'A diamond in the rough:' How the town of Speedway embraces culture outside the Indy 500

Indianapolis Star

20-05-2025

When Arlon Bayliss began to plan a sculpture for a blighted Speedway trailhead park in 2016, he sought residents' help. What are you proud of in your community? he asked.
Many said they wanted to celebrate the town's character beyond the Indianapolis 500, the annual race in the venue from which the town takes its name. Some mentioned Motegi, Japan and Varano de' Melegari, Italy, two sister cities where high school students have long traveled for educational exchange programs.
The sculpture born from those conversations reflects the city's international ties, Hoosier identity and the community's closeness. Absent from the artwork are the cars and checkered flags most often associated with the town. Situated just steps from the track, the sculpture is shaped like a cow parsnip, a flowering plant native to Indiana. Its form symbolizes the three cities' connection, and the seeds that Speedway students carry with them wherever they land. Nine years ago, in a vacant building a few blocks from the trailhead, Bayliss and dozens of volunteers and Speedway High School seniors worked together to assemble the florets that would be affixed to the sculpture and glow at night.
"It seemed to be in the DNA of the town of Speedway to work together towards a project," said Bayliss, who is based in Anderson.
"Seeds of Light," which sits just steps southwest of the towering Indianapolis Motor Speedway track, is a microcosm of the town's tight-knit community, a symbol of its non-racing related culture that's growing increasingly visible thanks to burgeoning public art, restaurants and pedestrian trails. These factors combine to attract younger residents and showcase the town's identity inside and outside of that world-famous Sunday in May.
"If you look at the grander scheme, we're just part of Indianapolis when you look at a map," said Bruce Levy, a sculpture volunteer and Speedway Arts Council member, who has lived in the area since 2000. "But there is a small-town camaraderie and a small-town feel to Speedway. It's hard to describe."
Established in 1926, 17 years after the track opened, Speedway originally housed mostly automotive workers and their families. The decades after World War II saw the town's population soar, according to the Polis Center at Indiana University Indianapolis. The town numbered almost 5,500 people in 1950 and by 1970 the population had grown to more than 15,000.
Twenty years ago, however, Speedway had an identity crisis. The town was aging and struggling to lure younger families with kids.
As ideas abounded on how to improve quality of life in the town, Beverly Katterhenry, whose family has run a business in Speedway since 1950, resisted changes that could draw in younger families and push Speedway into a new era.
Specifically, Katterhenry worried about talks of a trail project right next her family's business, worrying it would encroach on her ability to sell parking spots during the Indy 500 — a not-insignificant side hustle for many property owners in Speedway during the month of May. But as Katterhenry, now 75, learned more about the trail and walked the abandoned railroad path herself, she envisioned a community asset that could change how people travel around Speedway every day.
The trail "was a diamond in the rough," said Katterhenry, who grew up on the west side of Indianapolis while attending Speedway Christian Church and moved to the town in 2009. "We just didn't know it was there yet."
She would later become the unofficial face of Speedway Trails, the nonprofit that oversees the sprawling trail system that will soon span a total of 15 miles on the west side. The trail network includes the B&O Trail, the P&E Trail and the Main Street Trail.
Speedway Trails' origins date back to 2007, after the Speedway Redevelopment Commission started talking about revamping Main Street as a way to breathe new life into the town.
The momentum from the Main Street redevelopment trickled into the efforts to build a trail on the old railroad tracks that cuts through the town. The original concept for the trail was a five-mile loop around Speedway. That later evolved into a 15-mile path that connects Hendricks County to the White River at Michigan Street by cutting directly through Speedway.
Katterhenry calls herself the "squeaky wheel" who helped lure "Seeds of Light" to the P&E trailhead. The town partnered with Keep Indianapolis Beautiful and the Indy Arts Council for the project, which Levy helped build. The self-described "de facto maintenance guy," whose day job is as a design engineer at Allison Transmission, still checks on the sculpture at night and fixes lights that have gone out.
The public art momentum has continued. Over the past few years, murals have gone up along Main Street. One artwork by Barbecue & Bourbon shows an old-fashioned car at the center of a starburst pattern. Another by Charlie Brown's Pancake and Steak House depicts a vintage scene of cars parked in front of a diner. Outside Speedway's municipal center is a mosaic composed of photos submitted by residents.
