Did you hear what I heard? I didn't but did you hear what I heard?

I read both interview sets and was not impressed. First leading questions supported the blogger's position. You already know your position, built on information from the other side. I would rather ask questions explaining the project which would lead to other questions. Second, I would not take in a laundry list of questions for an hour and half interview.

I would have requested documents, documents and more documents. Documents answers some of the laundry list questions and provide a source for more relevant questions.

Next, I would structure my questions around the individual who would serve as the primary source for information.

Therefore, my questions would materialize from the folks in the room and the available material.

So, two questions, where are certain documents? And the funding sources?

This is my take on Downtown Fort Wayne Baseball interview, Starting with the first leading question,


Harrison Q is a signature project. It is a private and public dollar venture. The investment dollars willbe spent on Harrison Q in hopes of creating more foot traffic, which would in turn support the huge public investments, already in the downtown area.

The venture calls for more investment dollars from the public. What out of town investor does not what support from the locals? Nevertheless, this time public dollars will be combined with private dollars for mixed used project. Mixed use meaning not only a hotel,residential condominiums, street level retail, baseball stadium and a parking garage, but also the commingling of public and private funds.

Local officials controlled community input with planting certain types of projects that would be included in the mixed-use venture. Of course, those volunteering thought at the time of their participation some of these ideas came from their group, but city officials were planted in each group. Nevertheless, city officials and paid consultants compiled these ideas from the meetings and stored the data into three reports, Downtown BluePrint (2002), Downtown BluePrintPlus and Downtown Baseball Plus as marketing tools for private developers.

Because the public dollars are stretched in supporting the big-ticket items, the signature venture is needed to support these big-ticket items. Many of these projects are nonprofits. Moreover, to creatively support these projects they may become branded by the signature project. Branded meaning because their names will be visible. And the parking spaces of smaller nonprofit can collect revenue for charging for parking.


Because Hardball Capital is using their private dollars in this signature venture, they will be driving the development of the Harrison Q project. It makes sense that these businesspersons know more than the elected official knows or appointed officials.

Of course the Embassy, Grand Wayne Convention, Allen County Public Library are in position to take advantage of some of the decisions by Hardball Capital, but who will locally be a part of the project is in negotiation in the role Hardball Capital will play managing a public park.

The city will benefit from Hardball Capital driving this project from the shared revenue stream. This revenue stream is being hammered out as we speak in a legal document of Memorandum of Understanding in which all involved parties will have to sign.


Other public dollars will be similar to what we did in using the restaurant tax for Memorial Coliseum. Instead, this time we were able to extend the Jefferson Pointe TIF district to two streets downtown, Jefferson and Washington. We were motivated so that Jefferson Pointe Tif dollar could be used in the downtown area. The expansion allows us to use the fund from Jefferson Pointe TIF for public improvement on Harrison to the east, Ewing to the west and Baker to the south to improve traffic flow. Moreover, another use of the TIF fund would be to finance the parking garage.

This would free up income generated from the parking garage to pay for maintenance and operation of the parking garage. In addition, CEDIT dollar can now be lumped into one area instead of going into the separate councilman district and at large districts. This be an additional source of public dollars to commingle with private dollars.

Now if it is a success all the new business sales and income taxes will be limited to under a million dollar, more like $750,000.


The tiny businessperson will have an opportunity depending on Hardball Capital, on the other side of Ewing and Jefferson. However, Hardball may have a potential working partnership with the developers of Jefferson Pointe, RED, focusing on the big names and national chains. This would prevent any stores from competing with the stores or restaurants in Jefferson Pointe. In addition, if the tiny businessperson were allowed they would become renters and no longer owners.

Some local business will benefit, like architectural firm learning from a national firm and becoming part of a team in designing the baseball stadium of this signature venture. Other folks like construction companies, contractors, and homeowners in the West Central Neighborhood. Even the Holiday Hotel could benefit if it was to remodel and use the hotel for office space or apartments, which would sure help the new hotel.