Urban Geography BUSTBELT TO BOOMTOWN ...

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BUSTBELT TO BOOMTOWN: REGIME SUCCESSION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF DOWNTOWN INDIANAPOLIS Susan M. Walcott

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Department of Anthropology and Geography, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia 30303-3083 Tel: 404-651-1825 Fax: 404-651-3235 [email protected] Published online: 15 May 2013.

To cite this article: Susan M. Walcott (1999) BUSTBELT TO BOOMTOWN: REGIME SUCCESSION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF DOWNTOWN INDIANAPOLIS, Urban Geography, 20:7, 648-666, DOI: 10.2747/0272-3638.20.7.648 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.20.7.648

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BUSTBELT TO BOOMTOWN: REGIME SUCCESSION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF DOWNTOWN INDIANAPOLIS 1

Downloaded by [University of North Carolina] at 10:25 19 February 2015

Susan M. Walcott Department of Anthropology and Geography Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia 30303-3083 Tel: 404-651-1825 Fax: 404-651-3235 [email protected]

Abstract: The reconstruction of the built environment in downtown Indianapolis over the past 25 years demonstrates the impact of powerful individuals constituting a potent urban regime in an archetypal middle-American city. Change began on January 1, 1970, with the establishment of a new unified city-county government that targeted creating a new image for this essentially one-party, one-economy city. The rise and demise of the governing coalition determined the trajectory of development across time, as realized in the changing utilization of central-city land. Macroeconomic national scale elements provided challenges and opportunities, but individuals acting within the contextual rules and resources of their particular locale proved decisive in determining spatial outcomes. The significance of this research lies in its reassertion of the power of agents to anticipate and adapt successfully to changing political-economic circumstances by reconfiguring the built environment. [Key words: urban regime theory, growth coalition, urban built environment.]

Rejuvenation of a moribund municipality through the deliberate efforts of a leadership coterie provides a success story that is both an instructive model and the empirical basis for extension of urban regime theory. The awakening of "Naptown" to "Indiana-showplace" by the mayoral Lugar-Hudnut succession and the Goldsmith group that followed provides a detailed and ultimately revealing look at the political economy animating one restructuring and resurgent Midwestern city—and the price paid at its limits (Leitner and Garner, 1993). The fortuitous commitment of considerable funds to this effort by the Lilly Endowment, fueled by profitable stock from locally headquartered pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company, is often noted. Of more analytical interest are the strategies of the growth machine that captured the commitment of Eli Lilly, decided on the direction of Indianapolis' re-imaging, and carried the redevelopment project through recession and electoral reconstitution of the regime. The purpose of this paper is to accentuate the crucial part played by individuals who utilize critical place characteristics and their personal powers of persuasion and position to make a difference in the trajectory of urban development. Physical evidence of the strategies for Indianapolis' political and economic transformation lies in the ongoing recreation of the downtown built environment over the last two decades. Urban regime theory, with its focus on the nature and composition of the governing coalition (Stone, 1993), is utilized as a theoretical construct explaining the successive ascendancy and replacement of local development coalitions. 648 Urban Geography, 1999, 20, 7, pp. 648-666. Copyright © 1999 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved.


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Political restructuring in Indianapolis was a local response to a regional economic crisis, precipitated by the rampant de-industrializing of the Midwest in the 1960s and OPEC-shocked 1970s. The rejuvenation program was built on a revamped city-county municipal government whose boundaries were redrawn to include prosperous outlying townships, and recognition of the economic development potential of the innovative health sector. An exclusive network emphasized consensus among power groups, a "basetouching" outreach that extended only to include representatives of other power groups. Previous studies emphasizing the institutional aspect of Indianapolis' interlocking power network (Trounstine and Christensen, 1982; Peirce, 1996) miss a key contribution of this research the extent of exclusivity by which regime power was wielded by well-connected individuals, and committees behind the public committees. An elite group that one participant termed "White guys in red ties" conceived and managed the campaign to enhance Indianapolis' image and ability to attract high-skill labor since the mid-1970s. Indianapolis' opportunity and challenge was to build a previously nonexistent image. The direction urban development ultimately took was determined by discourse among a small group around the decision making table. The belief that they could create a positive image for their city was crucial. For Pittsburgh's "Regional Renaissance" backers as well, the critical challenge was "building a sense of confidence in ourselves" (Janofsky, 1997, p. A14). Indianapolis focused on the needs of a propulsive local growth industry reliant on a highly educated white-collar labor base in high demand. The city had to become competitive. Urban regime theory forges a framework for understanding political group formation and interactions. This paper extends regime theory to better portray a growth machine whose main engine is offstage. Eli Lilly and Company is the benefactor studiously avoiding direct engagement, but whose best interests underlie everything throughout regime transitions. The following sections fill in the urban regime framework, illustrating its utility for understanding changes in the urban built environment in Indianapolis, by recounting the evolution of growth coalitions over three decades. The final section of the paper draws summary conclusions. ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY Urban regime theory's focus on political considerations flowing from economic and social objectives (Fainstein et al., 1986; Stone, 1989, 1993; Stoker and Mossberger, 1994) overshadows crucial economic and personal factors influencing decisions made to reshape local areas. Previous studies using a political economy framework have examined a number of cities attempting turnarounds. Like its bustbelt counterpart Cleveland, for example, Indianapolis used Urban Development Action Grants for downtown development, rather than focusing on urban neighborhoods. Indianapolis successfully dodged the deindustrialization that decimated Cleveland from the 1970s to the 1990s (Keating, 1997) because it was able to anticipate the local effects of macroeconomic shifts and repositioned earlier to attract a lab-collar labor base. Urban regime theory's contention that nongovernmental interests, particularly economically well-equipped ones, play a critical role in advancing their mutual interests with and through government applies to the situation in Indianapolis (Wolch and Geiger, 1986).


