Ft. Wayne Set for Big Transformation
Like a lot of small US cities, it lost much of its manufacturing base, but adaptive reuse projects are bringing back the downtown.
FT. WAYNE, IN—Like many Midwest cities, in the last few generations Ft. Wayne lost a number of manufacturing facilities that once underpinned its economy. But the urban revival, which is bringing back downtowns across the US, is also helping this city recover some lost ground.
A group of developers is set to begin work on Electric Works, the $440 million redevelopment of an abandoned GE campus near downtown into a 1.2 million square-foot mixed-use innovation district. It is just one of several significant projects underway or recently completed that will change the city’s skyline and allow its businesses to compete for talent.
“This is an incredibly large project for a community our size,” John Sampson, chief executive officer of Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership, tells GlobeSt.com. The campus, which in its 1920s heyday employed 40% of the city’s workforce, had been abandoned and was “a location that the community had pretty much given up on.”
But RTM Ventures LLC, a joint venture of MD-based Cross Street Partners, and IN-based Greenstreet Ltd., and Biggs Development, have now secured interest and letters of intent covering nearly 50% of the project’s pre-leasing goal, with tenants including Indiana Tech, Fort Wayne Community Schools, and Fort Wayne Public Market, among others.
“A significant residential district called West Central is just two blocks away,” Sampson adds, and he envisions that turning the GE campus into a green space with bike paths will help make downtown an even more attractive place to live. “We view this project as transformative.”
Ft. Wayne has a good model to work from, he says. A few years ago, Greater Fort Wayne Inc. chief executive officer Eric Doden and others traveled to American Tobacco Co.’s campus in Durham, NC, to see how reviving such a property can impact a city. The success of that venture in creating a new entertainment center for downtown Durham helped convince GE, along with city and state officials, that something similar could work for Ft. Wayne.
Once complete, the 39-acre, 18-building Electric Works site will feature office, retail and residential space, as well as anchor universities and institutions, a boutique hotel and food market, incubators, affordable lofts for creatives, and gallery spaces.
Work on the first phase, which will include renovation of a pair of buildings with a combined 600,000 square feet, will begin this summer. The second phase will then tackle two similar buildings on the east side.
“We’re a region that is fighting for its place in the global marketplace,” Sampson says. “And you can’t do that by holding onto the past.”
Too many people see cities like this merely as part of the Rust Belt, he adds. But Ft. Wayne, the second largest metro in the state, is more than a town with an industrial past. It has several strong health systems and hosts the Indiana University School of Medicine, a four-year medical college. Furthermore, as reported in GlobeSt.com, Ash Brokerage, the largest independently-owned insurance brokerage agency in the nation, recently built a $98 million mixed-use project for the downtown, including an eight-story, 95,000-square-foot, $29 million headquarters building.
Other major projects include: six new hotels, including a 125-room boutique hotel spearheaded by Barbara Bradley Baekgaard, co-founder of Vera Bradley, a Ft. Wayne-based luggage and handbag design company; $100 million Riverfront revitalization project; and the $35 million redevelopment of The Landing, which will turn a historic street block into an art district with a mix of housing, businesses and entertainment.
“The market has responded well to these opportunities for downtown residents,” Sampson says. “You can clearly see the momentum.”