Speedway, Indiana

65 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 12 hotels are important to us, and we’re working with developers to build enough hotel rooms in Speedway to handle our year round needs, while central Indiana provides for the month of May. That’s part of what our redevelopment area plans have been about: attracting people on a year-round basis, not just in the month of May when the Indy 500 occurs.” A “Courtyard by Marriott” opened 3 years ago, and has had a very high occupancy rate year round, even during the first year of COVID, which points to the need for rooms in the town and the excellent proximity to the Indianapolis International Airport, Downtown Indianapolis, and Park 100 Industrial Park, a few miles to the north. A Hilton Hampton Inn and Suites & Conference Center is under construction and will be completed in late 2023, while a HiltonTapestry Hotel has had construction delays, but is expected to restart construction in April/ May of 2023, with completion in Q4 of 2024. Other ongoing projects of note revolve around water distribution, sewage, and treatment services. “We provide our own water and sewer, which is pretty uncommon for communities located in a large metropolitan area,” offers Kleinhenz. “That’s something we’ve always maintained because our residents deserve the most quality service we can offer. We also provide water to those large manufacturers—Allison, Praxair, and others. Obviously, we also support that population influx during the month of May.” About a year ago, the Town Council issued a rate increase on water users and with that, put together a sizable Capital Improvement Plan—$50M worth of investment targeted at its water and sewer plants, as well as its distribution systems. “What we’ve tried to do is look for projects that need completing— like the relocation and replacement of a storm sewer-in order to move our community forward,” Kleinhenz says. To that end, they’ve also received grants from the State of Indiana—through the Federal Highway Administration, for example—for some improvements to Crawfordsville Road on the west side of town. “That’s about a $2.5M project that looks at pedestrian enhancements out there by the shopping center, allowing residents to get across that six-lane road from North to South safely,” Kleinhenz continues.