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INDIANAPOLIS — Facing a Monday night deadline of a competing soccer stadium site before the City-County Council, Indy Eleven owner Ersal Ozdemir said Thursday that his company could start building on its Kentucky Avenue site on the southwest side of downtown within weeks.
”The fastest way to get MLS is our site because it’s ready to build, we can actually start digging next month and be open in the fall of 2026,” the owner of the Keystone Group told Inside INdiana Business host Gerry Dick on Thursday. “Unlike any other proposals. There’s a lot of hypotheticals, maybes and could haves and would haves to do that. We all want MLS. We should get together, work together as the city and state, as we typically have done, and do the right thing and make sure we’re going toward the same goal of MLS in Indianapolis in the future.”
This week a key City County Council committee approved Mayor Joe Hogsett’s proposal to establish a special taxing district with the Indy Heliport as the preferred site for a downtown soccer stadium.
The designation of the Professional Sports Development Area would capture nearly a quarter billion dollars in new tax revenues to be dedicated to the payoff of the city’s debt in building a soccer-specific stadium in Indianapolis’ quest to land a Major League Soccer franchise.
Deputy Mayor Dan Parker told the Rules and Public Policy Committee this week that such a PSDA centered on Ozdemir’s site on the former home of the Diamond Chain company would be too risky financially as it would depend on only the soccer stadium and the Elanco development across the White River the generate the funds to pay off the city’s construction bonds.
”The previous proposal presented tremendous risk to Indianapolis taxpayers,” said Parker, characterizing the proposed Indy Eleven PSDA. “What you heard related to this proposal was a much more diverse base of new development coming online that’s already in the pipeline.”
The Heliport PSDA, according to estimates by the Hogsett Administration, could generate $3 billion of new tax revenue over multiple sites with multiple developers, including the revamped City Market block, the Old City Hall hotel redevelopment, Circle Center Mall, the Cole Motor campus and some new development planned for Bottleworks.
Outside Counsel Scott Chinn told councilors that the Indy Eleven PSDA included just “two big eggs” in that basket while the Heliport PDSA has “a lot more eggs in the basket.”
During his appearance on Inside Indiana Business, Ozdemir insisted that his plan and his team of investors is ready to go, unlike the City’s work-in-progress proposal.
”We’ve obviously invested in the infrastructure and the legislation that helped us to get where we are, we bought land and we got a design ready to build and we’re going to continue as to what’s right and continue to look forward for all our constituents and neighborhoods and all of Indiana,” said Ozdemir. ”Our investors are from Fort Wayne to Evansville and Indianapolis and we’re here, we will continue to invest to make sure that we are going to put everything in place to get MLS soon and we’re going to continue to advocate for that.”
Ozdemir turned down an opportunity for an on-camera interview with FOX59/CBS4, though he said reporters ought to ask Hogsett about the unidentified ownership group that could be in the running for the Heliport site.
I did exactly that two weeks ago.
“Is it Simons and the Pacers?” I asked, citing the type of local sports ownership MLS is insistent on who could also raise the $750 million it is estimated it would take to bring the top professional soccer league to Indy.
“I can’t comment on that because I haven’t been involved in the recruitment of local ownership,” said the mayor.
That answer also frustrated opponents of Hogsett’s plan at the Council committee level where Deputy Mayor Parker said that any ownership group, Indy Eleven included, would be responsible for financing 20% of the City’s estimated $220 million stadium construction costs, and without enabling legislation and a special taxing district, there is no pursuit of an ownership group or a franchise.
“If we do not get the club, this is not like the Hoosier Dome where we build a football stadium and hope a team moved,” he said, recalling the early 1980s risk of then-Mayor Bill Hudnut who convinced the Baltimore Colts to relocate to Indianapolis two years after the Dome was built without a permanent tenant. “We need to secure the team first, then build the stadium.”
Hogsett journeyed to New York City on April 22 for a scheduled 30-minute meeting with MLS Commissioner Don Garber to update the soccer boss on the status of Indianapolis’ bid.
Parker said the talks lasted 90 minutes and the mayor told reporters that MLS was uncomfortable with the potential to unearth hundreds or thousands of burial remains at four cemeteries that are spread across the Diamond Chain site being excavated by Keystone Group.
Ozdemir disagrees.
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there and it’s difficult to really keep track of that,” he said. “It’s an excellent site. It’s been known as a cemetery site for 20 years ago. We had the governor and the mayor and a lot of civic leaders there and this is not new. We’ve done everything properly. And MLS has never said that they will not go to that site.”
Hogsett has said the only PSDA designation the City will send to the State House Budget Committee by the end of June will be the Heliport plan or none at all, putting pressure on the City-County Council to approve his proposal.
I asked Ozdemir if he felt he was being “blackmailed” by the mayor’s pledge to not submit the Indy Eleven PSDA no matter what, thereby putting all the chips for an Indy MLS franchise bid on the Heliport proposal.
Ozdemir didn’t answer but promised he would remain “transparent” in his efforts and schedule an on-camera interview “soon.”
You can see Ersal Ozdemir’s full interview with Gerry Dick on Inside INdiana Business at 8:30 a.m. Sunday on CBS4.
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