Magazine

GARDENS: RICHARD CUMMINS/CORBIS; GEORGIA STREET: INDIANAPOLIS MONTHLY; OTHERS COURTESY INDIANAPOLIS CONVENTION & VISITORS ASSOCIATION CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: White River Gardens, inside the Indianapolis Zoo, includes a glass-enclosed conservatory, a water garden and a wedding garden; the Canal Walk; Georgia Street, the planned site of Super Bowl Village; a bridge over the Canal Walk allows for outdoor recreation Bowl XLVI (Indianapo-where?), city boost- ers couldn't help but think it was about time. The fact is, Indianapolis has been audition- ing for this main-stage role for a very long time. "This has been at least two decades in the making, and we've added $3 billion in new tourism products in the past three years," says Morgan Greenlee of the Indi- anapolis Convention & Visitors Association. "We're built to host sporting events of this size." And she's not the only Indy booster betting that, after Feb. 5, this clean, attract- ive and surprisingly fun — yes, fun — little city, something of a hidden gem until now, will be a secret no longer. Host Committee, thank you very much) is all the more remarkable when you know something about Indianapolis. Here was a landlocked railroad stop with no beaches, no mountains, no casinos, no desert spas — no glitz, no glamour. And until recently, Indianapolis had a bad inferiority complex; those who lived here gave it nicknames like India-no-place and Naptown. People drove downtown to work in office buildings in the morning, and then, in the evening, T 46 JANUARY 15, 2012 he swagger of the Super Bowl Com- mittee (now called the Super Bowl they clocked out, shut off the lights and drove home. Out-of-town visitors came to Indi anapolis once a year, in May, for the In- dianapolis 500 (still considered the largest single-day sporting event in the world) and didn't return again until the following spring. But starting in the early 1980s, city lead- ers hatched a plan to make downtown a lei- sure destination. Then they began building. The city's recently minted NBA franchise, the Pacers, got a new arena (now demol- ished). On spec, Indianapolis built the Hoo- sier Dome (also now gone), and soon after, the erstwhile Baltimore Colts rolled into town in Mayflower moving trucks. Plan- ners also saw a possible niche in amateur athletics, and their efforts landed the Pan American Games in 1987, a mini Olympics, and, later, the FIBA men's basketball World Championships. The city has hosted the men's Final Four six times, with another on the way in 2015, and the NCAA relocated its national headquarters here in 1999. "There's a reason the NCAA likes having the Final Four here," Miles says. "Our track record is that we do them really well." That vision of bringing sports to down- town Indianapolis has been an unmitigated success, enough to merit investments in AA.COM/AMERICANWAY significant upgrades, namely the Pacers' new downtown home, Bankers Life Fieldhouse — consistently rated among the NBA's best arenas — and the aforementioned Lucas Oil Stadium. And Victory Field (rated the best minor-league stadium in America by Sports Illustrated) is a charming, throwback ball- park near Lucas Oil Stadium that keeps the sporting calendar full all summer. Now, on nearly any given night of the year, Indy's tidy downtown sidewalks teem with sportsgoers, and the place bustles even after the office stiffs have driven home for dinner. But the city has also given people plenty of reasons other than sports to come down- town. In 1995, Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group, the biggest mall builder in the country, opened Circle Centre — nearly 800,000 square feet of indoor retail space now anchored by Carson Pirie Scott and crowded with boutiques, gift shops, restau- rants and a multiplex theater. (At $1.50 for three hours, its parking is also some of the cheapest in any sizable city.) White River State Park, on the western edge of downtown, is a campus of cultural attractions, arrayed around grassy open spaces, attractive land- scaping and a canal walk that ties into an extensive network of art-lined urban trails

• Cover