much bigger than me and he's out on an NFL football field crazy you know breaking up passes and tackling guys that are twice his size and he's a baller I mean he he's a baller I've heard multiple people

say that he's just a just a good dude yeah we were at the Indie Motor Speedway both doing something taping something one day and that's where I met him for the first time generally nice guy I love that um and I know you love them all but if you had to say hey this going to this sporting event is my favorite here in Indianapolis what is it I would have to say I truly enjoy uh the night of the championship game of a final four there's no setting quite like that I mean one team is going to go home and all their alumni and all

their students uh just thrilled as could be and the other one is going to walk out of there like we were so close but the energy can't be replicated very well there's a different energy in a college basketball national championship game than there is in a Super Bowl for example in Super Bowl you still got some very passionate fans but it's very corporate in a lot of ways right and to actually hear the student sections and the alumni and and uh there's nothing quite like a final four championship game was it um okay even with football when we had the college football playoff right was

it was it Alabama Georgia that night was crazy very similar I would say that would that would you know when you have a championship game of a Collegiate event and and we're not you know the Big 10 is a tremendous game but you're you're winning a conference title when you actually win the NCAA title for all of basketball or the college football playoff title for all of college football the energy in those buildings is nothing is like nothing else what was it Georgia ended up winning that game I'm pretty sure and we but it was close up until middle of the fourth quarter and we

were out that we didn't go to the game but we were out downtown and all of a sudden all the Georgia fans roll in and it was nuts cuz that was also when DOA cat was on the circle for her concert that was a I will say this it's an annual event we should I I would never discount the Indie 500 the actual race day race day for the Indie 500 every year gives me goosebumps I get the hair on my neck stands up when they finished that last parade lap and the 33 cars and you get the green flag and they all hit the

gas at the same time there's a certain sound that comes out from when they hit the gas at the same time like that that's hard to replicate that's it's impossible to even in other races you know even in NASCAR races or or grand you know F1 type races I've been to F1 races I've been to the Italian Grand Prix in mon Italy uh there is nothing like the Indie 500 absolutely nothing that's my if I had to asked myself that question my single favorite sporting event is the n500 it is amazing and I didn't grow up in Indianapolis like I was like what do you

mean and I went the first time and I was like I was just a and I'm not a racing fan I mean I I will go to these other races like I was kind of bored of the F1 and Monza it was interesting I guess but you know they're making all these technical turns at you know 85 miles an hour and you're like boring two give me 235 for going into a corner watch poto award like doing his move at the end it's just crazy where they're jockeying back and forth the last couple of laps to take the Checker uh and and then just the

general 350,000 people the energy you get from that so I love the kind of Collegiate atmosphere you get from championship games but the Indie 500 is not something anybody can replicate anywhere else in the world oh my God like I just remember the end of this one right and you have New Garden going like and that comes through turn four and you're just like oh my gosh what did we just witness it was incredible um I I absolutely love that I think that's um leads me into my next question and and I know you love everything right you're you are the Indi Indianapolis guy um

actually fun note about that is like one of my personal goals is to uh is to wave the the flag the green flag at the nd500 I want to get big enough where they're like I have Doug blls coming on in a couple weeks and I'm like hey just planting the seed here it might not happen maybe have a million followers when I get to a million maybe you'll let me wave the green flag um but when you're downtown and you're working and whatever where's your favorite place to go grab a coffee before work and where's your favorite place to grab a beer after work

a coffee before work um well I live on massav so I often will get coffee on massav I love the massav neighborhood this week uh up until today because I had to drive up to Broad Ripple from downtown I've walked to and from the office every day from massab to the convention center back as the weather has been nice enough for that and um so I tend to uh to it'll be you know it could be the coffee place it's in the Atheneum Co yeah coach check it could be the Starbucks that's a block away from my condo uh Etc I generally will get coffee

if I'm getting coffee having like a coffee meeting it'll be a mess have the uh for a bear afterward it's usually not a bear okay uh it's usually like an oldfashioned at 1933 I would say my go-to is 1933 above Elmo I love the speaky Speak Easy atmosphere I will say I'm very much looking forward to having multiple options uh like uh the rooftop bar at the intercon like the 38th floor bar that we're going to have at the signia by Hilton that's going Overlook the city um it it could be fun even to this day to go up to the Eagles Nest at the

Hyatt you know that's like one of three remaining Hyatt rotating uh Observatory restaurants uh they they used to have a bunch of these and then there's still buildings that have that upper kind of Round restaurant but they don't move anymore ours still does which is kind of a cool little thing you know people forget about that yeah it really does you can still go up there and have that roll around so there's a couple places but my go-to on kind of a regular basis uh is to go grab a pops oldfashioned uh up at 1933 I love that um what's your favorite season in Indiana

and why uh I would say it's the fall uh the fall is is definitely um Primo weather for Indie another analogy with with Paris we have you know their their latitude is a little further north than ours believe it or not so uh they have very similar Seasons they've got kind of a a wet spring a warm uh slightly humid summer but you know not like Chicago uh Lake driven type of humidity um they've got an incredible fall and then they can have snow in the winter uh we are very similar in our Four Seasons to them and so you know the leaves change the

only thing that that that uh frustrates me is we're lucky enough to have a second place about a half an hour outside of downtown uh on a couple of Acres uh that we that we run off to and it's got trees everywhere what county uh it's believe it or not it's Maran County uh so oh wow I know isn't it crazy but there's a there is an old neighborhood up near gist that uh uh where there's a couple acre lots and there are old mid-century type houses and this and that and I bought it really for my mom my mom lives in California and uh