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The Lilly Endowment is the most-cited institution credited with planning and financing Indianapolis' urban economic renaissance. J. K. Lilly, Sr. (son of founder Colonel Eli Lilly), and his sons established the Endowment in 1937. The Endowment is sustained by a large grant of stock in the family company (Lilly Endowment, 1987; Barrows, 1990). Unlike Pittsburgh, where the Mellon's openly founded the Allegheny Conference on Community Development to rescue their troubled city (Lubove, 1969), the Lilly's were much more publicity averse. Participation in policy was cast as personal predilection, rather than representative of corporate interests. This study demonstrates how urban regime theory extends to encompass national scale developments, such as the economic shocks early in the 1970s that spurred Indianapolis' political leadership elected in 1976 to reexamine the outdated manufacturing base of their city (Lauria, 1997). These visionary agents immediately began considering how to reposition their city for the next wave of innovation-based economic strength. Urban regime theory also addresses how actors construct answers within their local historical and cultural context, reinserting individuals into the picture of reconstruction as potent decision makers (Clarke, 1993; Molotch, 1993). Construction of coalitions with powerful interests is the key to maintenance of power by stakeholders in urban development, who use institutions to shape land use for profit (Cox, 1997). Urban political economy provides the links to social organizations and economic activity, correcting the tendency of urban regime theory to overemphasize political aspects of growth coalitions (Horan, 1991). The economic focus of realistic urban politicians is on enhancing the tax base by shoring up the value of real estate, while cyclical variation in real estate values is a source of capital accumulation. The post-World War II decline in downtown property values and migration of higher income population to outlying areas of Indianapolis signaled a growing reserve of devalued land in the heart of the city—the "donut hole," as Mayor Hudnut termed the central core. The answer for Indianapolis urban planners was targeted redevelopment of this downtown core on behalf of increasing the city's decimated tax base, weakened by population migration to the suburbs and the large proportion of tax-exempt property downtown. The trickle-down effect would take the form of slower tax increases, amenities for the middle class and above with disposable income, and some new servicesector jobs for displaced assembly-line-level workers. Dynamics of the planning process leading to Indianapolis' resurgence were uncovered during the course of 47 interviews conducted with leading participants. On the government side, this involved a former mayor, seven vice-mayors, two city-county councilmen, and three former heads of the Department of Metropolitan Development. Elements of the economic engine were explored in the course of interviews with four executive-level employees of Lilly, three administrators from major hospitals (including one who has served as the head or participant on every major city development organization), and 10 medical device manufacturing representatives. University input was solicited in nine interviews including former presidents, chancellors, and deans of Indiana University and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Three independent researchers, five developers, and six individuals otherwise involved in public-private partnership aspects were also consulted. Their responses were plotted on three matrices detailing political, economic, and public-private partnership group input on both closed and open-ended questions as to why particular changes were sought, how they came about, who were involved, in what ways, and evaluations of the outcomes.


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The following empirical research examines the effects of a dynamic regime coalition on urban regional development during a period of capital switching to investments in the built environment, specifically as it occurred in Indianapolis from the early 1970s to the late 1990s. A focus on causal processes highlights the role of agents in directing urban development by inventing a new niche for capitalization. Individual influence networks shaped spatial restructuring of the built environment, revealing interactions of capital and personal strategies.


