NEWS

Speedway: Beyond a race destination

Robert King
robert.king@indystar.com
Lunchtime crowds have plenty of options along Main Street’s half-mile stretch, where you could sample a different eatery every day of the week.

In the historic residential section of Speedway, where the small bungalows date to the town’s founding in the 1920s, Realtors have gone door to door looking for homeowners who might be interested in selling their houses.

When one homeowner died a year ago, eager buyers began making inquiries about his property before the funeral services were complete.

And in her estate planning, Marie Hall, the 76-year-old sage of Speedway’s burgeoning Main Street business district, already has instructed her children on what to do when she dies: Call the New York City policeman who’s been trying to buy her house and tell him it’s available if he wants it.

The demand for homes in Speedway, particularly in the historic district known as Old Speedway City, is just one indicator of the transformation that’s come to the once-anemic town that sits in the shadow of Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The $200 million-plus redevelopment of Speedway’s Main Street — the bulk of which has occurred in the past five years — has turned a town that could roll up its sidewalks at 7 o’clock into a destination beyond the Indianapolis 500 and events such as Sunday’s Crown Royal 400 at the Brickyard.

These days, lunchtime crowds pop into the restaurants along Main Street’s half-mile stretch, where there are enough eateries to sample a new one every day of the week. On weeknights, people walk their dogs or bike along the street.

The demand for homes in Speedway, such as this house on McCray Street, just west of Georgetown Road and Indianapolis Motor Speedway, is just one indicator of the town's transformation.

On Friday and Saturday nights, there’s live music in places such as the Big Woods Speedway restaurant, which opened in the spring, and Daredevil Brewing, which a year ago became the area’s first built-new-from-scratch brewery since Prohibition.

At several points throughout the year, street festivals envelop Main Street. There are race-related events, such as Thursday night’s Haulers Parade, where the big rigs of the NASCAR teams line the street for an up-close look. But there’s also a vintage car show in June and a cycling race in August. Smaller events include pub crawls for Mardi Gras (February) and St. Patrick’s Day (March).

The flurry of activities associated with the Main Street makeover has brought with it some occasional nuisances — residents just off Main note that cars now fill parking spots along their streets with greater frequency, and the Main Street closures bring additional traffic. On nights when the bands are playing, they can hear the pulse of the music.

But people seem to be taking it in stride in a community where residents turn their yards into parking lots for the big races, where gridlock is built into the Indy 500 weekend and where cars regularly buzz like hornets around the track.

“We enjoy everything that they do on Main Street,” said Amy Wilson, who lives with her husband, Bill, and their three children just off Main Street. “I love it. It’s kind of like the new Broad Ripple. Or the new Mass Ave. for Speedway. Nice crowds. Nice people.”

Plenty of residents and business owners make the analogies to Broad Ripple and Mass Ave. Just as easily they might include Fountain Square or downtown Carmel — other once-moribund places that have experienced a revival.

The lunch crowd filled Big Woods Speedway on Main Street on Wednesday, July 20, 2016. The restaurant opened this year.

But Speedway, in many ways, is its own unique illustration.

Most of the redeveloped properties were, until a few years ago, owned by the town or the town’s redevelopment commission, giving local authorities a strong say in the kinds of businesses that could come in and how they could operate. Up-front Main Street locations were sold to businesses whose owners understood there was a noise ordinance, with quiet hours from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.

“We’re not trying to be the next hip bar scene,” said Town Manager Ian Nicolini. “We think this is a really great town for families. Having an all-ages use and a perspective that we want to bring in families to the community is really a driving motivator for us.”

The developments along Main Street reflect that philosophy.

Some businesses — Daredevil Brewing,  with its 24 beers on tap, and Foyt Wine Vault, with its selections from the racing family’s vineyards — are clearly geared toward adults.

Kris Komakech's "Welcome Race Fans" is one of the art pieces that were part of a collaborative art project between the Arts Council of Indianapolis and Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500. Thirty-three Indiana artists were commissioned to create the works for the historic race.

But the lineup of the new includes a yogurt shop and the Speedway Indoor Karting facility, which features two indoor racetracks where kids — and adults — can test their driving skills. Also wrapped into the attractions is a new community health center.

And Speedway remains a place where there’s a trick-or-treat candy giveaway on Main Street at Halloween, and where Santa parades down Main in a race car at Christmas. Business people and city leaders are proud of their downtown, but they’re just as quick to brag on their schools, which perform as well as any in Marion County. Speedway, in fact, is small enough that the district doesn’t use school buses — if the kids don’t catch a ride, they live close enough to school to walk.

Among several business that bridge the worlds of adults and kids is Big Woods Speedway. It has a beer garden and a 21-and-older liquor bar, the Hard Truth Saloon. But its dining room is family-friendly.

Big Woods co-owner Jeff McCabe said the business is drawing customers from across the age spectrum and from a 15-minute driving arc. Interestingly, the place is getting referrals from hotels in Downtown Indianapolis.

At Daredevil, about one-third of the taproom’s visitors come from within 5 miles, said co-owner Shane Pearson. The rest come from around the Indianapolis metro area and beyond. On weekends, that includes visitors from every surrounding state taking part in the thriving industry of craft beer tourism.

That life has come to Main Street is almost a shaking-my-head realization to residents. They speak of the Main Street of yesteryear as if tumbleweeds rolled across the midday desolation and sidewalks were populated by ghosts. Except, of course, in May, when the invading hordes brought life to the town like some sort of Brigadoon of the plains.

“I’ve been here since 1977, and you always wondered would they do anything with it,” said Bill Wilson, 50. Other racetrack towns, such as Daytona Beach, Fla., he has observed, have gone in a much more commercialized direction. But he approves of what Speedway is doing. “It’s got that traditional Indy 500 hometown flavor to just about everything they do.”

The evolution is continuing with the arrival of another racing technology firm and the headquarters of an environmental engineering company. Bigger still is a $40 million mixed-use project that will include luxury apartments, condominiums, retail spaces and a 120-room hotel. The latter is notable because, after years of eradicating nuisance motels, Speedway is currently without a hotel room in the town limits.

Tyra Campbell (back to camera) had lunch with her parents, Antoinette and Lloyd Campbell, on Wednesday, July 20, 2016, at Big Woods Speedway on Main Street. Lloyd Campbell works at nearby Allison Transmission.

But Speedway has limits on how much more it can do. It’s a landlocked enclave. And, as housing goes, the town is built out. That, along with the revival, has nudged housing prices upward. But because of appraisal limits and the smallish size of the housing stock, real estate broker Sharron Hill says, most of the new listings are priced in the range of $100,000 to $185,000, still lower than many places in the metro area.

Yet Donald Davidson, the track historian and longtime town resident, said Speedway has never before experienced a period of such vibrancy.

Longtime residents who were at first cautious about the town's plans — about the traffic and crowds and suggestions the place might change into downtown Carmel — have come to like what they’ve seen. “So far,” he said, “it has worked out really well.”

Now, the town that came into being because of the racetrack and the race uses the Indy 500 as something of a touchstone, said Nicolini, the town manager. It’s a marker on the progress of Speedway he hears often from the observations of visitors.

"I was here last May, and none of this was here," he said, “is the sort of sentiment that we like to get.”

Call IndyStar reporter Robert King at (317) 444-6089. Follow him on Twitter: @RbtKing.