Springfield chamber selects Indianapolis for next Community Leadership Visit

Matt Morrow: Indianapolis will be a first-time stop for the chamber CLV.

The Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce recently picked Indiana’s biggest city for its next annual Community Leadership Visit, after going to Cincinnati last year. Springfield Chamber President Matt Morrow said at an April 1 media roundtable that the chamber trip is scheduled Oct. 6-8. The most recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates in 2024 said the population for Indianapolis is over 891,000.

“We take about 85 people on this trip, and that’s logistically kind of necessary to limit it to that for us to be able to actually keep the group together and be in the same room at the same time, which is a key part of the value,” he said.

Morrow said the performance of the Indianapolis metropolitan statistical area was most impressive to him, as noted in a 2025 study by the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

In the study, of the nation’s 195 largest metropolitan areas, 10 were able to achieve strong growth and prosperity between 2013 and 2023 while maintaining relatively low increases in the cost of living, which includes housing. One of those was the Indianapolis MSA, along with others including Tallahassee, Florida; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Fargo, North Dakota.

“The thing they have in common is that they’ve all aggressively expanded their housing supply. So, you’re aggressively expanding your housing supply, you’re controlling the biggest driver of cost of living in most people’s lives,” Morrow said, adding the chamber wants to dig deeper to learn more about what Indianapolis is doing right in that area.

There will be roughly eight sessions over the course of the trip that will involve a deep dive into several key areas in the community. Those are still to be determined, chamber officials say.

“We’ve never been to Indianapolis before on one of these trips in 30-plus years, but I’m excited to go there,” Morrow said.

The chamber also soon plans to reveal results of a study it dubbed Stay SGF. Morrow said the chamber contracted with Mostly Serious LLC, a Springfield website design and digital marketing company, on the study, which involves a survey of juniors and seniors from four-year universities in town. The survey looks to learn key drivers that motivate students to stay or leave Springfield after graduation.

“We’ll be getting results at a staff level in a little over a week,” he said, noting the chamber then looks to share those with its board of directors later in the month before a public reveal.

By the time the chamber is ready to share the results publicly, Morrow said he hopes it will have compiled structured feedback from its board to further inform the survey data.

“What we’d love to be able to do is say, ‘Here's what we learned, here’s what it means and here’s what we think the next steps look like,’” he said, adding the date of sharing the results is still to be determined.