INSTITUTIONS AND INDIVIDUALS The 1950s and 1960s Indiana's traditional conservatism was mirrored in the Indianapolis civic and corporate life through the 1950s. The tutelage of William Book, politically powerful perennial head of the Chamber of Commerce, kept the City on the quiet track and out of the flow of federal funds—even to the point of considering refusing federal highway funds. This changed with the election of Mayor John Barton, a Democrat, in 1960. Kennedy's New Frontier and Johnson's Great Society created well-funded programs to combat a rising tide of decay in urban inner-city areas. Breaking a historic pattern, Mayor Barton sought to take advantage of federal money in the form of Housing and Urban Development and Urban Development Action Grants. He simultaneously created a new power structure to advise on the disbursement of these monies, thereby circumventing the traditional power structures such as the Chamber of Commerce. Barton once declared that the proudest accomplishment of his two terms in office was the establishment of the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee (also known as GIPC, pronounced "gypsy") in 1964. Under the leadership of its first president, energetic banker Frank McKinney, Sr., GIPC was intended to act as a mediating institution for directing growth. Barton used it to bring in underrepresented constituencies, such as African Americans. An active participant since GIPC's inception remarked that the idea was to "set up various citizen task forces to bring major players around the table." GIPCs evolution is a reflection of the men who have occupied the mayor's office, and participants in the discourse of development. In typical Indianapolis fashion, invited agents of governance worked quietly through a new mediating body. A map of the "Indianapolis Downtown Business District" dated November 1, 1966, by the firm of Klein and Klein for the Division of Metropolitan Planning and Development shows the four primary blocks packed with large and small retail stores surrounding city center Monument Circle. Two sections of "Automobile Parking" adjacent to the "Businessmen's [sic] Public Library" occupy the far northwest quadrant. Nongovernmental construction downtown was virtually nonexistent by the 1960s. Members of the Jaycees practiced shooting pigeons in the empty downtown avenues on Sunday afternoons. Indianapolis felt the double pinch of a deteriorating downtown and reduced federal funding by the late 1960s (Madison, 1994). The confluence of these events laid the groundwork for an unprecedented partnership between not-for-profit private philanthropy and public government. The Tax Reform Act of 1969 provided momentum for a change in private philanthropy policy by requiring private foundations to annually dispose of either their net income, or a fixed percentage of their assets. Foundation capital sought

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new outlets for investment. The Lilly Endowment responded by shifting funding proportions among its three major divisions to favor community development projects, and appointed as president the young assistant to the new mayor of Indianapolis to oversee this new direction.


Restructuring's Roots: The 1970s The November 1968 elections resulted in a Republican sweep of all city, county, and state top positions and the majority of State General Assembly delegates (Blomquist and Parks, 1993). The result in Indianapolis was a decided shift in the balance of partisan power in the direction of the Republican Party. Richard Lugar became the mayor of Indianapolis as part of a Young Turk faction of activist Republicans who helped birth a new entity on January 1, 1970: Unigov. City and county legislative and executive bodies and boundaries consolidated, with a single, strengthened City-County Council and a countywide Chief Executive. Disgruntled Democrats labeled it the "UniGrab" Act. Indianapolis consolidated into a "Unified Government" to capture a voting pool and tax base of relatively affluent, largely Republican suburbanites, and to create a strong mayor at the center. On the economic side, Unigov improved the ability of the city to issue bonds to finance large projects, providing leverage for the public-private construction projects that proliferated in the 1980s (Kirk, 1994). The strengthened single city-county executive framework reflected the business community's application of business methods of operation to the political sphere (Owen and Willbern, 1985), along the lines of Cleveland's tight, market-oriented development policy (Clarke and Gaile, 1998). When Lugar decided to run for the Senate seat he still holds, his successor as mayor, William Hudnut, took over growth machine construction via public-private partnerships for the next 16 years. The role of Indiana University in this process illustrates the power of individuals to shape and nurture the direction of growth through regime participation. Creation of Indiana University—Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in 1969 came as part of the Lugar-orchestrated push toward elevating the economic and political power and stature of the city. Consolidating sites on the southern edge of town used as hospitals and health centers since Civil War times, the new university combined classes held in various locations around town onto one campus. When the head of the Metropolitan Development Commission in the late 1970s sought to delineate the area for IUPUI's future expansion without full consultation with regime leaders, the chairman of the IU Foundation (who also headed a major Indianapolis bank) reportedly blocked that individual's ability to get any bank loans—leading to the collapse of his business and move out of town (personal communications). Growth of the campus is now constrained and set off from its surroundings by two major streets, a river, and a large park. The university became a force and focus of real estate expansion in the restructuring era of the late 1970s. The president of IU at the time proclaimed that, "it is in the nature of the university to have a decision to make: [is it] imperative for its own integrity to recuse itself from the political economy of surrounding society, or accept the risks intendent upon being a player?" (John Ryan, President of IU, 1971 to 1987). As city business activity moved northward, so did those who could move out of the ethnic neighborhood (Appalachian, European immigrant, African American) adjoining the campus. Quietly



