Shiel Sexton carves out high-profile sports projects as niche

Shiel Sexton builds everything from factories to apartment buildings to warehouses, but the casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that all it does is sports venues.

For years the construction company’s name has been associated with many of the state’s newly built or newly refurbished athletic complexes, including (but by no means confined to) the Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall renovation (completed in 2016); the recent $360 million Gainbridge Fieldhouse modernization program, for which the firm served as construction manager; and the conversion of Lucas Oil Stadium into a temporary, world-class swimming venue for the 2024 USA Olympic Swim Trials.

Its current roster of projects includes both the Jack and Kathy Shields Family Hall at the University of Notre Dame, which offers ancillary facilities for the school’s football program. But Shiel Sexton’s most high-profile current sports build is the $78 million Indiana Fever Practice Facility, which will include two full-size basketball courts, a podcast studio, a hair and nail salon and more.

Such gigs draw millions in revenue and raise the firm’s profile. But it’s not all about headlines and free PR.

“The difference between a marquee project and doing a warehouse in the middle of nowhere is that everybody sees it,” said Shiel Sexton CEO and President Kevin Hunt. “You don’t have the opportunity to be late or over budget because the world will know it. A lot of eyes and a lot of stakeholders are focused on you. So you have to overcome any obstacles and deliver on time and under budget. It’s unlike a more typical project, where you might not have as many stakeholders watching your progress.”

Those are valid concerns, but they’re also the sorts of champagne problems lots of other contractors would love to face.

“I think what separates Sexton from a fairly crowded market of general contractors and construction managers in central Indiana is that they’re really well known for doing truly specialized, unique or boutique projects,” said Adam Campagna, director at Avenew Inc. and a former Shiel Sexton employee. “When you look at their portfolio, you see they don’t do one-size-fits-all projects that they build over and over. They’re really good at doing unique, very specialized construction projects.”

A niche

Interestingly, while sports have been very, very good to the company, management didn’t set out to make arenas and fieldhouses one of their specialties. It just sort of happened.

The Indianapolis-based general construction firm was founded in 1962 by Dick Shiel and Tim Sexton, and in its early years focused on smaller-scale central Indiana developments. By the late 1990s it had carved out a niche in downtown Indianapolis via several high-profile renovations, including updates to its own headquarters 902 N. Capitol Ave. It also took on ever-larger, more complex historic preservation, education and health care builds. And of course, ever more complex sports facilities.

“It’s a niche that we’ve developed over the last 30 years,” said John Andrews, Shiel Sexton’s vice president of preconstruction.

It began with work on smaller projects at Butler University, DePaul University, Earlham College and Marian University, among others. Perhaps the first truly headline-grabbing effort occurred in 2014, when Shiel Sexton was engaged to convert Gainbridge Fieldhouse (still called Conseco Fieldhouse at the time) into a temporary natatorium for the FINA Short Course World Swimming Championships. Though it pales in comparison to last year’s conversion of Lucas Oil Stadium into a natatorium, at the time plunking a 300,000-gallon main competition pool and a 170,000-gallon warmup pool inside a basketball arena—and then ripping the whole thing out as soon as the event ended—was something new, highlighting Indy’s ability to host complex international sporting events.

After that, the hits just kept coming. And growing in profile. Shiel Sexton built the NFC practice facility at the University of Indianapolis for the 2012 Super Bowl and also helped manage the game’s Super Bowl Village. Over the next decade the company renovated both Assembly Hall and Memorial Stadium at Indiana University, and during 2020 and 2022 in the middle of COVID, completed a modernization of Gainbridge Fieldhouse.

“That was a $360 million renovation, and it really put it on a par with a lot of other NBA facilities across the country,” Andrews said. “Frankly, because of that work, we take full credit for the Pacers reaching game seven of the NBA Finals this season.”

He’s only kidding about that last part, but the cash that sports brings to Shiel Sexton’s coffers is no joke. Hunt reckons it accounts for around 30% to 35% of total annual revenue (projected to hit $650 million this year).

That cash has helped push employment at Shiel Sexton to just south of 500. The company became employee-owned in 2016, through the establishment of an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP. The transition positioned the company as one of the few major construction firms in the region owned entirely by its employees—a structure that has since been used in company recruiting and branding efforts.

“In 2010 we were looking at ways to take us through the next generations of the company,” Andrews said. “At the time we had about 14 owners. I was one of them, and we said, we’ve got to do something different, to set ourselves and share in the growth and the financial acumen and the financial strength of our employees in the company. So we decided to become an ESOP. We were 30% employee-owned in 2012 and 100% employee-owned in 2016.”

Other projects

While Shiel Sexton has gained attention in recent years for its work on athletic facilities, that sector is only about 30% of its revenue pie. In addition there’s a broad portfolio of industrial, hospitality, health care, corporate and K-12 education projects. Indeed, many of them, including the $200 million Elanco Animal Health global headquarters, Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital, the $206 million Westin Indianapolis Airport hotel, and the K362 Biotech Development Laboratory Building at the Lilly Technology Center North, are as headline-grabbing in their own ways as any stadium.

Perhaps the most visible of its non-sports projects is the Bottleworks District, the ongoing, $300 million redevelopment of the former Coca-Cola bottling plant on the northeast end of Massachusetts Avenue that’s led by Hendricks Commercial Properties. Shiel Sexton served as one of the lead contractors for the multi-phase effort, which included converting the historic Art Deco building into a boutique hotel, constructing new office and retail space, and carefully restoring original architectural details. The firm also handled the build-out of several tenant spaces, including the headquarters for venture studio High Alpha.

Shiel Sexton’s association with Hendricks Commercial Properties goes back years, including work on the Ironworks Hotel, which was completed in 2017.

“We’ve worked with them on so much stuff,” said Hendricks Commercial Properties president and CEO Rob Gerbitz. “Their work really speaks for itself, and we couldn’t have done what you see at Bottleworks or Ironworks without them.”

Hendricks and Shiel Sexton also worked together during the pandemic and weathered the supply chain disruptions it created. It made Gerbitz appreciate what he describes as Shiel Sexton’s penchant for advanced planning. Specifically, Shiel Sexton encouraged Hendricks to buy HVAC units for a building early and store them, rather than risk not being able to get them later given rising prices.

That problem has lessened somewhat, but the possibility of tariffs could make things wobbly once again.

“They’re very good at looking into the future and facing issues like this,” Gerbitz said. “The issue is certainly better as we get farther and farther away from 2020, but it will always be there at some level.”

In the future, Shiel Sexton will still focus on Indiana sports projects, plus (among a great many other things) continue to work with Lilly on its ongoing expansion plans. In addition, the company will serve as construction manager for a new project across the street from Gainbridge Fieldhouse, which will replace an old railway servicing building with a 4,000-seat entertainment venue, retail space and a hotel.

“That’s obviously adjacent to the Fever facility as well, so those areas are going to be a big focus,” Andrews said.

Not that there isn’t room to bid for more—be it a new factory or research facility for Lilly or perhaps a long-awaited downtown soccer stadium. In the meantime, there’s plenty to keep the company busy.

“The Fever practice facility is a very high-profile, exciting project, but we have a couple of other recent high-profile projects,” Hunt said. “We just finished up the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, and we’re also working on the Indianapolis Airport hotel.”•

Correction: This story has been corrected to reflect the current location of the Shiel Sexton headquarters and correct the spelling of Marian University. See more corrections here.