Jeff Swiatek

jeff.swiatek@indystar.com

After 10 years of fruitless searching, Indiana Ice owner Paul Skjodt has hit on what he thinks is the most promising site yet for a permanent home for his hockey team:

A 92-acre former farm near a Cracker Barrel restaurant at Michigan Road and I-465.

The project Skjodt envisions at the site would be more than a hockey complex. He has outlined plans for a $22 million three-rink ice skating and hockey complex with volleyball and basketball courts thrown in for good measure.

Also part of the plan: office space, 1,100 parking spaces and a landscaped lake crossed by two bridges. The largest rink in the complex would seat 4,800 people.

Called Lyceum Park & Pavilion, the complex would provide a permanent home for the Ice — something the minor league team has never had. The U.S. Hockey League team is currently dormant for a year after losing its former rink site in Pan Am Plaza Downtown.

The Ice would be just a tenant at the proposed Northwestside site, which Skjodt sees being owned by a nonprofit corporation that would open the facility for community uses.

Skjodt said his wife, Cindy Simon Skjodt, a daughter of the late Melvin Simon, cofounder of the international mall development company Simon Property Group, would like to use the sports site to promote health and wellness programs for the mentally ill.

The money isn't exactly in hand to build the facility. Skjodt said the Lyceum Project will soon start a fundraising campaign aimed at individual donors, companies and other entities to raise the money to build the complex. Groundbreaking could occur as early as next summer, he said.

Skjodt said a foundation he and his wife run, the Samerian Foundation, would likely donate to the Lyceum Project.

Skjodt hasn't yet filed any plans with the city for zoning, development and other issues.

Over the years, Skjodt has worked unsuccessfully to develop a stadium for the Ice in Carmel, Fishers, and Noblesville and near Zionsville at the mixed-use Anson development. "A lot of these cities and towns didn't have the financial wherewithal" to assist with the project, he said.

Skojodt said he has the 92 acres under contract to purchase and the contract has two years to run. The site is just west of the Cracker Barrel at the southwest quadrant of I-465 and Michigan Road.

The facility could be a boon to hotels and restaurants in the area, Skjodt said. About 40 acres of the site are wetlands, created by a creek and a borrow pit for I-465, that can't be developed.

Call Star reporter Jeff Swiatek at (317)444-6483. Follow him on Twitter: @JeffSwiatek.