INDIANAPOLIS — Fort Wayne billionaire and Sweetwater founder Chuck Surack has plenty of reasons to oppose Mayor Joe Hogsett’s plans to build a major league soccer stadium on the site of the current downtown Indianapolis heliport.
Surack owns Sweet Helicopter, which has flown into and out of the Heliport in the past. He operates several airport facilities in northern Indiana. He bid $15 million for the Heliport, but the Indianapolis Airport Authority accepted the city’s offer, which was more than four million dollars less.
He’s also a minority owner of the Indy Eleven soccer club, along with developer Ersal Ozdemir, whose own planned soccer stadium site on Kentucky Avenue was sidelined when Hogsett pulled his support for the proposal. And he thinks bulldozing a significant urban air travel infrastructure site makes no economic sense…