It's a City, County, and Downtown Improvement District (D.I.D.) cooperative effort to make Downtown Fort Wayne a more vibrant and exciting place to live, work, and play. The goal is to draft a 5-Year action plan that will guide and direct new investment. But to do so we need your ideas.Learn more here. Posted by Admin at March 19, 2003 01:48 PMSo fire up your imaginations! It's Your Downtown. It's My Downtown. It's Everybody's Downtown! Everybody's Neighborhood... Everybody's Playground... Everybody's History. And that means creating a new vision is Everybody's Opportunity.
I agree with the DID program, as well as the fact that it's "everybody's playground and neighborhood". The downside to those types of statements is that a plethora of diverse people on the SOUTH side treat the neighborhoods AS playgrounds.
When you have drug houses, party houses, boomcars litterbugs ALL in great abundance, having a nice downtown for those of us LIVING in the "playground" becomes a non-sequitor.
I do suppose that a nice downtown will make MY trip to the courthouse more "appealing" as I testify against the person(s) who shoots out my windows for no good reason. I can only imagine the Didier and Chapman families will enjoy the "new" downtown look as they arrive in court as well.
I for one simply LOVE the fact that I have to drive EVERYWHERE ELSE in the city to get almost ANYthing I need, whereas those more "fortunate" are compelled to merely WALK a block or two to the newest addition to the retail venue at the other 3 compass points.
We have an honest chance here to take back the south side and make it viable as well as vital to the city's economy.
A nice downtown is all well and good, but ANY city is ONLY AS GOOD as it's WORSE AREA. And there are only TWO zipcodes with the highest crime rates......and they're in the S.E. quadrant. Imagine that. SO let's FIX UP the downtown...that'll make the south side look MUCH better. Maybe it will even make the south side just "go away".....nice rhetoric if you can sell it.
The south side playground is suffering....the swings are broken, the slidingboard is rusty (no pun intended, CHIEF), the ground is littered with needles, shattered liquor bottles, empty beer cans, and shell casings.
But it IS "everybody's playground"...the only problem with that with a few scattered exceptions, not many people seem to care.
They play (us) anyway.
R.G.
Posted by: R. G. at March 20, 2003 10:05 AM