Fort Wayne mayor touts downtown development
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndiana’s second-largest city continues to land first-class projects and investment, reshaping its downtown and attracting national attention.
Downtown investment in Fort Wayne over the past decade has topped $1 billion, from a $30 million boutique hotel in The Bradley to restaurants, retail and tens of millions of dollars in housing remaking the city’s skyline.
Last month, Mayor Sharon Tucker announced plans for the Treeline District, a redevelopment of the former Pepsi warehouse site north of the St. Marys River.
“We want to continue the growth of having a mixed-use facility downtown, attracting people downtown, giving a new kind of environment of activity,” Tucker told Inside INdiana Business Host Gerry Dick.
The Treeline District, which will include 250 apartments, 7,500 square feet of retail space, a parking garage, and most notable an extension of public space along the riverfront.
The district is part of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in projects that have been talked about for years and are now becoming a reality.
“We have increased our riverfront by adding our Promenade Park, which is a huge, beautiful park for walking, swinging,” she said. “We have a small open theatre there where you can rent the space and have small concerts. We have a barge in the middle of the water where you can rent and have a little concert out in the middle of the river, and seating along the river side there so that individuals can sit along the banks and watch a concert.”
Tucker said the Treeline District aims to expand those offerings on the other side of the river, with an emphasis on providing more housing.
She said the investment is putting Fort Wayne in the national spotlight among an increasing number of cities embracing waterways as a means of enhancing quality of life and attracting talent.
“Fort Wayne has been deemed one of the fastest growing Midwest cities; we’ve been deemed No. 8 as the best place to live, so we’re getting national accolades because of the work that we’re doing in our downtown and specifically in our riverfront development, and in our parks,” she said. “So people want to come to Fort Wayne and be a part of the success.”
And that quality of life effort increased again just last week, with the city, along with the University of Saint Francis and Surack Enterprises, announced a $30 million renovation of USF’s Robert Goldstine Performing Arts Center in the city’s downtown.
“We want to make sure we renovate that building and make it the historical landmark that it is, beautify it the way that it is, but bring it up to date,” Tucker said.
Tucker said it takes risks to make real change happen, especially when trying to grow a portion of the community.
“Any leader worth their salt takes into consideration all of the real and perceived facts and fiction of emotions that will go into [a project],” she said. “And you also have to make sure that you are a believer of the project and a believer of the value that your community could receive from that type of investment.”