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but deliberately, the university used funds provided by the city, state legislature, and federal urban renewal grants in order to buy property as it came on the market. In several instances, this required reluctantly invoking "eminent domain" to assemble parcels of buildable size. IUPUI chancellor Glenn Irwin participated in the earliest growth coalition planning meetings and saw to it that the university was involved in major development initiatives such as the amateur sports strategy. Initial plans to develop sports facilities were expanded and upgraded in a trade-off of university land for Endowment and city funds to build competitive world-class facilities such as the Natatorium in time for the Pan American Games and tennis courts featured in the annual nationally televised RCA championship matches. For the people who wanted to change Indianapolis, "the bottom line was development for the city," according to Irwin. Development proceeded at an uneven pace. During the 1970s, the Indianapolis population dropped from 736,856 to 700,807. A developer recalled "bums and winos living in Union Station...the city had a real problem on its hands." The head of the Department of Metropolitan Development in the 1980s contended that in the previous decade: "We had nothing downtown. If our goal was to create a city nobody wanted to live in, we'd done it" (Haddix et al., 1989f, p. A1). Eli Lilly and Company, however, fatefully decided to stay under the strong urging of CEO Wisely, who felt the company had a responsibility to the city of its birth and nurture (Wisely, 1968; Newell, 1973). The "Indianapolis Downtown Business District" map by Klein and Kuhn for January 1, 1972, showed that a Hilton (the first new hotel in 40 years) replaced a parking lot and the library. However, a parking lot replaced a theater, a city park took over for a department store on the Circle, and the adjacent Claypool Hotel became another parking lot. Large empty lots used as car parks ominously supplanted healthier clusters of small hotels, restaurants, and shops (Fig. 1). A study commissioned by the Lilly Endowment in 1970 revealed that Indianapolis lacked a national image. It was an invisible entity. This tabula rasa presented obvious problems—and great opportunities. In August of 1972, Eli Lilly invited Mayor Lugar to visit the Lilly Endowment to discuss what the fifth largest endowment in the United States could do to help its hometown (Haddix et al., 1989b; Madison, 1989). The key individual connecting the flow of money from the Lilly Endowment to the Indianapolis built environment for 15 dynamic years was James T. Morris. A former top aide to thenMayor Lugar, Morris was hired by the Endowment as head of Community Development in 1973. He was elected president of the Endowment in 1984. Based on the fluctuating stock fortunes of pharmaceuticals, the Endowment grew to third-largest private philanthropy in the United States in the 1980s, and to number one in early 1998. In 1973, three major projects showed the first infusions of Lilly Endowment funds mixing with municipal monies to leverage federal and state funds in support of projects. Following an expression of regret by Eli Lilly that noted Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley's Indianapolis house was in such disrepair, moneys from the Endowment went into gentrification projects in the Lockerboe Square area (to the immediate northeast in Fig. 1) from 1968 to 1978. Neighborhood rejuvenation continues to ripple into surrounding neighborhoods today. It was clear that the city of Indianapolis needed heavily funded projects to turn around a downward slide. In 1976, the year of Hudnut's first election to the mayoralty, Eli Lilly "convened with key Endowment leaders and reaffirmed the family's commitment to Indianapolis and Indiana" (Madison, 1989, p. 26).


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Fig. 1. Additions to the downtown built environment, I960 to 1972: B = Bank; C = Car Park; E = Empty; H = Hotel; O = Office. Source: Klein and Kuhn maps, 1960 and 1972.

That Indianapolis' ultimate choice of an image was the "Amateur Sports Capital" was the result of the personal predilection of the head of the Lilly Endowment, James Morris, and an opportune timing of events in the reorganizing sports world. Within the parameters of possibilities, it did not matter so much what was chosen so long as the focus had strong leadership from civic and corporate sponsors and was advocated by locally sanctioned methods. "Every project needs a mother," declared one head of a large brood. Since the asset base of the Endowment was overwhelmingly tied to Lilly company stock, and Lilly had already made a crucial decision to stay in Indianapolis, the direction chosen could only happen within those beneficial to Eli Lilly and Company. From that time forward, it meant real estate with appeal to a new labor element—technocrats. Capital was seeking new investments, and the built environment was ripe for redevelopment. As predicted by urban regime theory, the economic transition led to formation of a growth machine. Following the election of William Hudnut as Mayor of Indianapolis, in late 1976 a small group of individuals seen as "involved in the community planning process" went



