Pre-Harrison Square Councilmen Letter

Baseball stadium can spark greater downtown revitalization
Originally published 8/31/2006 in the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel
Written by Fort Wayne City Councilmen Tim Pape, D-5th, and Sam Talarico Jr., R-at large.

At the age of 30, with new careers and young families, we both plowed into local government determined to make our city greater, our people more prosperous and our community safer and to leave our children with a greater future. Eight years later, after countless hours of study and debate, we know there are few things that can better further those goals than the revitalization of our downtown.
In a recent New York Times poll, business owners placed quality-of-life factors as their top consideration in locating their businesses. From conversations with local business owners, we know they agree. They want the highest quality of life for their families. Moreover, they know that in order to compete for the most talented employees, it is imperative that downtown Fort Wayne provide amenities offered by competing communities. We consistently hear from college graduates, whom we are trying to retain or to bring to Fort Wayne, that they want to live in a city with a vibrant urban environment.
We know from our research that other cities (of all sizes and circumstances) revitalized their downtowns into vibrant, fun, lively, interesting, inspiring places that are business magnets. Cities such as Greenville, S.C., Greensboro, N.C., and Dayton, Ohio, are experiencing economic revitalization with downtown developments that include new minor-league baseball stadiums. We believe Fort Wayne would be no exception. We have the intelligence, drive, prudence and resourcefulness to return downtown to the glory days older generations regularly reflect upon with happiness and nostalgia.
There is something special to the human soul about a vibrant downtown that cannot be replicated by gigantic shopping centers (even outdoor ones designed to evoke a downtown experience) or by new parks or even by otherwise functional ball fields surrounded by acres of concrete parking spaces. We seek to congregate, to wander and to enjoy life in places with character, walkability, history, connection, activities and options.
Once we determined the critical importance of downtown to our future, we investigated how it could be done. Led by Mayor Graham Richard and Allen County Commissioner Marla Irving, the community drew up a specific plan called Downtown Blueprint. The new streetscapes, signage, wider sidewalks, traffic control, Barr Street Market, Grand Wayne Center and Library expansions, free downtown wireless Internet service and a planned third hotel reflect sustained implementation of that plan. The Blueprint advised deeper investigation into the possible advantages of relocating our stadium downtown to serve as a catalyst for private-sector investment. Mayor Richard formed the BaseballPLUS Committee with the charge to thoroughly investigate and report whether Fort Wayne could replicate other cities’ success in using stadiums to catalyze such downtown investment.
We may have made a mistake labeling the committee BaseballPLUS. The title further fosters the misimpression of our citizens that the work of the committee was solely to move Memorial Stadium downtown, rather than to determine whether a downtown baseball stadium could be a catalyst for new retail, commercial, and housing development in downtown. We made sure to include skeptics on the committee of 25 local community, governmental, and business leaders. The committee included two Coliseum trustees and its general manager – individuals with a vested interest in concluding that our community’s professional baseball stadium stay on the Coliseum property.
Nonetheless, the committee unanimously recommended Mayor Richard explore with Hardball Capital, the new owners of our Wizards, whether they might invest significant private capital to develop a downtown real estate campus consisting of residential housing, retail stores and a baseball stadium.
This community has a tremendous opportunity with Hardball Capital. The owners of Hardball Capital are nationally recognized for successful downtown development projects and have voiced their interest in a downtown baseball development. This is an especially timely discussion to have since there is now talk of multi-millions being spent to renovate the existing Memorial Stadium.
The city has a very real and present opportunity to attract tens of millions of private dollars in the form of housing and retail stores that would be developed concurrently with a new stadium. There is no other catalyst project with remotely that type of possibility. We have an opportunity to make choices for our future to create the kind of community that is unique, distinct, and desirable. To pass on this opportunity is to reject not just becoming a jobs magnet community, but to reject hope.
As fathers of three young children each, the stakes are even higher for us. We love baseball late in the summer on cool nights with a slight breeze when you can sense fall just around the corner. Our children are in light jackets munching on Cracker Jack and laughing as our mascot mimics the visiting circus acrobat performing between innings. We don’t know our team’s place in the standings, but we’re having fun, the stadium is packed, and we gaze out past center field upon our downtown skyline. A new skyscraper is taking shape, funding for the new downtown youth sports complex is falling into place, new river developments have been proposed, and there are waiting lists for downtown condo units. We are content because we have reason to hope that our children just might choose, after all, to come back after college and live out their lives with us in Fort Wayne.