INDIANAPOLIS – This city is girding for a Super Bowl party that is challenging its small-town virtues. The strippers are already at work.
Rick’s Cabaret International flew in more than 100 dancers to its Indianapolis club for “seven days of nonstop party action” from its Miami, New York, Minneapolis and Texas venues, Allan Priaulx, a spokesman, said in a telephone interview from New York.
National Football League owners voted four years ago to hold the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis, the state capital and a center for amateur sports. The city has said the economic impact of the game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots and days of high-rolling parties may be $250 million. It prepared with measures that include as much as $4 million in public-safety spending, a human trafficking law and what boosters say is the nation’s longest temporary zip line.
“Hosting the Super Bowl, doing it well, is putting us in front of corporate decision-makers, convention planners, event planners that can have an impact on the city for a long time to come,” said Marc Lotter, communications director for Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard.
Indianapolis, only the fourth cold-weather city to host the Super Bowl since it began in 1967, is not endowed with the attributes often associated with the year’s biggest game – none of Miami’s beaches or rum cocktails in the sun, no Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
This is pork tenderloin country, Indiana’s signature sandwich.
It’s also home of the Indianapolis 500; the headquarters of the National Collegiate Athletic Association; Eli Lilly, which is the world’s 10th-largest pharmaceutical company; and hometown of author Kurt Vonnegut, whose memorial library is near the Capitol.
Indianapolis nurtures the belief that “a good small town works,” said James H. Madison, a historian at Indiana University in Bloomington, who wrote “The Indiana Way,” a history of the state.
Yet it grows as Midwestern peers shrink. Indianapolis is now the 12th largest U.S. city, with a population of 829,718, according to the Census Bureau, almost doubling since 1950.
“It’s not a dramatic place; there is no ocean, the architecture is predictable 20th century,” said Andrew Cayton, a historian at Miami University of Ohio and co-author of “The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia.”
“It’s a good city that functions well, although you might not go out of your way to go there,” he said.
This week, 150,000 people will make that pilgrimage, Lotter said.
Indianapolis spent $12million to turn a four-lane street into a three-block pedestrian plaza that is home to a Super Bowl Village for 10 days and can be used for future events, said Lotter, the mayoral spokesman.
The village features stands with $5 hot dogs and $4 soft drinks and stages for free entertainment from the likes of singer Patti LaBelle and the Indianapolis Colts cheerleaders.
Mikado Japanese Restaurant & Sushi in the village’s heart is serving $6 beers and hot sake.
There’s also the 80-foot-tall zip line over Capitol Avenue.
The Indianapolis Super Bowl Host Committee raised $25 million to pay for the attractions from 103 people and corporations including Cummins Inc., Eli Lilly and State Farm Insurance, said Dianna Boyce, a spokeswoman.
The Capital Improvement Board of Managers of Marion County, which operates the $720 million Lucas Oil Stadium, where the game will be played Sunday night, expects to lose $810,000 that will be covered by cash reserves, Dan Huge, chief financial officer of the agency, said in a telephone interview.
The largest expense is as much as $4 million the board has agreed to pay the city to cover public-safety costs, Huge said.
Madison, the historian, said, “It’s almost a little embarrassing how much the city wants to be loved by the rest of the country and the world.
“Maybe there’s an inferiority complex, but I like to quote Kurt Vonnegut, who said you should never apologize for being a Hoosier,” he said.
