Jack Murrah came to Fort Wayne to explain to local leaders how the foundation he headed helped turn Chattanooga's downtown around. He offered advice that may be a little too late (and which city leaders have heard before anyway and chosen to ignore):
Fort Wayne isn't exactly sinking, Murrah is quick to point out. But neither is its downtown yet thriving, despite the $125 million Harrison Square project and mostly tax-funded projects, including the expansion of the Grand Wayne Center and main library. That's precisely why the Downtown Improvement District invited him: Despite the positive changes already under way, the momentum can't be sustained by government alone.
In Chattanooga, that realization led Lyndhurst and other foundations and banks to pledge $12 million in 1986, giving birth to the River City Co. that has attracted more than $1 billion to that city's downtown - including the aquarium, which attracted more than 1 million visitors in its first year alone.
Downtown Improvement District President Richard Davis would like to create a similar community development corporation in Fort Wayne, but knows the private sector will have to do most of the heavy lifting from here on out if Fort Wayne is to approach Chattanooga's results.
Some people might say downtown isn't thriving because of all those tax-funded projects, not despite them. How much heavy lifting can the private sector be counted on for when the public sector has muscled so much through already and so many people have the feeling that "economic development" is something the Good Old Boy Network likes to play with, making up the rules as it goes along? It seems to me that public-private collaboration would work best when everybody starts on the same page, which might have the title "What can we do together to make downtown thrive?" When the public sector gets so far ahead and then asks the private sector to catch up, there is a danger that the two groups won't even be using the same book, let alone reading from the same page.
I agree with Kevin's closing point in the column that what is needed is "a commonly supported vision and mechanism for making decisions and spending money." But we're a long, long way from even knowing how to talk about a shared vision. There's a small matter of the private sector's lack of trust in the public sector, completely justified as far as I can tell.
And all of this flows from a premise that is at least debatable: Downtowns are good, and a community needs a vibrant one in order to thrive. I believed that for a long time, but I've started to have my doubts. I had a nostalgic fondness for downtown Fort Wayne that led to me to support all sorts of foolish projects I would ordinarily have questioned on fiscal responsibility/limited government grounds. I wonder how many other people are reflexively romantic downtown fans. Downtowns developed and flourished for reasons, and they started to wither and die for reasons. People don't live the way they once did, and the hustle and bustle go where the people go.
There is a trend, it seems, of people returning to downtowns as they get tired of long commutes and traffic jams and yearn for walkable distances and a slower pace. But if enough people want it, that movement will happen organically just as the migration to the suburbs did. Those who say the trend can or should be accelerated by this government policy or that public-private venture should be questioned with a skeptical attitude.
Comments
I agree that this city isn't "sinking"...but we're nicely stuck AGROUND on a SANDBAR, with few (if any) methods to extricate ourselves from this situation at present.
And YES...a COMMONLY supported ANYTHING is better than the current status quo.
But how many times are the PEOPLES words blatantly ignored for "our greater good" (puh-lease)?
As far as nostalgia goes, I love a nice downtown, and perhaps we've had a little TOO MUCH "hustle & bustle" for OUR own good for too long a time.
And NO, you cannot rush this "new" trend...it WILL occur JUST as you say it will...in it's OWN time and for it's OWN reasons.
The PEOPLE will make it happen...or not.
Well stated, Leo!
The "organic" movement to which Leo refers shouldn't be confused with the sort of planning that most communities have experienced, i.e., planning AFTER development. This has all too often essentially put commercial developers' short-term interests ahead of the long-term interests of the communities. Granted that public and private services should be made available to those areas into which people have recently moved. Yet facilitating such expansion in order to ostensibly serve both private (developers' and homeowners') and tax revenue (government) interests can, as we have seen, debilitate other areas of the community, ergo central city deterioration. One need only briefly visit cities whose governments have aggressively combined diverse downtown private commercial development (a "big tent" rather than a "big event") with attractive downtown public spaces linked to the rest of the city through easily accessible public transportation to start imagining what is doable here.
A few corrections, Leo:
1. "because the public sector has muscled so much through already"? Please! Even with HS, the amount of downtown investment during the recent national urban renaissance, both public and private, has been pitiful and embarrassing. Do you really imagine private entities feel the City has robbed them of opportunities?
2. Downtowns ARE good! When the Komets won recently, did they have their victory parade on Lima Road or Glenbrook's parking lot? When fireworks occur, do they shoot them off at Village of Coventry or Dupont Crossing? People are built to be in community, and the burbs can never deliver that to them, notwithstanding Jefferson Pointe's feeble attempt at a Summer Jazz Fest.
3. Hustle and bustle doesn't necessarily follow people, people most often go where larger forces direct them. And even when migrations are people led, that doesn't mean they're good (i.e. white flight).
4. The migration to the 'burbs was anything but organic. There's been no greater government subsidy in history than the one that created and has sustained sprawl. I thought everybody acknowledged that by now.
5. Question: are you skeptical and even cynical when millions are proposed annually for highway, roads, utilities, bridges, etc? If you're interested in which type of spending is more efficient, it's a no-brainer.
In the past eight years we have poured over 200 million into downtown with little private support. Private support is driven by demand, not politicians. The politicians and political appointee's driving downtown development have done little to measure that demand or they would not be trying to build upscale one and two bedroom condos where there has never been a demand for them or new hotels where existing hotels have a very large vacancy rate.
Scott, yes the Komets won... never mind where the victory parade occurred...where did the victory occur? There were over 9000 people present for their Victory
For the record it is Harry W. Baals.....sorry Freudian slip:)