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away to Boston with the mayor-elect for a long weekend. The political aim was for Hudnut and his deputy mayors to build an agenda that would last more than one term. Also in attendance were Morris (from the Lilly Endowment), De Mars (a major local developer and head of GIPC), and Irwin (Chancellor of IUPUI, 1973 to 1986). Discussion led off with consideration of Indianapolis' major strengths and barriers to development of those strengths. The economic-focused analysis looked at the current basis of the region's employment and anticipated the demise of the durable goods manufacturing sector. No significant innovations had occurred since the 1940s, leaving manufacturing without a modern base. How then should the city be positioned for the next generation of jobs and workers? The area chosen to spearhead development combined the new economic base of innovation and corporate strength of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company, the personal interests of decision makers in competitive athletics, a period of restructuring in the international sports world resulting in a search for new headquarters, the instant publicity of sports-affiliated sites, and the availability of the theme: a convention-tourism-sports strategy. Every hotel room constructed was calculated to represent the equivalent of one job created, primarily for the assembly-line substitution, entry-level labor market. By encouraging bookings for conventions and sports events, the Indianapolis image would be brought onto the "radar screens of decision makers" who held the key to transforming branch plants into headquarters, hubs, and important nodes. This theme also was combined with "health and fitness" to complement Lilly's presence and need to attract workers to a desirable place. Amateur sports were not used as an image theme by another city at the time, so Indianapolis sought to position itself in a niche of its own creation. Rather than repainting the picture of a pariah place, Indianapolis' growth machine manufactured one from a void (Short et al., 1993; Gold and Ward, 1994; Neill et al., 1995). The "City Committee" was a private group of "movers and shakers" (Trounstine and Christensen, 1982) founded in 1978 to create a new reality to fit a new image for Indianapolis. This mental picture would attract the attention of decision makers, who would then choose to locate (personally or for a business address) in the city, building an economic renaissance. A member noted the presence, power, and potential purse of Lilly Endowment president James Morris on the Committee: "That's where the leadership came, the impetus in knowing that it's going to be supported by Lilly Endowment" (Haddix et al., 1989c). Capital in the third largest private foundation at the time focused on the 13th largest city in the nation. The City Committee grew as members were added because of their position in organizations integral to the execution of the projects conceived and targeted by the Committee. Several original members knew each other from previous community volunteer work such as an annual arts festival. The networks this group drew on were wide and well placed: GIPC, the Corporate Community Council (an elite group within the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce), local and state government representatives. The culture within which they operated was highly competitive (declared one player, "we spent 10% of the time getting the money part together, and 90% planning how we were going to win") but the method was behind-the-scenes and around-the-table. "Base-touching" is a key social process in this locale, building a quiet consensus for projects to assure controversy-free public proposal and acceptance. These were very aware agents of change, whose success


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in pushing through a number of ambitious and highly visible projects transformed the landscape and liveliness of their city. The Committee's success was distinctive for the spatial impact of the money invested and the social aspect binding the original founders. The latter served as the reason given for broadening membership to include developers and Development Commission males, Democratic office-holders and one Black, but not women—who were not in positions of sufficient power to make them useful. One of the first actions taken by the City Committee founders was to break up into two-man interview teams to ask 25 major local CEOs what they thought Indianapolis needed most. Changing the perceived quality of life in Indianapolis, in order to help attract "talent" employees, was the overwhelming response. With the agreed-upon new direction in hand, Mayor Hudnut (as self-proclaimed orchestra leader) swung into action to build consensus, meeting with leaders of organized labor and community groups on a monthly basis. The first Regional Center Plan was drafted by the Hudnut administration in the late 1970s. When William Hudnut first became mayor in 1976, the downtown "inner loop" of Routes 65 and 70 was completed—decimating a less-well-to-do southside neighborhood in its path that lost 25% of its pre-construction population. Additions to the central downtown area by 1980 included the beginnings of a Meridian Street office corridor, two neighborhoods gentrified close to Lockerboe Square, and an expansion of Lilly research facilities (Department of Metropolitan Development, 1981). A large area of land on the southwest side of town was consolidated into White River State Park, thus buffering Lilly in the manufacturing quarter on the southeast (Fig. 2). The purchase of this land was made possible by a grant of $5 million from the Endowment, which in turn pried twice that amount from the State Legislature. Growth through 1983 included commitment by the city's Capital Improvement Board and the Lilly Endowment to purchase the outstanding shares of Market Square Arena—the Pacers professional basketball facility. Morris summed up the concern of Indianapolis planners in the mid-1970s that "We needed to build a great city that people would want to come be a part o f (Haddix et al., 1989d). The 1980s: Developers as Doers and Directors For a city historically resistant to soliciting or accepting federal funds, Indianapolis benefited enormously from UDAG grants in the 1978 to late-1980 period. Money paid back to the city from profits of assisted projects was designated to assist other projects such as low-income housing. Another method of city support for projects involved leasing the land to developers. Payments were in some cases to be made from profits on these projects, but depreciation could be taken over a staggered time period to minimize revenues, deferring scheduled paybacks. Connections between friendly contractors and contractees to City Committee—inspired and Lilly Endowment—funded projects were explained as good business based on trust accumulated through myriad shared experiences (Haddix et al., 1989a). This was particularly the case between Lilly Endowment president James Morris and developer James Browning, whose friendship included an interest in sports. Whereas a leading downtown developer protested that "The big thing that people don't understand is that real-estate ventures are not a get-rich-quick scheme," the four-term mayor was quick to retort that "Developers didn't lose any money!"



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Fig. 2. Additions to the downtown-built environment, 1980 to 1998: A = Apartment; B = Bank; G = Government; H = Hotel; L = Lockerbie Square; O = Office. Source: Department of Metropolitan Development, Planning Division, 1990.

