The long heralded downtown baseball-stadium plan is finally here, and it's a doozy. We should probably call it the stadium-plus plan, since it also includes a hotel, condos, shopping and a little bit of everything else. There's so much to say about the proposal that we'll all undoubtedly be writing back and forth about it for months, but just a few obvious points right off, er, the bat:
1. There had better be very open and very thorough discussions about this at every step of the process. If a monster project such as this is to succeed, public support is essential. If it gets pushed through over the objections of a majority of the citizenry, it will fail. There's nothing Fort Wayne and Allen County taxpayers hate more than feeling like something is a done deal they have no say on.
2. It will be a tough sell. Everything proposed for Harrison Square, we already have. There's a stadium people already go to. People are now quite happy to shop at Glenbrook and Jefferson Pointe. There are plenty of hotel rooms and places to live in other parts of town. Why is it so important to have all that stuff in one particular place? The case can't be made with facts and figures -- the opponents will have plenty of those, too, and everybody will be able to point to similar projects in other cities that succeeded or failed, and nobody can really predict how this one might work out. The city has to sell a dream -- why downtown is important and why this will revive it.
3. This project is so big that it will suck all the air out of any other downtown plans for a long time. So this had better be the right idea. It would be better for it to not get off the ground than for it to get done and not make it.
4. I'm a big believer in downtowns in general and have a lot of fond memories of ours in particular, so I really would like to see it come back. I'm not sure this is the best idea. It's a self-contained complex. Even if it does well, how will it spur development elsewhere, especially on what will become the dead zone on the north side of the Grand Wayne Center? Why should I care if this particular corner of downtown does well for the people who set up businesses there?
5. But I'm still only skeptical, not cynically pessimistic.
Our editorial board will be meeting with the mayor at 3 o'clock this afternoon. If's there's something you'd like to know about the proposal, put it in a comment, and I'll ask him. Nothing snarky or sarcastic, please. Serious questions about a major project that could be good or bad for downtown. I'll write about his answers in a future post.
