The government wanted to do something about the housing stock in Fort Wayne specifically in the Hanna-Creighton area. It provided the city with $5.5 million dollars for improvements. The city used the money instead to disperse a large African-American population into other declining neighbors. The city bulldozed 112 acres of land located in the Hanna-Creighton Ave, and distributed the land to various entities. The cost to the city was a little less than $300,000 in 1964. The area saw little housing built, but did see apartments for low-income families pop up in the area.
Another grandiose scheme costing more than $1.5 million was hatched to disperse African-Americans into other declining neighborhoods occurred in 1997, according to www.epa/gov/brownfields. The catalyst to the Bowser and Creighton Brownfield development was a fire that broke out near the Hanna-Creighton area. The Bowser location was the site of a fire where over 600,000 tires burned for three days during a Labor Day weekend. The area was deemed a Brownfield, which required some clean up and protection from liability to the owners for any environmental hazard that could have been discovered on the property.
The city obtained a loan of $500,000 that was to be paid back by the residents who lived and worked in the county for the cleanup and redevelopment. An Environment Protection Agency Brownfield Assessment Pilot grant of $200,000 was used for assessing the property and another $27,500 was used for the Bowser Pump Site. $350,000 was used to demolish the remaining charred and unsafe buildings. A $300,000 grants from, the Housing and Urban Development’s Economic Development Initiative was to finance installation of a new public infrastructure for the 20 new homes. The land 12.5 acres was given to the Greater Progressive Housing Community Development Corporation for housing development. The site was divided into three parcels. Ten homes were to be built on one parcel, parcel C as a symbolic revitalization of the area. Ten years later, no signs of the $5 million, 40,000 square foot neighborhood commercial retail center, but rising from the ashes rose a senior citizen apartment building.
Symbolic.
But ten year later Hanna-Creighton area will have another chance at a do over. This time the city government commitment is much more than the thousands it is used to throwing at a neighborhood, mistreated and neglected, and considered the Negro problem. Under the Strengthening American’s Communities Grant Program, cities must prove they are willing to invest dollars into improving their own cities. Therefore, this go round, the city is to invest over $4, 100,000 a year for 5 years, totally $20,500,000, to attract additional investment from private investors by targeting result-oriented projects in economically distressed communities.
In the second year of the plan, the city came up with a marketing strategy for the project calling it a synergy. From that project came a housing project expanding on the Phoenix Place failure to a newer model for changing the appearance of 67 acres covering 37 blocks calleing the model, Renaissance Pointe. According to the City housing plan crafted by the city in 2003,
funds will come from the Community Development Block Grant and Home Investment Partnership to increase homeownership, preserve and improve homes of existing homeowners, create a model revitalization project to be implemented in two other areas of the city, and encourage rental development for low-income senior citizens and people with special needs.
In the plan a total of 400 homes were to be built by 2009. In its fourth year, not one model home but several model homes in the Renaissance Pointe model revitalization project are to be built. A groundbreaking at 2401 John Street is to produce a cluster of six model homes for the Renaissance Pointe project, with Mayor Graham Richards in attendance. At another location within the Renaissance Pointe project is a home on Smith Street was renovated with equipment totaling over $130,000. This is well short of the 400 homes. But this is not the first time that promises were made for homes in this area. On June 29, 2007, a celebration of some sort will be held for the community at 2323 Bowser, at the site of where thousands of tires stored in a warehouse burned for three days.
Eat, drink and be merry as they wait on the new empty promise of 400 new homes.
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