INDIANAPOLIS — A dream decades in the making is now about 90 days away from coming true.
"Indianapolis downtown needed something," said Danny Hayes with the Back 9 development team. It's a new golf facility that lets you tee it up in the shadows of downtown Indianapolis.
"The fairway is 220 yards long," Hayes said. "It will be all AstroTurf with greens marked throughout the entire facility."
The golf features will be state of the art, including golf ball tracking technology used on the PGA tour. Visitors will be able to play a simulated round at some of the most famous golf courses in the world.
But it's a development aimed to attract everybody.
"This is for the nongolfer — the golfer and people that just want to come and have fun," Hayes said. Back 9 will have a stage on the grounds that will feature live music from local musicians.
It's the first step of Stephen Alexander's vision. Alexander is a partner with the Back 9 Development Group.
"It's all really going to come together and it's going to be dramatic," Alexander said. "Part of the redevelopment of the Southwest quadrant is really where I've focused for the last 40 years. Trying to find parcels like a little bit here a little bit there. My strategy has been, let's get enough to do a $20 or $30 million project. It might be an acre, it might be an acre and a half, but let's get enough and get something going. So that's how we did it.”
Back 9 sits on 10 acres along the White River and will cost $30 million. Alexander plans to use the entirety of the property to attract people to the area.
"People go to Brown County and people go to Brookville and people go all around to go to water," Alexander said. "We've got water, we've got outdoors, we've got activity."
Alexander will try to use the property to bring people out onto the White River, an effort the city has struggled to
"I'm going to bring an 80-90 foot houseboat in here in the next couple of years and we're going to be launching pontoons, kayaks, canoes," he said. "This river is going to change in the next two years.”
Back 9 is scheduled to open mid-June.