How Indianapolis' New Developments Cater to Meeting Planners
On this episode of the Meetings Today podcast, learn all about the meeting planner's guide to Indianapolis' new developments.
Maddie Willis, content developer with Meetings Today sits down with Leonard Hoops, CEO and president of Visit Indy to discuss Indianapolis' $3 billion budget for tourism-related projects in Indianapolis.
Transcript:
Madeleine Willis
Hi, Meetings Today podcast. I might be a new voice in your headphones. I'm Maddie Willis, content developer for Meetings Today. I'm on the scene in Indianapolis about to talk to Leonard Hoops, who is the president and CEO of Visit Indy. Leonard is joining me to discuss the $3 billion budget that is being dedicated to new tourism-related projects in Indianapolis. Hi, Leonard. Thank you so much for joining me.
Leonard Hoops
Madeleine, great to see you.
Madeleine Willis
Leonard, tell me what's happening here in Indy. What new tourism projects can meeting and event planners expect?
Leonard Hoops
Well, we are underway with an incredible renaissance, maybe the biggest jump in product development since at least 2011 when we opened the JW Marriott and arguably going back into the 80s and 90s, that timeframe when Indianapolis kind of had its first big boom in convention area development. We've got over $3 billion in tourism related infrastructure being built right now that's actually out of the ground and underway. And the big project is the Signia by Hilton Hotel and the Convention Center Phase 6 expansion on Pan Am Plaza. That project alone is worth over $700 million. It's going to add 800 Signia by Hilton rooms on the opposite side of our Convention Center for more our big thousand room JW Marriott is. And then the Convention Center expansion is going to add about 143,000 square feet of function space, including a new 50,000 square foot ballroom.
Madeleine Willis
Yeah, so let's talk about that some more. So, the most expensive of the projects in the $3 billion budget is the Signia by Hilton Hotel and Convention Center expansion. The Signia is actually what brought me here this weekend. It is expected to open in fall of ‘26 and is a $710 million project. This is record-breaking here in Indy, tell me about the significance of this expansive project.
Leonard Hoops
Yeah, this project really started in 2014. So, it's by the time it opens, it will have been a 12-year process, which is not unusual for any project of this kind of magnitude. It started with a conversation at the Visit Indy Customer Advisory Board. And we have a number of major customers on the Customer Advisory Board, FFA, Gen Con, the performance racing industry, the fire department instructor's council conference. And so, you've got, you know, major customers like that. And they had basically started telling us in 2014, hey, the good news is we're really growing and we're growing well in Indy. The bad news is that may make us too big to stay in Indy by the turn of the decade when you get to 2020-ish. So we started working on that and took us about four years from that moment to get it to the point to where a study had been done and it showed that everything was going to work and that there was market demand beyond just our existing customers, and then the pandemic hit. And so, not surprisingly, that slowed the project down. It almost, frankly, halted it to a complete stop. But Indy is a very resilient city. We're the same city that built a football stadium with no NFL team and then brought the Colts in after the stadium was already under construction. And so, it didn't surprise me that our community leaders banded together and got this project out of the ground. And now it'll open next fall.
Madeleine Willis
And this project and other projects are ongoing for the next five years with the Circle Center Mall expected to be done in 2030. What large-scale meetings and events do you hope to bring in with these new developments?
Leonard Hoops
Well, the biggest thing, frankly, is that we want to be able to host two good sized conventions simultaneously. do that to some extent right now where we can put in one group and then maybe put in a very small second group. You can't really put in two mid to large groups at the same time, but you can put a mid to large in a small. And so, we're really focusing on layering two groups at a time that are significant city-wides that are, you know, two to 3000 rooms on peak at the same time with some overlap on their event days. And then quite often you might have an event day for one group and the other ones either moving in or out. Certainly, with the additional space and the additional rooms, we can now keep those bigger conventions Gen Con is over 70,000 people a year. FFA is over 70,000 PRI is over 60,000 fire department instructors conference is nearly 40,000. Now we can keep them. and um but as we look at new business we're particularly branching into kind of higher paying groups medical events and we've already had a number of medical events book Indy in the future years post fall of 26 knowing that this hotel is coming on board knowing that we're going to have a new 50,000 square foot ballroom in addition to the existing facilities.
