Indianapolis books citywide conventions years ahead through Visit Indy. Its new hotel rooms arrive on construction schedules, debt markets and preservation votes. The city holds the power to line the two clocks up, and the record shows where the order has held and where it has slipped.
The King Cole File
The King Cole building at 1 N. Meridian Street holds a planned 116-room Motto by Hilton across 11 stories. Indy Propco LLC, an affiliate of The Gettys Group and Ridgeline Development Partners, has owned the building since early 2019.
The Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission granted a two-year extension to the project's certificate of appropriateness at a Wednesday evening meeting. The certificate had expired in 2023. The vote was unanimous with one abstention.
IBJ reported in February 2025 that Ridgeline planned to resume work in the second quarter of that year. The company's timeline now puts completion in the fourth quarter of 2026, roughly seven years after the announcement.
The cost record runs from $21 million at announcement to $54 million by 2022. Rob Hunden, a spokesperson for The Gettys Group, told IBJ the figure would run 10 percent higher than before, which puts it close to $60 million. The city approved $9.2 million in tax-increment financing bonds in 2022, alongside federal historic tax credits.
The Delivery List
Visit Indy's development page dates the rest of the wave. The Signia by Hilton and the convention center expansion carry a $710 million figure and a December 2026 opening, with 803 rooms, 38 stories, a 143,500-square-foot expansion and a 50,000-square-foot ballroom. The Kimpton carries 167 rooms and the Westin at Indianapolis International Airport carries 253 rooms, both for 2027. The Ritz-Carlton carries 176 rooms and the Renaissance carries 378 rooms, both for 2028.
The venue's own expansion page states the addition will make it possible to host two citywide conventions at one time. It lists 90,000 square feet of Signia meeting space, including a 50,455-square-foot grand ballroom, along with 2,500 construction jobs, 400 hotel jobs and almost $300 million in annual economic impact.
What Each Deal Carries
The public terms of the 2028 deliveries are on the record. The city allocated $15.6 million for the Ritz-Carlton project through a single-site tax-increment-financing district and a $25 million forgivable loan. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. committed up to $23 million in loans over three years.
The Signia's cost grew 14 percent from $501 million to $571 million, and the Capital Improvement Board of Marion County carries the increase, per IBJ's report of 21 February 2025. The adjoining convention center addition carries a $210 million figure in the same report.
The King Cole conversion follows the same pattern at a smaller scale. Public money entered in 2022, the certificate lapsed in 2023, work restarted in 2025, and the rooms arrive at the end of 2026.
What the Rooms Meet
The venue's facility guide counts 4,721 rooms connected to the center, 7,175 within a six-block radius and 4,570 committable group rooms. Visit Indy's connected-hotels page puts the connected package at 12 hotels and 5,200 rooms once the expansion opens, with more than 10,000 rooms within walking distance.
Marcus & Millichap's Indianapolis 1Q 2026 hospitality report forecasts the CBD to hold occupancy near 65 percent, the highest in the metro, despite a modest year-over-year dip. The same report states the expansion and the connected Signia should improve Indianapolis' competitiveness for large conventions, potentially supporting weekday occupancy and rate growth over time.
The market mix shifts with the wave. About 18 percent of downtown's nearly 8,800 hotel rooms are classified as luxury by CoStar, and that figure rises to about 24 percent if the city's current 2,600-room pipeline completes, per IBJ's report of 9 January 2026. The InterContinental opened on West Market Street in February 2025 with that classification.
The Position
The city should attach its next round of public participation to delivery slots that widen the convention floor. That means sequencing discretionary approvals, TIF increments and preservation extensions against the two-citywide capability the expansion brings in December 2026.
The 2026 and 2027 deliveries arrive alongside the expansion's first trading years. The 2028 deliveries arrive after it has a record. A schedule that puts new approvals behind a proven two-citywide calendar asks the market to carry the risk it would otherwise carry alone.
Visit Indy's page names five properties with room counts against a 2,600-room citywide pipeline: the 116-room Motto, the 167-room Kimpton, the 253-room Westin at the airport, the 176-room Ritz-Carlton and the 378-room Renaissance. Those five total 1,090 rooms, and the 2026 delivery rests on the Motto and the expansion's 803-room Signia.
What Would Settle the Argument
No publisher states a room-night forecast for downtown against the December delivery, a group rate floor for the new inventory, or the Motto's meeting square footage, banquet capacity and group rate structure. Those numbers would turn this argument into arithmetic. Until they arrive, the case rests on the delivery dates.