Only a few short months after opening the shiny new Lucas Oil Stadium, the head of the Indianapolis Capital Improvement Board said that without an infusion of $47 million the stadium might be forced to close.
The State Senate Appropriations Committee has passed a bill that would raise taxes on alcohol statewide, restaurant meals and hotel stays in Marion county, and tickets to sporting events in Indianapolis but that is facing a tough fight in the larger senate.
A major part of the cost overruns have been the higher-than-expected costs to run the new stadium. The previous Mayor, Bart Peterson, didn’t allocate enough funds, partly because they didn’t do a proper estimate of how much it would cost to run the new stadium.
According to the president of the CIB, Bob Grand, “If you want me to give you worst-cases, I mean the worst-case scenario is we could be out of money and the facilities would be, arguably, closed.” Of course, since he couched it with “arguably” and the state paid $620 million to build it in the first place, this scenario seems unlikely.
Fortunately, the Colts who are the only real tenant of the building have promised to chip in money and are suitably grateful to their fans who built them a stadium so they could be charged money to come visit. Or, instead, Colts President Bill Polian responded with a courteous, “We look forward to working with you and your colleagues in the Legislature in taking a look at this problem and in sharing with you data and information that we will make available to you.”
I hope they close the place to the Colts and turn it over to the citizens of Indianapolis to turn it into the most bad-ass Lazer Tag joint in the country.
The Slanch Report 
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