Indy's skyline getting a lift

The Indianapolis Star reports:

After a 16-year lull, the Downtown skyline again is looking up.

The 14-story Simon headquarters and 23-story Conrad hotel quietly cracked the city's top 20 tallest buildings this year.
And others will soon join them: Lucas Oil Stadium will stand 260 feet when it opens in 2008. A roughly 1,000-room hotel that could reach 25 to 44 stories tall, depending on what proposal is selected, will follow by 2010. And on the eastern edge of Downtown, a high-rise is still hoped for on the old Market Square Arena site.
"The last great period of high-rises was back in the late 1980s. . . . It seems to me that we may be headed for a similar time, for different reasons," said Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson. "It's a little different kind of a boom, but, yes, we're seeing that."
Since 2000, $2.7 billion worth of projects have been completed in generally the Mile Square, said Indianapolis Downtown Inc.'s Terry Sweeney, vice president of real estate development. In the next four years, $2.9 billion more are planned, he said.
In some ways, what's going up, construction-wise, is a symbolic measuring stick of the economy. There's so much construction happening on Downtown's western edge, with the new football stadium and Indiana Convention Center expansion, that the resulting congestion is expected to cut into the city's convention and tourism business in the next couple of years.
But Bob Schultz, spokesman for the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association, loves the cranes.
"Whether Indianapolis is your eventual destination or a pass-through, it will be hard to miss as the skyline changes," Schultz said. "Most dramatically, you see that with cranes. A city with cranes is a city with opportunity.
"What it does is present a perception that Indianapolis is progressive, is moving forward, is willing to take good and sturdy steps toward progress and has an infrastructure to support it. In this day and age, you just don't build a building and hope people fill it. You've got to have strong demand."
Unlike the last boom, the construction is driven by tourism and leisure, not work. Hotels and sports facilities have been the dominant additions Downtown, not the office skyscrapers, such as Chase Tower, OneAmerica Tower, One Indiana Square and 300 N. Meridian.

Corporate America isn't moving "downtown".