[Related: Live From ASAE: L.A. Tourism Chief Doane Liu Shares Meetings Haps in the City of Angels]
Madeleine Willis
And what aspects of the convention center renovation do you expect will draw clients you haven't been able to attract before? How will it augment the offerings of your current client base?
Leonard Hoops
Two things jump out right off the bat. One is the 50,000 square foot ballroom. Our largest one right now is under 35,000 square feet. And there's a lot of groups we've come to find that need something in the neighborhood of 50,000 square feet for their general sessions, for major meals, things like that. And so that has opened up a whole new list of customers that couldn't fit. We had the overall hotel room inventory, or we had the convention center exhibit space, but we didn't have that ballroom space. And that ballroom space is very flexible. It can be turned into 12 meeting rooms. Sometimes groups don't really need that large ballroom and so adding 12 more breakouts in that particular space is another additional benefit. The other thing is, with the Hilton brand, we really didn't have a lot of Hilton inventory. We had great Marriott inventory, and we have a good amount of IHG and Hyatt. But Hilton is one of the biggest hotel brands in the world, second biggest in the U.S. behind Marriott. And so, we had customers off to say, boy, if you had more Hilton rooms, I would take a look because we have a Hilton partnership, or we have a lot of members who are Hilton premium members. And so having a Hilton with 800 rooms and having this new brand Signia, which Hilton has developed to really focus on meetings and events, I think that combination along with this 50,000 square foot ballroom is something we just couldn't offer before.
Madeleine Willis
And I want to talk about some of these I know you said talked about kind of like outgrowing Indy here, but recently events like the emergence of Caitlin Clark or the Eras Tour have put a spotlight on Indy as a meetings destination. How do you expect that to grow?
Leonard Hoops
Yeah, we even had an anti-spotlight. We had an eclipse where the path of totality ran right through and made everything dark, and we still got attention for that. But yeah, I mean, when you get three nights of Taylor Swift, that's going to have people pay attention to you. In fact, we were the very last city in the United States to get a Caitlin Clark. They're almost the same level of rock star, right? A Taylor Swift concert. Caitlin, of course, is an incredible success story as a player, as a person, and the draw that she has internationally. I mean, we'll get people who we see Iowa license plates. in the parking garage when the Fever play home games. We talk to people. We see people on the streets who are speaking with international accents. And we're like, where are you from? Oh, I came in from Europe. I came in from Germany. I came in from London. And I wanted to see Caitlin play. And she's that level of draw. It's really an incredible thing to see somebody with that kind of international appeal.
Madeleine Willis
My Iowa Hawkeye license plate is parked in the Omni Hotel right now, so guilty on that one. But for our meeting planner audience, why don't you tell me something about Indy they may not know that really stands out to you.
Leonard Hoops
One thing that's jumped out to me recently with the country celebrating its 250th anniversary next year in 2026 is that Indianapolis is the second largest city in terms of monuments and memorials to our armed forces. It's a very patriotic city. At the center of the city in the circle, McCall Monument Circle, is the Sailors and Soldiers Monument. It was built to celebrate the Union winning the Civil War. And atop that monument is a statue called Lady Victory. And we like to say Lady Victory has seen it all. She's seen all the development of the last 120 years from her perch high atop Monument Circle. And she can look out to the West, and she'll see the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. She looks a little bit more northwest, and she'll see something called the American Legion Mall, where we have just an incredible tribute to those who have served our country. There's a very patriotic video that plays on the walls of Monument Circle, the buildings in Monument Circle every evening. And then sometimes when we have special events like an NBA All-Star Game, WNBA All-Star Game, Indy 500, they'll play a custom video after it gets dark, you know, where the video maps against the buildings. It's a really cool thing to be able to see, and it happens every single night. So, I would say, you know, given the timing of 2026, that if, you know, only behind Washington, DC, if somebody really wants to feel that patriotic spirit, Indianapolis is the place to be.
Madeleine Willis
Amazing. Leonard, thank you so much.
Leonard Hoops
It's great to be with you, Madeleine. Thank you.
Madeleine Willis
Thank you. This has been an on-the-scene edition of the Meetings Today podcast. I'm Maddie Willis. Thanks so much for joining me in Indianapolis.
