Most people in Fort Wayne seem to agree that downtown revitalization is a worthwhile goal. With this in mind, what are some things that could be done for downtown besides the much talked about Harrison Square proposal? The video below provides an opportunity to learn from another city's successes and to examine what people are attracted to in downtown areas.
Insights into a Lively Downtown: An Ann Arbor, MI Case Study
Runtime: 20:30
Comments? Responses? Suggestions of your own? Post them here!
12 comments:
Personally I can't think of a core maybe a small part of calhoun, or columbia?
Being intimately acquainted with Ann Arbor, I can tell you that they do have a bustling and vibrant downtown. However, it doesn't hurt to dump 30,000 mostly single 20 year olds right in the middle of your downtown either.
Great question. I always think of Calhoun as the core of Fort Wayne. The area around the Dash-In has a lot of potential as a retail/residential community. I look forward to future development there.
Fort Wayne can learn from the success of Ann Arbor's "college town" population. The clip mentions that of the people interviewed, they would rather be downtown than at the university hot spots.
The downtown is the university hotspot. If we want Fort Wayne to learn from Ann Arbor, we may as well learn something from San Francisco and locate our city on an ocean, we'll were at it.
Yes, Ann Arbor has a lot of college people, but that's besides the point.
Fort Wayne can make similar changes to our streets to promote pedestrian activity, open up the buildings with street level windows, and create places for people to hang out and congregate, as well as other aspects mentioned in the video.
These are all lessons that can be taken from Ann Arbor's example and applied to Fort Wayne.
These changes can be enacted in a city whether or not it is a "college town".
Do the observations of the video make sense? Would those attributes and aspects work in Fort Wayne? That's what we should be discussing.
I love Fort Wayne and I love Ann Arbor and have spent considerable time in both. But how can you say that Ann Arbor has a lot of college people but "that's beside the point." How can 30,000 people dumped into your downtown with disposable income and disposable time be beside the point?
Because changes to the streets, facades, and atmosphere can be changed regardless of who's downtown. Most of downtown is hostile and unattractive from a pedestrian's point of view. The area has to be conducive for walkability and social functions if it's going to thrive.
Actually Fort Wayne is a college town. I did some quick research and here is what I found:
-IPFW has about 12,000 students
-Taylor University in FW has around 1,000 students
-Saint Francis has 2,000 students
-Indiana Tech has around 3,000 students
That’s about 18,000 students. Its not 30,000 but its definitely not negligible.
Scott
I guarantee you 100% that if you dropped the University of Michigan into downtown Fort Wayne it would transform the downtown immediately. It wouldn't matter if the downtown is "hostile" or "unattractive." In fact, Fort Wayne has a lot of things going for it that Ann Arbor doesn't. Ann Arbor has no river downtown (its river is outside of town). Ann Arbor has a homeless and panhandling problem that Fort Wayne doesn't have. My only point was that comparing Ann Arbor and Fort Wayne is like comparing apples and oranges.
Kelly - how many of the 12,000 IPFW students ever see downtown? Where the IPFW campus is now, they might as well be 100 miles away. In fact, that's not a bad idea - abandoning the north campus and moving IPFW downtown or at least transitioning IPFW downtown. Drawing 12,000 students multiple times a week is a lot better than drawing 3,000 people 50 nights a year.
Great idea putting the video of new motivation for a thriving downtown Fort Wayne!
I agree with the hypothetical statement that IPFW should be "moved downtown" and by that action, implementing 18,000 into the heart of downtown.
The only problem is: we can't just keep 'moving' places; the people need to be attracted and that people need to move.
The simpliest changes to our streets would help how friendly our city is. All of our major arteries of downtown are one way streets with 3-4 lanes. They create race conditions in which people are hurrying to get to the next night, thus hurrying to get out of downtown. These streets are not friendly to walkers around downtown.
I think we do not have a core due to the fact that we have all of these dividers that are four-lane-one-way streets. Add some on street parking and increase the size of the sidewalks by a half a lane on each side.
Someone should get their facts right. There are more like 70 home games a year.
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