CIB Board Meeting Summary - January 9, 2026
CIB Board Meeting Summary - January 9, 2026
The Board of the Cabinet Improvement Board (CIB) of Durham County convened to receive monthly reports on tourism revenue, downtown economic activities, financial performance, and venue operations, while approving several contracts and routine items. The meeting featured robust reporting on a projected strong 2026 for the convention center, despite 2025 seeing a slight decline in occupancy compared to the unique tourism spike of 2024 attributed to Taylor Swift.
Consent Calendar
- Unanimously approved the minutes from the December meeting.
- Authorized the disposal of obsolete equipment.
- Approved the Operating Expense Voucher for $6,538,653.57 and the Confirming Voucher for $5,813,660.84 as a combined action.
- Ratified the annual written consent for the CIB's building facility corporation to affirm acts of the board and executive director from the prior calendar year.
Public Comments & Testimony
- No public comments were offered during the session.
Discussion Items
- Visit Indy Report: Leonard Boose provided a review of 2025 performance, noting that November 2025 was the best November recorded excluding the "Taylor Swift effect," which had caused a 31% revenue drop in downtown and a 27.3% drop in Marion County compared to the previous year. He emphasized that year-to-date room sales in downtown Indianapolis were 1.4% higher than 2024. Boose highlighted the "unicorn" success of booking the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, which boosted the organization to 108% of its goal. He expressed optimism for 2026, citing the Ritz Carlton opening, the Signia hotel, and the Final Four as key drivers.
- Downtown Indy Alliance Report: Taylor Shaker presented updates on the Economic Enhancement District (EED), noting its transition from federal funding to a stable model. She detailed the launch of the "Say" (C-Say) app for real-time service requests and reported that property owners consistently perceive downtown cleanliness and safety improvements more positively than other demographics. Shaker announced plans to increase homeless outreach programming by $30,000 and expand IMPD homeless unit staffing for 2026 to better address non-9-1-1 safety issues.
- Financial Report: The CIB reported a Net Revenue of negative $64 million for November 2025, primarily due to a $71 million grant approved for hotel construction, which was categorized under "other services" rather than capital outlay. Tax revenues were $14.3 million, exceeding the budget by approximately one million dollars. Year-to-date tax revenues were $11 million over budget.
- Indiana Convention Center: The Center reported a 2025 occupancy of 51.5%, down 1% from 2024, attributing the difference to the absence of massive events like Taylor Swift and WWE that occurred in 2024. The 2026 outlook is positive, with no dark days forecasted for the first quarter, including events like Archery Trade, G-Master Fest, and the Final Four.
- Lucas Oil Stadium: Taylor Buller reported a successful end to 2025, including NFL games and a high "Voice of the Fan" satisfaction ranking likely in the top five NFL-wide. The stadium is preparing for the Men's Final Four and has confirmed a Bruno Mars concert for September 2026.
- Construction Projects: Updates on the Signia Hotel indicated the building is fully enclosed. A "snag" regarding century-old underground utilities on Georgia Street may delay the final landscaping (trees and granite) for the Final Four tailgate, though the area will be activated for events.
- Contracts and Infrastructure: The Board discussed a sole-source renewal for the Lucas Oil Stadium Wi-Fi system with Extreme Networks to refresh aging equipment, totaling $5.2 million. This includes repurposing original hardware to reduce costs and downtime.
Key Outcomes
- Contract Approval: Approved the $5,204,783.10 contract with Extreme Networks for the Lucas Oil Stadium Wi-Fi equipment upgrade.
- Financial Adjustments: Recognized that the $71 million hotel construction grant shifted the variance classification from capital outlay to other services, resulting in a $72 million overage in other services for November.
- Operational Directives: The CIB and partners are proceeding with the Final Four preparations, accepting potential landscaping delays on Georgia Street to prioritize event activation.
- Strategic Focus: Downtown Indy Alliance 2026 priorities shift from "refine and maintain" to "grow and evolve," with specific focus on family experiences, worker support, and suburban event goers.
Meeting Transcript
Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Representative. When board member Maggie Lewis arrives, we'll have a course for voting, but we can take reports and other things at this point. So I'd like to call the board of Cabinet Improvement Board of Durham County meeting to order. First item on the agenda will be the report from Visit Indy. And I'll note that we were to have a report on kind of their goal setting and a preview of how that works. However, Leonard Boose has to leave to catch a flight. So we will do that in March. February, he'll be out for spring break travel with his family. So thank you, Madam President. And Madam Lewis present is the President Lewis now again, too. So that's a great noise and stuff. We had a very good November, all things considered. You have to remember that this is not a Taylor Swift year, and if you factor that out, it's actually the best November we've ever had, both downtown and for the county. But when you factor in the Taylor Swift effect, we were down 31 or 29.6% of revenue downtown and 27.3% revenue for Marion County. We actually sold more rooms in downtown Indy in November of 25 than we did in 24. And again, it was really about the rate that those first couple of nights that Taylor Swift performed that drove the entire month of November last year. Year to date, the numbers are actually quite good. We're ahead of last year's pace downtown. We sold 1.4% more rooms in downtown in 2025 than we did in 24, which I think is remarkable considering all the special events of 20 uh 24. Marion County is down slightly 1.2% in demand, and average daily rate is down in both cases. And in large part, if you if you factor out literally a couple of nights of Taylor Swift, it's pretty even uh year over year for the for the revenue. So all in all, I think CIB is gonna see with the lag that Tim deals with pretty comparable numbers uh at the end of the year in terms of hotel revenue for uh what goes to the CIB, which is I again better than I think we all anticipated. Okay. Uh when you slide down farther into the deck, um for 11 months I've told you we were behind our goal pace, uh, and we ended the year at 108% of goal. And there's a fine line between making goal at 108% and not making gold. We booked one group called the Fellowship of Catholic University students. They're a unicorn because they meet December 30th to January 3rd. We'll have them December 30th, 2027 to January 3rd, 28th, and the same days 28 into early 29. That was 66,560 room nights. We booked them late in the year. If you don't book them, we end the year at age 6395 below goal. You book them, you're at 108% of goal. And that's kind of how every year ends up working. We we look if we get one or two big boys uh uh uh in in the bookings, then you can make it and and or exceed it if you don't, you can come up short or even woefully short. So on the lead side, uh this is what I was giving the comfort about the future. Um and I'll get into the details about how consumption benchmarks work and how we use those to set gold, et cetera, at the March meeting is as um uh President Marcy said. Uh but we booked nearly four million lead room nights this year, 3.98 million. President Lewis. Oh wait. Um we booked nearly three point, or we generated nearly three point nine eight million room nights. That's 130% of the goal for lead room nights. I mean the pipeline is very robust. In a lot of ways, that gives us the ability to put in better business because we can we can prioritize rather than just take what's what what got thrown at us, uh what we won into certain days. And so uh all in all, really good. Uh right now in the building, I'm sure uh Monique will mention this. Um we have the Archery Trade Association. One of the things about archery trade is they're a bit of a unicorn as well. You don't generally get groups of six, seven thousand people the first ten days of January.
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