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.
