Grand Wayne Promenade Concept
There Is No Better Time To Bridge Together Assets Downtown
First of all I am not a civil engineer, this is just a concept I put together over the past few days. I am not a urban planner by any means so forgive me if I’m missing certain elements. I just wanted to propose the overall concept of creating a pedestrian link or “experience” to bridge together a large portion of our downtown assets with something more than a sidewalk.
Most importantly, this proposed GWPromenade would connect Harrison Square, Grand Wayne Center, Allen County Public Library, Firehouse Museum, and very importantly the Hilton and Courtyard hotels without a pedestrian ever having to leave the promenade block(s).
The second purpose is to create highly attractive spaces adjacent to the GWPromenade to push developers to develop and now. If the AWB Condos and the Harrison apartments do as well as everyone is expecting, I don’t expect developers to sit around for long before announcing another project. The real key to additional development will be absorption, so lets hope the market can absorb all of the downtown units coming available in the next 9 months. What the city needs to do, and now, is continue the current momentum we have going, and that includes the Legacy Fund. We posted yesterday How The Legacy Fund Will Forever Change Downtown but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep the wheels moving. Part of the Legacy Fund is a Downtown Opportunity Fund, perhaps we could see some of this funneled into a project such as this?
I’ll discuss the concept itself in a bit more detail tomorrow, but please leave comments, thoughts, or ideas of your own in the comment section by clicking Leave A Comment on the tab to the left.
-Mark Johnson
Are you going to talk about this or no, because i thought it was a really cool idea.