Our town

OK, I went to the new Harrison Square Web site and took the virtual tours. The place as conceived looks nice, but the prices are still ridiculous. $150,000 for barely over 600 square feet? And all the downtown amenities are just promised -- no guarantee of delivery. This seems like an attempt to promote the sizzle when people aren't buying the steak.

Harrison Square developers are having trouble selling their condominiums, so they're rolling out a new marketing plan. Indiana's NewsCenter went out looking for the kind of condos Fort Wayne folks do buy and, surprise, surprise, discovered a fondness for peace and quiet, woods, tennis courts and swimming pools. Then there is Harrison Square:

The price range on the Harrison Square condos is much higher, in the 175 to 350-thousand dollar amounts.

If you're going to do something pedestrian-friendly, it won't do to have drivers unclear on the concept:

Irene Stroh, 24, 1520 W. Ashland Ave., was walking across Riverside after the Scramble Light changed when she was hit by a 2002 Ford F-150 pickup driven by Brian A. Johnson, 37, Selma.

Gee, I don't know. Sounds kinda catchy to me:

“Not making the list of dying cities is not exactly the kind of thing economic development people dream about,” Young said. And he's right, of course. “Fort Wayne: We're Not Dead” isn't much of a marketing slogan.

Most of the stories about Robert Armstrong mention that he was on the Central High School basketball team that won the state championship in 1943. They also say that he started the Snider High School athletic department and that he had been a teacher before that.

Saigon, one of my favorite restaurants, gets a nice writeup by a Circle City couple whose Worth Your Attention blog is dedicated to "eating, drinking, shopping and exploring Indianapolis and beyond."

There are so many specialized Web sites out there now, that a lot of Fort Wayne news is going to show up on some of them. Two stories made those sites yesterday.

I don't want to alarm anybody, but the International Olympic Committee has already narrowed the host for the 2016 summer games to a short list of four (Chicago, Tokyo, Rio and Madrid), and the list of bidders for the 2020 games is already growing -- India, Peru, Birmingham, Ala., and St. Petersburg, Fla., are definitely in already.

When Fort Wayne Community Schools unveiled its $500 million building program, a lot of people said, "But what about academics?" Now we have the answer. FWCS has plans to reinvent its six high schools. I'm working on an editorial about it, and I don't know exactly the final shape will be, but it will not be nearly as uncritically supportive as The Journal Gazette's:

This is one of those good ideas that are spoiled only by the realization that such things should go on all the time, not just when there's a cash-flow "crisis":

At a time when all school districts are feeling a cash-flow pinch, Westfield Washington Schools is working with city officials to save money by sharing fuel tanks, paper and maintenance.