Although not every public-private partnership made money for investors, developer losses were often cushioned by city (and therefore taxpayer) pre-arrangement. The public side often solicited broad input via public "charrettes" for the development of a "Vision" for future goals, but it was the private-sector developers who were needed for the realization of any particular Vision projects. A public-private partnership would be attempted to assemble the funds and other arrangements necessary, but without developer or financier approval such potential projects remained moribund. The phrase "hat passing" was often used to characterize what could be small, rather personal and private sessions. A prominent example is the construction of the Hoosier (now RCA) Dome. This was a speculative venture in 1984, since a professional team to occupy the structure was not yet secured. Robert Irsay, the owner of the Baltimore Colts, was known to be disgrun-


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Fig. 3. Restructured regions, 1998. Source: Author, personal communications.

tled with Baltimore's failure to provide his team with suitable facilities, so he was approached by a small delegation from Indianapolis including a deputy mayor. At the negotiating meeting, it developed that a major tie to Baltimore was his outstanding loan from a bank in that city. That impediment was removed when an individual at the meeting declared that his bank would have no problem picking up the balance of the loan. Handshakes followed, as did movers at midnight from the Indianapolis Mayflower Van Lines. Through the 1980s, the growth of downtown Indianapolis centered on certain areas designated for particular uses (Fig. 3). The northeastern gentrification sector continues to spread from its early core in Lockerboe Square. The office corridor runs up Meridian Street from Monument Circle. The southeastern industrial sector is dominated by the spreading and consolidating campus of Eli Lilly and Company. The southwestern sector including White River State Park, whose location was picked by a former head of the Endowment's Community Development division, features amenities particularly appealing for the visitor and amenity crowd, such as a private zoo, museums, and three sports arenas. The University quarter in the northwest includes public sports facilities such as the Natatorium on university property. Infrastructure improvements upgraded the core monument area and major radial streets.



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The creation of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) absorbed losses from the savings and loan collapse, signaling a bubble-bursting slow-down at the end of the decade. REITs were groups of investors who spread the risk (and potential future profit) of purchasing real estate drastically reduced in value. The literal rise and figurative fall into receivership of the Bank One Tower, the tallest and last constructed skyscraper on the Circle, epitomized this swing. The building boom moved out to the suburbs after the savings and loan industry problems, leaving downtown offices underoccupied and below value (Haddix et al., 1989g). Federal philosophy concerning building assistance to inner cities changed over the course of the 1980s (Beauregard, 1989). Soaring office vacancy rates were particularly painful downtown. These were exacerbated by the move of office towers and freestanding structures ("anchors") to the suburbs along an extended Meridian Street corridor, and by completion of a large State Office Building west of the Capitol in a new Government Plaza. Overcapacity was emptying out downtown again, an ominous sign of the end to a decade of optimistic expansion. A seven-day newspaper series in late 1989 detailing the growth machine's personal, economic, and political ties (Haddix et al., 1989a through 1989g) brought on the demise of the "White-guys-in-red-ties" era. Stung by the ensuing negative publicity, the Endowment announced a shift in its investment emphasis away from the built environment toward "youth, education, and human needs." Its goals of the previous era were declared accomplished. Shortly thereafter, James Morris, the Endowment's chief operating officer, resigned to take a position with the Indianapolis Water Company. His successor as titular head of the Endowment also ended up several years later as CEO of a city utility indicating close ties between these institutions and the enduring power of the man behind the throne. New Directions in the 1990s Former District Attorney Stephen Goldsmith, Mayor Hudnut's 1992 political successor, represented a shift in both tactics and direction. While Hudnut's contemporary Mayor Lee of New Haven also presided over a growth restructuring for 16 years, Lee was brought down by a more radical "street-fighting pluralism," which shifted the power coalition from a strong center to a fragmented enfranchisement of new voices (Fainstein et al., 1986). In Indianapolis, the shift was to a stronger center with a more powerful mayor. The growth regime remained, but the discourse of development changed participants and direction. The personality of the mayor substantially impacts political life in Indianapolis. Mayors Richard Lugar and William Hudnut were consensus seekers who strengthened city and county ancillary bodies such as governing boards, while Mayor Goldsmith successfully sought to weaken their power and concentrate it in his own office. Mayor Goldsmith was personally at variance with his predecessor, and politically at opposite ends of their same Party. Upon taking office, he rapidly reconstituted both existing systems and participants ("Never saw anyone so quickly try to take apart and put back together anything in my life," declared one interview subject). The ensuing campaign to privatize municipal functions was part commitment to conservative theory stressing "competitiveness" (the term now preferred over the politically more controversial "privatization" with its over-


