The Fort Wayne International Airport is finally tackling the one thing that can increase its passenger numbers:
Airport officials designed the new site in part to counteract the tendency of people to search for cheap flights out of Indianapolis, Chicago and Detroit. According to airport research, 55 percent of passengers who should be flying out of Fort Wayne aren't. Indianapolis is the biggest draw, taking 31 percent of the potential market.
Fort Wayne Observed notes comments made by Allen County Prosecutor Karen Richards in a Wall Street Journal article and follows up with a podcast interview with the prosecutor. The WSJ asked her to comment on a new approach to drug dealers getting some nationwide interest. Instead of being arrested, suspected nonviolent drug dealers are given a second chance, subjecting them to pressure from the "influentials" in their lives such as mothers and mentors.
As expected, county commissioners this morning responded to the City Council's government-reorganization request with something less than the council proposed. The county wants full consolidation off the table, and instead wants a reorganization committee to study only the merger of these specific departments: clerk of courts/city clerk, communications/911, highway/street departments, human resources, land use planning (GIS), parks and purchasing.
A "new" development in the 18-year-old April Tinsley case:
Investigators have reason to believe that the same man who wrote a message on a barn door near I-469 in 1990 claiming to have killed the 8-year-old girl also left four notes in small plastic baggies at the homes of young girls in Fort Wayne and Allen County in 2004.
I got a call yesterday from someone in city government who told me that quite a few restaurant owners in Fort Wayne are not very happy right now.
Poor Wal-Mart can't catch a break. It's attacked by labor unions and Democratic politicians, and now it's even being disparaged by people who wanted it to come to their neighborhood:
Fort Wayne NAACP president Michael Latham said Wednesday he will call on shoppers to boycott the new Wal-Mart at Southtown Centre when it opens next week if the store doesn't remain open 24 hours like every other in town.
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One way you can tell you live in Fort Wayne instead of Chicago. Here, we note coming of Macy's with tearful reminiscences about the passing of the L.S. Ayre's era. There, they take to the streets:
Protesters marched, carried signs and called for a boycott Saturday because their beloved Marshall Field's store, the shopper's magnet on State Street for more than a century, had been replaced by a New York icon — Macy's.
I'm taking my birthday day off today, so this will be my only post. Y'all keep the wheels of commerce running till I get back tomorrow.
Where are the front-page stories, the TV reporters asking people how their lives have been affected, the calls from politicians for immediate action, the letters to the editor from the conspiracy theorists? Gasoline prices have dropped dramatically, even drastically, in the last couple of weeks.
