Ft. Wayne Business Tycoon Cheers Heliport Decommission Reversal
By Russ McQuaid
Posted: Oct 12, 2026 / 06:33 PM EDT
Updated: Oct 12, 2026 / 06:33 PM EDT
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Indianapolis — When Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita announced late last week that the Federal Aviation Administration had reversed a city-led effort to decommission the Indianapolis Downtown Heliport, the news reverberated all the way to Fort Wayne.
"We had been landing at the downtown heliport in Indy,” said Chuck Surack, billionaire founder of Sweetwater Sound and owner of Sweetwater Aviation. "And then about five years ago I got wind the mayor and the Indianapolis Airport Authority wanted to close that heliport down and I’ve been battling it ever since."
Underutilized and not maintained, the abandoned heliport sat square in the middle of the site where Mayor Joe Hogsett thought about building a quarter-billion-dollar stadium to entice Major League Soccer to locate a franchise in downtown Indianapolis. The Statehouse never bought into his stadium construction plan which depended on anticipated revenues from undeveloped parcels of property downtown, MLS doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to relocate or expand a franchise to Indy, and Surack, who said he regularly flies into and out of Indianapolis, marshaled his forces to oppose the Hogsett scheme to have the FAA decommission the site and the Indianapolis Airport Authority to sell it to the City for $10.88 million, about four million dollars less than Surack said he was willing to pay.
"I have the support of the state,” Surack told Fox59/CBS4. "I have the support of Senator Todd Young and Todd Rokita and the governor and on and on and on and all the aviation organizations were in support of keeping this open. The mayor was kind of out on an island by himself, suggesting it should be shut down."
After Rokita’s announcement of the FAA’s decommission rollback decree, Hogsett said, "The FAA decision does not reflect the priorities, needs or interests of our city and its residents."
"I personally believe the mayor is very wrong,” said Surack. "Every major city in the country has a heliport in their downtown."