New DID director wants to put plans into practice
By Ryan Lengerich
rlengerich@news-sentinel.com
Growing up in west Chicago, Dan Carmody knew from a young age he wanted to be involved in architecture and city planning.
He earned his urban regional planning degree from the University of Illinois, and landed in Rock Island, Ill., in 1977 as a city planner. Two years later, he left his job and founded a brewery, which thrived through the 1980s even as a major plant closing devastated the local economy.
He sold the brewery and returned to a leadership position with the city in 1988 as president of Renaissance Rock Island, a nonprofit group charged with reinvigorating a slumping downtown.
Now, 17 years later, with Carmody's help, Rock Island is a thriving city of 38,800 in the Quad Cities region along the western border of Illinois.
Last week, Fort Wayne leaders announced Carmody was selected as new director of the Downtown Improvement District.
An advocate for downtown
Carmody's first visit to Fort Wayne came on a Saturday during the Three Rivers Festival. Fort Wayne's most popular event reaffirmed his mind-set that downtowns are "everybody's neighborhood," even in times when suburban sprawl threatens midsize cities nationwide.
"There is only one place that (festival) can happen, and that is downtown," he said.
Carmody fills a position vacant nearly a year, a time when the board for the 10-year-old Downtown Improvement District revamped its direction and searched for a suitable leader. Once geared toward beautification projects, promotion and event hosting, the organization's new focus is economic development.
"The first positive reaction was the huge amount of community investment that has gone on there in the past few years. You can see the strong civic commitment to the big catalyst projects," Carmody said, citing the newly opened Grand Wayne Convention Center, library expansion project and Allen County Courthouse renovation.
"Now
how do we work with the private sector to see those market-based investments? You got to show them there is a market where they don't see a market."
That's a lesson Fort Wayne's 24-person delegation to Greenville, S.C., to study its downtown revitalization learned. Greenville has become a national model for merging public and private dollars in the interest of major development.
Filling in the gaps
Carmody, armed with his small-business knowledge, saw something lacking when he visited Fort Wayne.
"The first challenges I noticed were a limited amount of retail, limited amount of housing, and a limited amount of food and beverage for a town its size," he said.
"I think there are some great restaurants in Fort Wayne already, but there is not a great concentration of them, that I know."
John Freistroffer, owner of Columbia Street West, said he supports the Downtown Improvement District's new focus and looks for Carmody to reinvigorate the organization.
"He's a businessman and a city developer, so maybe he will have two different angles," Freistroffer said.
Though downtown's economic impact may fall short of expectations, Carmody said that does not mean its importance is waning.
"One huge aspect is the number of large churches that still remain in the downtown area," he said.
"That represented to me that downtown may have lost some of its economic hold on the region, but certainly had retained its spiritual heart of the community."
Not alone
The Downtown Improvement District represents only a small portion of the engine driving downtown revitalization.
A slew of community development and redevelopment officials crowd the City-County Building. The Economic Development Alliance attracts and maintains jobs in the city and county, and the Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce plays its role in business development.
"Nothing we are going to do can be done ourselves," Carmody said. "It has to be done with others who have a stake in downtown."
Carmody said there is no shortage of ideas within the city's five-year downtown revitalization plan, or blueprint, started in 2003 by Mayor Graham Richard. In June, planner Gianni Longo submitted a report updating the blueprint, creating another useful tool with which to work.
But for Carmody, the blueprint alone means little.
"If the plan itself were going to get the job done, it would have been done 20 years ago," he said.
"But the plan is only as good as its implementation. I think there is a good plan in place. The challenging part is to put it into practice."
Dan Carmody
Age: 50
Born: Oak Park, Ill.
Education: Bachelor's degree in Urban and Regional Planning, University of Illinois
Family: Wife Vivian and six daughters
Accomplishments: Board member, International Downtown Association; Citizen of the Year, Rock Island, professional category
Philosophy on downtown revitalization: "Successful downtowns combine density, diversity, and details to become compelling places that are sustainable, equitable, and viable. Successful downtown organizations are effective, incremental, entrepreneurial, inclusive and organic."
On the Web
- Downtown Improvement District - www.downtownfortwayne.com
- Downtown Rock Island Arts and Entertainment District -