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tones of job losses), and part evisceration of previous patronage positions. A new regime entailed new mediating institutions as well as new agents. The evolution of GIPC is a prime example of the fate of organizations under different urban regimes. Lugar and Hudnut used GIPC frequently as a consultative and opinionshaping body, creating an atmosphere of consensus to ease acceptance of new measures. Under Goldsmith in the 1990s, both GIPC and the Department of Metropolitan Development were out of the consultation loop. Offices of the latter were even physically relocated from the City-County Building to across the street. IUPUI acquired a new head, and a cooler relationship with the city. The successor mayor began his regime proclaiming the power of entrepreneurialism at the end of an economic downturn in late 1992. Downtown real estate values plummeted and banks were acquired by out-of-state financial institutions. In the manner of "creative destruction" (Schumpeter, 1947), the pit of one cycle is often the cockpit of an innovative trajectory sparking the next ascendancy. The new Goldsmith administration's move away from developing the downtown built environment in favor of focusing on several innercity neighborhoods was both a savvy economic move and a reaction against doing what his predecessor espoused. Such a turn was anticipated by Hudnut when he made sure Goldsmith inherited large holes extending the length of the projected mall, hoping to force his hand in filling them eventually. Hudnut moved on to work with various private urban planning groups in Chicago and Washington, DC. The turn of the Lilly Endowment to investing in neighborhood social and real estate structures in 1990 signaled a change in both the social and economic path of investment in response to a public perception that "bricks and mortar" had prevailed over people considerations. As one former deputy mayor hotly contended, however, "There has to be something there in order to spread it around." A large grant by the Lilly Endowment went to strengthen Community Development Corporations (CDCs) in inner-city neighborhoods. Organized bodies in areas lacking CDCs were given grants to build their service capacity. As in Cleveland's Housing Network (Clarke and Gaile, 1998), Endowment contributions to LISC were funneled into urban inner-city neighborhood renovations. Indianapolis caught its second wind with the national economic resurgence beginning in the early 1990s. Employment in Indianapolis-Marion County increased by 9.62 % in 1996, with an unemployment rate of only 3.2%, down from a high of 5.1 % in 1992. Small business service industry owners on the booming north side of town resorted to organizing their own van pool for conveying desperately needed workers from the center city to shift jobs along the 86th Street corridor, an entrepreneurial answer to spatial mismatch. The economic development focus on attraction and retention of "lab collar" employees continues to capture the attention and energies of the growth machine. When the Naval Air Warfare Center at Indianapolis was threatened with termination under the Base Realignment and Closure Act, Mayor Goldsmith and a brain trust went to work to privatize the facility and retain its large contingent of engineering jobs. In a small labor pool, the development of a critical mass of similar skill sets and individuals can be crucial. Employees of these businesses indicated that it was highly desirable for their children to go to school, for example, with other offspring of highly educated families. Key finance and management officers in major Indianapolis area firms were allowed release time to work on the city's negotiating team with the Navy delegation on an appeal to the Base Reuse and Closure Commission. In the end, Indianapolis became the first city permitted



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to market its own facility, concluding a highly favorable transaction with the Hughes Corporation to take over operations at the former military base (Wheeler and Walcott, 1996). Restructuring of the built environment in the 1990s often continues plans stalled in the late 1980s, along the lines familiar in other cities catering to the disposable income of the middle class (Frieden and Sagalyn, 1989). Circle Centre mall recently opened directly south of Monument Circle, rising from Hudnut's Holes. The final financing was secured by European banks that were recipients of Eli Lilly and Company funds from operations on that continent. A concrete example is thus supplied for local capture of global capital and the stretch of an urban regime growth strategy from the municipal to an international scale. The southern downtown district is the site of a new baseball stadium, across from the football stadium renamed the "RCA Dome" for a $10 million, 10-year contract. It is possible to stand in front of one section of the Circle Center mall, watch the new basketball stadium rising within easy walking distance, and note the corporate campus of Eli Lilly looming just beyond. Lilly continues construction at their $1 billion Technology Center complex, expanding two manufacturing sites for new pharmaceutical products and adding approximately 1,000 new high technology, white-collar jobs. An expansion of other research facilities includes a major addition on the medical school side of the IUPUI campus (Department of Metropolitan Development, 1991; Indianapolis Downtown, Inc., 1997). The tourist and convention attraction strategy has been so successful that expansion of the Convention Center was widely hailed upon its completion in 1994. Hotel room occupancy is still well above the national average. Other transformations of the downtown area were made possible by a late-1994 grant of $4.25 from HUD, leveraging another $10 million for renovations and additions to numerous amenity facilities downtown, from an amphitheater and IMAX to a new State Museum. The vision of a "24-hour downtown" with all major entertainment and residence components within walking distance is becoming a reality—particularly for the affluent (Karski, 1990). All features reportedly cited by transferees at a large foreign medical firm as pluses for relocation to Indianapolis—the Children's Museum, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, sports—were heavily funded and in some cases established in the 1980s by the Lilly Endowment (Walcott, 1998). The effort to create a new reality to maintain a supply of high-skill employees thus appears to work. Centrifugal Trends The rise of Goldsmith as mayor in 1992 was accompanied by a new geography for areas bordering the city as large corporations increasingly moved to north suburban locations. The Goldsmith administration was unable to retain corporations oozing out of Marion County's borders, oiling the development of an "Edge City" type complex at the northern border of Indianapolis. Carmel threatens to become the "Edge City" office park of Indianapolis, a belt of glass towers in the former cornfields between the little town and the big city. A major planner of the earlier era noted that a prime goal was to develop Indianapolis so it remained on the radar of decision makers driving to work. A study by the Metropolitan Development Commission concluded, however, that the main reason given by Carmel office headquarters was the convenience of being closer to their home address. The city of Carmel, as reflected in figures for Hamilton County, is distinct in


