The planning for each annual Community Leadership Visit (CLV) starts with a question: what other community do we have the most to learn from in the coming year? This year's ask led us to this initial answer: a region that is growing without pricing out the people who make that growth possible.
In comes Indianapolis, or Indy as local leaders prefer to call their region. Eighty-seven business, civic and community leaders from the Springfield region will travel to Indy Oct. 6-8 as part of the Chamber’s 32nd annual visit.
Indy first caught the Chamber’s attention through the Brookings Institution's Metro Monitor 2025. Of the nation's 195 largest metro areas, only 10 achieved strong growth and prosperity from 2013 to 2023 while keeping cost-of-living increases relatively low. Each of the 10 expanded its housing supply faster than its population grew, and the Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood metro is one of them. Chamber President Matt Morrow explained why that matters for Springfield in a recent Springfield Business Journal column.
Brookings measured a decade-long, relative picture. The Chamber's own CLV data site offers a more recent snapshot, and it shows Indy hasn't been immune to the affordability pressures of the past several years. Estimated monthly homeownership costs have nearly doubled in both metros since the early 2020s, driven largely by higher mortgage payments, with taxes and insurance adding to the increase. What sets Indy apart is that it kept building; the Indy metro averaged about 12,000 permitted housing units a year from 2020 to 2025, compared with about 2,100 in the Springfield metro.
The parallels go well beyond housing. Springfield is weighing major decisions about infrastructure and housing as the region grows, investing in downtown, building up its sports and tourism assets and competing for the talent local employers need. The two metros have even grown at nearly the same rate: From 2020 to 2025, the Springfield metro grew 5.1% and the Indy metro grew 5.4%. Indy has simply been working through many of the same questions at more than four times the size.
This year, the CLV program is organized around three themes.
Regional alignment
Growth doesn't stop at city limits, and neither does its challenges. Delegates will hear:
- How government, business and civic leaders in Indy align around shared priorities.
- How communities across central Indiana work together as a region, even when individual jurisdictions have different needs.
- How Indy runs on Unigov, the consolidated city-county government Indianapolis and Marion County adopted in 1970, which brings many municipal and county functions under shared leadership.
- How a region that spans multiple counties and municipalities focuses less on structure and more on how shared priorities get set, and how they get kept.
Strategic investment
Knowing where a community wants to go is the first step. Paying for it is the second, and it's usually the harder one. Delegates will explore how Indy and Indiana combine local and state resources, dedicated funding mechanisms, private investment and philanthropy. Together, those sources fund significant investments in infrastructure, housing, downtown and sports. The delegation will experience one example firsthand: the Bottleworks District, a $300 million, 12-acre mixed-use redevelopment of a former Coca-Cola bottling plant.
Quality of place
Ultimately, community decisions determine whether people want to live, work, visit and invest in a place. CLV program sessions will cover housing and talent, downtown public safety and homelessness, and sports and tourism.
“The themes of regional alignment, strategic investment and quality of place overlap intentionally,” Morrow told delegates at a pre-trip reception on Sept. 30. “A housing challenge isn't just about housing. Infrastructure isn't just about roads. Sports aren't just about events. Each raises bigger questions about how a growing region works together, where it chooses to invest and what kind of place it is trying to become.”
The how, not just the what
Delegates are being asked to focus less on what Indy has done and more on how it got there. Who had to be at the table? How were shared priorities set? Where did the resources come from, and what partnerships made implementation possible? Program sessions will also include candid conversations about challenges Indy is still working through. Those conversations are often as useful as success stories.
“The point of this trip isn't to come home and replicate Indy,” Morrow said. “It's to learn how another community has approached many of the same questions and consider what those lessons could mean for us.”
Past visits have sparked innovative collaborations and strategies that continue to benefit the Springfield region. The Indy CLV program is expected to equip our business and civic leaders with insights on how a peer Midwestern metro has overcome challenges to thrive and what could come next for our region.