The New Boss and the Old boss
The progress that begin around 1980 in the city of Fort Wayne will continue under the guidance of Tom Henry. We've been very fortunate to have
Tom Henry's opponent preached a mantra of reining in local government and putting the brakes on government involvement in improvement projects such as Harrison Square and Southtown Centre. Indeed, if you believe some of the numbers that have been tossed around, a majority of the local citizenry were against such projects. If we truly are a community opposed to change, how do such so-called "big government, hard left leaning" mayors keep getting elected in this conservative midwestern town?
I can't speak for the rest of you, but I can give you my thoughts as a forty-year resident of Fort Wayne (My family roots actually go back much farther than that here; older residents will recognize the surnames of my local ancestors - the Buskirks and the Leiters).I remember driving around downtown as a teenager in the very late 1970's. Downtown was a popular location for haunted houses to be set up in for Halloween back then. Why not? It was full of old deserted buildings and little else. The only "new" things in decades was the City-County Building.
I still recall tooling around downtown in my 1964 Chevy BelAire, in 1979, to check out the haunted houses and the downtown remote from WMEE. The future site of One Summit Square was a big hole in the ground, surrounded by a board fence on all sides. I don't think I could have told you then, and certainly not now, what had been there and I was curious as to what was going on - nothing ever changed in the "deadlands" of downtown back then. The thought that a brand new 20+ story "skyscraper" would be built there soon never even occurred to my young adolescent mind.
I've digressed quite a bit since starting this entry, even taking the time to watch Pruitt interview the anti-Christ (Hiya, Dan-O!), so I'm gonna wrap this one up for now. I'm still running on four hours of sleep from last night's excitement; I may actually be dreaming of writing this post! I'll know for sure on the flip. . .
Goodnight, and good luck!
posted by John Good @ 7:22 PM
3 Comments:
John,
Nice post even if you were asleep when you wrote it. I hear you on the no sleep agenda. Between pre-election stress interfering with my sleep to now post election glee keeping me wide awake, I should probably go get paid for some sleep deprevation study. Really no complaints though! At least I'm not sleeping over worrying about the future had Tom not won.
As for downtown, I was running around there in the 80s (and the 90s, but I'll try to focus here) and the ONLY thing going on then was what my "gang" was getting into at the park, Coney Island and the Blue Mountain. I wonder if I'll always miss the Blue Mountain... but, ah maybe we have some Blue Mountains in our near future.
Angie - I saw the boarded up warehouses and holes in the ground replaced by One Summit Square, Midtowne Crossing, et al. And I started feeling hopeful again. I was worried when Helmke knocked Win out, but he proved to be another champion for downtown.
Graham has kicked it up a notch, and I know that Tom will carry the torch forward, as do the majority who just elected him to do so.
I totally agree. I believe no matter what plans the city would be making for downtown there would be this loud group who disapprove. They're certainly loud, but not the majority.
Despite the lack of activity in downtown I saw as a teenager, I fell in love with our downtown and have always seen potential and promise. I lived in West Central for about ten years and loved it. I'm a wee bit jealous I won't be living in the heart of all the new life that is and has been developing downtown. But I'm not too far away... I love going down to Toscani Pizza on a weeknight and actually seeing lots of people at Toscani's, JK's, the library, etc. I don't remember One Summit Square being built, but I do remember it being purple. It was again colored purple not too long ago.:) Go Harrison Square! Go! See you at a baseball game.
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