Covering All The Bases
Make downtown ‘clean and green’
DID wants areas closest to Harrison Square tidied up
Link (NS)
“Arnett is spending the summer as the Downtown Improvement District’s beautification specialist, doing his best to make sure the giant project doesn’t turn into a latter-day Gulliver tied down by a lot of little annoyances.
And that’s precisely the goal of the DID’s new “clean and green” program, which has identified no fewer than 3,183 tiny eyesores that, taken together, could turn off the thousands of visitors Harrison Square is expected to bring downtown starting next spring. The $125 million revitalization project will include condominiums, retail space, a hotel and a baseball stadium.
Arnett and others have spent six weeks inspecting 91 central-city blocks, looking for anything that might pose a physical or aesthetic threat to pedestrians: trees that are missing, dead, or need work; sidewalks or bricks in need of repair; missing or malfunctioning smoking receptacles; broken windows and other features that make buildings unsightly or unsafe. Blocks with few problems were designated “green.” A few more problems earned a “yellow” designation, then “orange” and, finally, “red.”
By the end of the month, block-by-block scores and maps should be available on the DID’s Web site – which is when the work will really begin.”
“Despite its $414,500 annual budget, most of it from a special property tax paid by downtown businesses, the DID has little money for capital improvements. Arnett said the district has talked to the city about helping, especially sidewalks, grates around trees and other needs on public property.
But the real motivation for a downtown face-lift, Arnett hopes, will be exerted by the property owners themselves.”
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“Downtown’s most “challenged” blocks include the north side of Jefferson Boulevard between Lafayette and Barr street, highlighted by gravel parking lots and deteriorating sidewalks (57 issues), and Barr between Jefferson and Wayne Street, where numerous bricks are crumbling in a median.
But the Barr Street block shows how this remains a work in progress. Arnett originally reported 68 separate issues there – the highest of any block – but later decided that counting each brick as an individual problem gave an overly critical impression.
So he counted the bricks in sections and lowered the number of issues to 49. Still “red,” yes – but a lighter shade than before. Other blocks may also be reviewed before the final scores are posted.
But last-minute changes won’t alter the program’s premise, or its promise. This is so-called “broken-window” theory in action: the idea that little and relatively benign problems will, if left unchallenged, ultimately grow into big, costly and possibly dangerous problems.”
This is good to hear. The devil is in the details and the details tend to be ignored in this community. We as a city shouldn’t be content with “good enough”!
I recently heard that the City of Chicago budgets $160 million a year for city beautification (i.e. litter control, flower planters, streetscaping, etc.). The result is that people I’ve talked to from many parts of the country have called it the cleanest big city they’ve ever been to. I hadn’t thought about it until others said it, but it’s true. You won’t find garbage on the street like you do in NYC.
Yep, great idea. I know in May we just had the “Great American Cleanup” but things like this should be done several times a year. We should not leave it up to city workers or street sweepers to clean up all the litter, and we should look at ways of beautifying our community, ESPECIALLY downtown. Every time I drive downtown, I notice things that are simple fixes yet untouched. Things like areas that need to be mowed, weed wacked, litter picked up. There are several areas we could beautify simply by lining with some trees/shrubs or planting some grass(and not letting it grow to 2 ft tall). I know there is an annual budget for this sort of thing, but I would volunteer my time/services to help beautify downtown.
The parking lot bordering our office on Wayne and Harrison behind Cindys diner is probably one of the ugliest eye sores in Fort Wayne and it is in the heart of downtown. I would be embarrassed if I was the owner. Ideally it could be something other than a parking lot, but a low cost solution might be some hedges and other landscaping to detract from the various forms of asphalt, concrete, paint, and rusted barriers. You could probably put in a few thousand dollars worth of boxwoods and mulch to separate certain areas and make it a much nicer space.
A similar survey should be done in winter to identify areas where inept snow-clearing efforts result in sidewalks, crosswalks and bus stops being blocked by snow shoved there by private contractors and city plows, and where lumpy, slippery windrows of ice create barriers between parking spaces and public sidewalks. Attention should be directed to bridges where city plows bury sidewalks under two feet of jagged, crusted, packed snow and ice, forcing pedestrians to walk in the traffic lanes. A call to the city results in being told that bridges are the county’s responsiblity, even though the city’s plows created the problem.
Probably beyond the scope of this survey, still…I know the first few lots on Ewing south of Jefferson have been bought and will be developed into something (although everyone’s hoping Not a gas station), but the whole stretch of Ewing across from the ballpark is pretty bad. Actually, scary bad on some lots. I know if I brought an out-of-town guest to a ballgame and we were standing outside the main entrance I’d be embarrassed for the city if they turned around and looked across the street. That said, I’m really glad that this survey is taking place.