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being the only area in Indiana to have more residents employed out-of-county than incounty (United States Bureau of the Census, 1982, 1992). One disgruntled designer of the mid-1970s resurgence of downtown grumbled, "Hudnut wouldn't have allowed all that to happen." Revealingly, he continued: "We'd have got to them through their peers, talking to them and twisting arms in their organizations and clubs." As a major developer put it about former days and ways, "Obstructers fell in line." The transformation of downtown Indianapolis illustrates both the power of agents and their alliances and the fragility of that power. The social networks that transcended issues of tax base have snapped. Utilization of space is demonstrably socially constructed (Soja, 1985; Urry, 1985). Without the social bonds bringing and holding power brokers together, it is now "difficult to get everyone sitting around the table," according to a would-be participant. CONCLUSION An empirical examination of the processes underlying transformation of the Indianapolis built environment since the 1970s reveals the geographically and historically contingent interaction of individuals and interests. When Indianapolis' nascent 1970s growth coalition realized that major changes needed to be made in their city's economic undergirding, their key insight was that innovation was the driver of the next economic cycle. The post-Unigov urban regime focused through two mayors and two decades on redevelopment of the downtown, while its successor regime shifted to investment in inner-city neighborhood real estate development before returning to assembling glittering retail and white-collar offices in the central-city core. The goal consistently was to create a city attractive to the new breed of knowledge workers. Actors and institutions operate within the bounds of economic constraints, historical circumstances, and individual personalities that are geographically contingent to varying degrees. The urban regime is driven by political, economic, and social compatibility among power elites. Economic development strategies that succeed in attracting new businesses and employees correctly anticipate what existing place characteristics can be developed to enhance chances in the new economic order. A sociopolitically and financially viable coalition is then assembled to advance projects to that end. The historical evolution of the growth regime followed a predictable path through public-private partnerships in the 1970s, entrepreneurial TIF districts in the 1980s, and international political-economic debt sharing schemes on the local to global corporate scales in the 1990s (Clarke, 1998; Clarke and Gaile, 1998). A study illustrating the spatial effect reconstituting local goernment can have on survival of a governing group in Boston (Horan, 1998) is mirrored in Indianapolis by Unigov's 1970 launching of a continuing growth trajectory and Republican regime. The antagonistic racial and ethnic divisions plaguing Philadelphia's governing coalition (Beauregard, 1998) did not occur in Indianapolis, in part because of the efficacy of the base-touching coalition—though that is another story. To Cleveland's growth mechanism of image-enhancing stadia mania (Keating, 1997), Indianapolis previously added sponsorship of a sports spectacular (the Pan Am Games) and headquarters of international sports organizations. Indianapolis provides a mesoscale example of two urban regimes within the same political party, both dedicated to development of the CBD, maintaining a trajectory sup-



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ported by employment, convention, and construction statistics. Transition led to new players, a new discourse, and power distribution, but ultimately economic well-being was built on the lab-collar labor base envisioned in the mid-1970s. Restructuring inevitably shifts focus and strategies over time and space (Beauregard, 1989). Development is always uneven, and new pockets of undervalued space continually open up opportunities for profit taking. In the age of "global capitalism," when political boundaries seem increasingly irrelevant to economic enterprises, local interests directed by powerful actors can still prevail. Lilly is now the wealthiest endowment in the United States, owing to a stampeding stock market bullish on pharmaceuticals. It retains a propensity to "put Indiana first." This examination demonstrates that such a focus of funds, energies, and persuasion can be brought to bear to reinsert the local. Questions remain as to the equity of distribution of development benefits. Public health officials vigilantly watch infant mortality trends since the embarrassing revelation in 1988—at the height of Indy's building boom—of the city's first place morbidity ranking. Mobile "Healthy Baby" campaigns for inner-city populations most at risk were quickly instituted. A brief spike upward just before the 1996 re-election year was rapidly addressed by more of such attention. This can be a tricky balancing act (Logan et al., 1997). As a popular columnist asserted: "We like this city, and what it's become—we just wish we had more to say about it" (Carpenter, 1986, B-31).

NOTE 1

In November 1999, as this article went to press, a Democrat won the mayoral election in Indianapolis for thefirsttime in 30 years since the birth of Unigov.

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