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Katterhenry said she would like to see more public art along the trail — especially murals for a B&O Trail tunnel near High School Road. Julia Muney Moore, the Indy Arts Council's public art director, stands ready to help whatever efforts will help Speedway expand its charm to those who are not necessarily race fans.
"The idea that the trail is what's bringing people in, and it's a whole different crowd of people. It's bikers, it's pedestrians, it's exercise people, it's people walking dogs," Muney Moore said. "That trail is a connection, and they would be well placed to think about how they want to position themselves to these people who come literally any other day of the year except for (race day)."
Good quality-of-life assets, such as usable trails and strong schools, drew Logan Posson and his family, who moved to Speedway from Kansas in 2019.
"On any nice day, if you get out on the trail, you'll notice how many young families are out there. It's more than the older crowd that people think of when they think of Speedway," said Posson, now president of Speedway Trails.
The Possons were told by their realtor that houses in Speedway sell fast for the very reasons they looked at the town. Sold signs scattered throughout the town suggest more new residents are on the way.
To town manager Grant Kleinhenz — Speedway, though an excluded city, does not have a mayor — today's progress all goes back to that decision 20 years ago to take a risk on redeveloping the historic town.
"We are reaping the reward of all of that work," Kleinhenz said. "The town councilors would say that was a challenging process, no one likes the unknown, but we forged ahead to build a source of pride."
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Over the past few weeks, Katterhenry has watched crews pour concrete and put the finishing touches on the three-mile Hendricks County expansion. On May 25, more than 800 people are expected to travel by bicycle to the race.
"My whole goal has been to make it a safe community place for people to meet on and go on and kids can meet and go up and down," Katterhenry said. "It's just so gratifying now. You can give me all the awards but the most important thing for me is seeing people on the trail."
Although Jeff Shields, 60, has only lived in the town for about a decade, he said he feels as though its culture is stitched into the fabric of his being.
Shields' father, Norm, worked for the United States Auto Club, the sanctioning body of open-wheel racing in the 1980s, and as a technical director for multiple Indy 500 races. The ceiling of Jeff's boyhood bedroom in Knightstown was painted like a checkered flag and scribbled with the signatures of drivers such as Gary Bettenhausen and Steve Chassey who would swing by the Shields' home for dinner.
But Shields' ties to motorsports are not why he moved his family to the world's racing capital from their home in Danville about a half hour away. That would be his two daughters, who in 2015 were enrolled at Covenant Christian High School just west of Speedway. Shields and his wife Krista liked the town's parks, its walkability and its up-and-coming small businesses, he said.
Ten years later, Shields runs one such business, The Spark, a coffee shop on Main Street. Shields previously served a pastor at a church in Avon, often meeting congregants at a Panera or Starbucks rather than in his office.
'I feel like coffee shop tables are almost sacred places where people are just sharing stories and sharing life,' he said.
So in June 2021, reemerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, Shields and a member of his church created a gathering place of their own with The Spark.
Compared to longtime Speedway institutions like Charlie Brown's Pancake and Steak House or the Famous Tomato, Shields' distinctly modern coffee shop can feel somewhat iconoclastic. While Shields admires Speedway's old soul, he's proud to help nurture Speedway's growing younger population.
The Spark now operates a second shop in Mooresville and a trailer that slings cups of joe outside the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Pagoda during May. As Shields sat in the mid-morning shade of the Pagoda during last week's Indy 500 practices, he acknowledged Speedway is inextricable from the sporting venue for which it was named. But the lifelong racing fan is just as enamored with the cozy side streets around the IMS as the iconic oval within it, he said.
'I love racing,' he said. 'I grew up in racing with my dad. But I would still love this town even if the track weren't here.'
Contact IndyStar reporter Domenica Bongiovanni at 317-444-7339 or [e-mail]. Sign up here for the newsletter she curates about things to do and ways to explore Indianapolis. Find her on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter: @domenicareports.
Alysa Guffey covers business and development for IndyStar. Contact her at [e-mail].