so when she comes out um it's a little tight in the condo downtown for us to be all together for a month at a time sort of thing so my mom and stepdad can come out and spend weeks at a time so but when they're not here we use it as a getaway so in the fall the one challenge is the leaves just start coming down and they're you know they you can't maintain it on a daily basis they're coming down so quick but for the couple of weeks leading into the final fall of the leaves uh it's a pretty spectacular place to just gaze

around it feels like Brown County but you're essentially 30 minutes from downtown I love that uh did you say you should have two kids and you have a daughter yeah she a Taylor Swift fan uh yeah she's gonna go with me on Sunday night heck yeah have you okay so what I gotta ask then what's your favorite Taylor Swift song you know what I am horrible at naming songs I mean I'm like a Tom pety guy and classic rock guy and so I can name all sorts of songs from that era but uh the Taylor Swift eras I have no clue you've got to be

I mean I know them all like I'm going to go there and every song she'll sing I'll know and then my daughter will be that song is such and such and this song is such and such so I would literally have to look at a playlist or hear some songs and have you go oh yeah Nate that's the one you got to be like Dad of the year for that right like taking your daughter to Taylor surp that's awesome you know she um she gets frustrated with my travel schedule she's at that age now where because I've been on the road this year I'm I

happen to be the chair of the board of something called pcma and pcma is an International Association for people who plan uh conventions meetings trade shows congresses uh and and the those who sell to those people who plan those events like me and uh we have events we've had events in Singapore we've had events in Mexico City uh in Tulum uh we have one in Barcelona coming up we've got one in Abu Dhabi uh so for one year in addition to my regular visit Indie business travel schedule going to trade shows in Vegas or up to Chicago going to DC and seeing clients and trying

to convince these folks to plan their meeting in 2033 in Indie I've also got all this pcma stuff so she's really been frustrated lately with me that oh you're gone again and she's that got that kind of 12-year-old attitude of whatever but the other day I brought up again I said oh you know I'm taking you on Sunday night to Taylor Swift oh thank you you know this is why this is why daddy's job is kind of cool yes it sucks when I'm gone for weeks at a time uh but I also get to take your Taylor Swift yeah I guess that's also like a

fun like I didn't think that the you know president CEO visit Indie would be like oh yeah there's a lot of travel for this work it's like oh yeah I guess that makes sense even in a regular year it's about uh 20 trips a year I would say um but this year it's closer to 40 holy yeah that's holy smokes all right these are my my always the same tried and true lightning round questions we're going to start with what something the world needs to know about Indiana there is a hell of a lot to do in fly over country heck yeah I love that

okay now we're going to put you on the spot what is a Hidden Gem in Indiana it's not so hidden but I feel that not nearly people know enough about White River State Park even Regional residents don't spend enough time down there you're talking about 250 Acres with the world class Zoo with Incredible museums with a Canal Walk with an Amphitheater with some really cool acts uh and shows every year with an IMAX theater the state's largest IMAX theater uh and I just think it is I mean I came from San Francisco we had Golden Gate Park everybody talks about you know Central Park in

New York for a 250 Acre state park it is still a relatively Hidden Gem in my opinion and we get convention clients all the time who come who are looking at the JW and I'm like you're across the street from 250 Acre state park yeah right with like 20 attractions oh my gosh there's so much to do there we that's a subtle plug go listen to our episode with Jake it was incredible and I learned so much about uh about all the attractions down there and and just like uh the work they put into to make this like Indian like downtown's backyard you know like

a place to go play and it is my goal to get some sort of iconic structure in there like was originally proposed uh before I walk out of here in 2030 there we go all right you heard it here some type of iconic structure before 2030 something that everybody will identify is being Indie I love that all right and we're uh you're going to get the chance to share the love a little bit with someone else who's crushing it right now who's a hooer that we need to keep on our radar I think Chris Gul my CMO uh at visit India our CMO at visit

India I think uh Chris uh he's a lifelong hooer uh he went to Butler he's a butler trustee now he's our chief marketing officer what uh you know Chris is still in his mid-40s and so he unlike me who's got six years left on the contract I think he's got a good 20 25 years still to contribute but the contributions he's made to this point I think are really impressive and uh he recently joined me on the Indiana 250 list that the ABJ does and I think it was well uh deserved uh but I think you're going to see and hear a lot more from

Chris and if I don't get that tower out of the ground he better yes I love that Chris is is absolutely crushing it Leonard thank you so much for coming on this was an awesome episode so much wisdom and knowledge about all the cool things happening in Indianapolis and what's yet to come in the rest of the decade on the rest of Leonard's contract before it comes up in what is that June of 2030 June 1 2030 hey there's been some big stuff that happened thus far but I can see bigger stuff on the horizon thank you so much thanks Nate it's been a really

pleasure to be here thank you for listening to this episode of get in if you like what you heard make sure you leave us a review wherever you listen to podcast this show is made possible by our friends up at Sweetwater whether you're trying to start your own podcast or looking to take your show to the next level make sure you check out sweetwater.com for all your creator needs if you want exclusive behind the-scenes content on all things Indiana make sure you follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok @ Nate spangle thank you for being part of what makes the hooer state so amazing we'll

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